09 Dec How Technology is Changing Wealth Management — And What That Means for You
But there are other equally convenient—yet more robust and supportive—options, too.
Forward-thinking wealth managers today are using technology to cost-effectively service a wider range of clients. “We’re meeting them where they are,” says Tom Holloway, Portfolio Manager at Genus. “And because of the way technology is changing wealth management, we’re able to take down our fees and minimum investment threshold.”
So what exactly does that mean for you?
Onboarding Made Easy
Now you can simply go online from the comfort of your home, fill out a form and click submit. “When a client makes the buy decision, it’s like e-commerce,” Holloway says. “You go on the website, find out about the service, maybe make a phone call, and when you’re ready, you hit sign up, fill out your name and address and initiate the relationship.”
Human Advisors Team Up with Technology
While technology-based investment solutions have been growing in popularity since 2008, a 2017 study by Accenture showed that a majority of clients prefer a hybrid approach to investing — essentially, the best of both digital and traditional processes for optimizing their investments.
In the back-end, we use technology extensively for security selection and asset allocation, both of which are determined based on algorithms we’ve fine-tuned over the past 30 years. “Our algorithms rank factors like value, momentum and quality of the companies we invest in,” Holloway says. “We also use a data-driven process for portfolio construction. Our software knows the correlations between the assets and can make optimizations.”
Technology Lets Wealth Managers Focus on What They Do Best
The use of technology frees up time for wealth managers to focus on higher-value tasks like helping clients to achieve their goals — particularly when it comes to ESG investing.
And as technology keeps evolving, more and more benefits will be passed down to investors. “Our relationship might be a little less personal and a little more tech-enabled, but we keep tweaking the balance,” Holloway says, “and the result might be different for every client. Part of my job is to get both sides calibrated to serve you just right.”
