CRITERIA
Please use the following areas of questions as a guide to help you structure your 1500 statement.
1. Use of technology
Please provide client AuM (December 2022) in local currency (for the private banking business only, excluding assets under advisory).
Please give details of key investments in technology made in 2022 to improve client engagement/experience, increase advisers’ productivity and enhance operational efficiency, helping you face social restrictions. Also, please describe your firm’s digital transformation, how you have faced new challenges and which key areas you aim at improving, to be prepared for a post-pandemic world and also more prepared for future crises too.
Please also outline how technology has enabled you to measure employees’ productivity and targets, and enhance client services, and how you were able to shift your corporate culture and management style quickly and effectively to adapt to the new environment.
Please also indicate any key investments made to meet regulatory requirements (RegTech) and face cybersecurity threats, and details of key partnerships with fintech firms or other third party firms, and how this ecosystem has become a key competitive advantage for your firm, accelerating the innovation process. Also please indicate how technology and digitalisation have contributed to grow revenues and profits, boost inflows, attract new clients and grow client assets.
Finally, please provide evidence of how your technology budget is split among the following areas (client facing technology, relationship manager technology, back-office technology, regulatory compliance and risk management, data management and analytics, IT infrastructure) and high priorities for the future.
2. Digital client experience
Please provide supporting evidence of how technology has enabled private bankers to keep close to clients, reassure them, provide timely market updates and advice during these very challenging times. Please illustrate how new digital approaches have enabled your firm to reinvent engagement with clients and meet their evolving needs, also through partnerships with fintech firms.
Please show how this unique client experience has reflected in your private bank’s KPIs (in terms of new client relationship, increased client assets, revenues and so on)
Also, please indicate which digital skills and services clients have most appreciated over the past several months, and which skills and services are likely to differentiate your firm from competition, post pandemic. Finally, please indicate what types of clients (by age group, wealth, profession etc) tend to use digital services at your firm, and what it implies for your digitalisation process going forward.
3. Digital portfolio management
Please highlight how changes in the use of technology - or new technology investments made during the past year - have contributed to modernise portfolio management, asset allocation and product strategy, and have helped develop digital advisory services, including health checks for clients, improving performance, managing risk and meeting clients’ goals. Also, please explain how digital tools allow the personalisation of CIO insights in solutions that are more personalised and relevant to clients.
4. Digital wealth planning
Please explain how your firm provides regulated and digital real time advice, and how technology has helped private bankers recommend a suitable investment strategy based on a client’s individual financial situation relative to their attitude to risk and an understanding of their life stage, assets and goals.
5. Self-directed investments
Please highlight how your firm is facing increasing demand from self-directed investors, and how technology has helped transform how investors engage with their investments in a modern, digital experience, whether directly only or also through an adviser. Also, please explain how important it is for your firm to take into account not only traditional investments but also cryptos and other digital assets for instance. Finally, please explain how big tech firms may provide inspiration for your digital services and how you face competition from non-financial services providers.
6. Digital marketing & communication
Please describe how digital marketing, through digital/social media and platforms, has helped you grow your brand awareness, promote specific products and services to clients, in a bespoke way, and improve client prospecting. Please indicate key results achieved in terms of revenues growth, client retention and acquisition.
Please indicate three key initiatives taken over the past year, to improve client communication through digital channels (including mobile and tablet, web portals and social media), and which ones will last in the future, post pandemic. How have you leveraged technology to offer customised communication to existing clients and target new clients over the past 12 months? Do you see that the pandemic has created lasting positive change in how advisers and clients connect?
How have you used technological tools to customise your client experience, from onboarding to the product choice and preferences for interaction?
Also, please indicate what share of your client communication is conducted through digital channels and how it has changed since the start of the pandemic and whether you expect these changes will last in the future.
7. Client acquisition
Please indicate how investments in the digital platform at your institution have helped private bankers acquire new clients (including key segments, such as millennials, entrepreneurs etc) and what challenges you had to face. What engaging digital tools and prospecting techniques have you used to attract new clients, in particular millennials? Is social selling effective for larger, sophisticated clients? Has technology and working remotely enabled private bankers to tap into new and unexpected needs of new clients? How many clients did you acquire over the past 12 months compared to past years? Where did you source them from? Please also explain whether you use ‘gamification’ and how it can help you gain new clients.
8. Empowering relationship managers
Please highlight how you have digitally empowered relationship managers and how improvements in this area have boosted relationship managers’ productivity and services, allowing them to keep close contact with existing clients, attract new clients and onboard them digitally, while complying with regulation. Also, please highlight how investments made in digital tools to empower relationship managers have enabled you to attract new advisers to join or existing private bankers to stay longer. Are there any ‘killer’ apps, or tools that have been particularly successful in empowering relationship managers? In what way have digital tools allowed personalising CIO insights, products and services in solutions that are more personalised and relevant to clients?
Also, please describe what training has been provided to private bankers on new digital tools.
9. RegTech
Please give details of key investments in technology made over the past year to meet regulatory requirements (RegTech), improve client engagement/experience, increase advisers’ productivity and enhance operational efficiency.
10. Digital Innovation
Please describe one or more key tech/digital initiatives introduced over the past year - comprising new products and services and/or significant technological improvement to products and processes – and tangible benefits they have brought to your firm and clients.
Also, please explain how this new technology has supported digital transformation and streamlined operations.
What are the steps that lead you to launch new digital solutions? How important is it for your firm to build digital systems and innovative solutions leveraging feedback from clients and private bankers?
11. Client reporting platform
Please explain how your firm provides their clients with the right data about the outlook and performance of their investment strategy, while helping your institution save time and money.
Also, please specify how your client reporting platform helps private bankers interact with their clients regularly and help them educate their clients. Finally, please explain how your client reporting platform keeps both clients and private bankers accountable, allowing private bankers to meet client needs, optimise their campaigns and get optimal results.
12. CRM system
Please explain how your CRM system helps you manage your client base, helping your firm centralise, optimise and streamline your communication. Also, please explain how technology investments made last year have enhanced the quality and consistency of private bankers’ relationships with their clients and improved customer loyalty.
13. ESG technology
With sustainability and impact investing now firmly at the core of all investment activities, please indicate how technology investments made at your firm have improved the integration of ESG factors into the investment process and the alignment of investments with client values.
Also, please highlight how technology developed/used at your institution has enhanced impact measurement and any other benefits of technology in the ESG/impact investing space.
14. Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence
Please provide evidence of key initiatives taken over the past year related to Big Data analytics which have enabled your firm to successfully predict customer behavior, for instance, particularly at times of high market volatility.
Also, please describe key initiatives taken to incorporate Artificial Intelligence into your business model, for example to support client advisers, build up a more complete risk profile of
clients or analyse research, information and products and match them to the relevant client portfolios and relationship manager, help understand how markets are behaving and the likely impact on portfolios, including natural language processing.
15. Digital Vision & Culture
Please highlight how your institution has developed a strong and common culture conducive to
the execution of its digital strategy, including support from top management, removing silos and breaking through risk aversion and experimentation. How do you foster a digital culture?
Please describe the key pillars of the digital transformation for your firm, progress made so far and the plan to achieve your digital vision.
Also, please describe how your existing technology and any technology investments made over the past year have helped enhance the bank’s value proposition, making it more appealing to today’s increasingly interconnected world. Finally, please indicate the biggest challenge you face in your drive towards digitalisation, when you attempt to update traditional ways of working? Do private bankers tend to resent innovation? How do you avoid resentment? Do you believe that drive towards digitalisation and innovation has to come from the top or should be decentralised? What was the single biggest change or initiative that has promoted a culture of innovation within the bank?
16. Cyber security
Please describe key best practices adopted and investments made at your firm that help manage risks posed by cyber-security threats facing your business, especially during the past two years of hybrid/remote working, and briefly outline your response plan for a cyber incident, and key benefits for your clients.
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