Comarch Highlights How to Improve Key Touchpoints in Wealth Management through Digitalisation

IT solutions provider Comarch is one of the leaders spearheading the digitalisation of the wealth management and financial sectors in Asia. Grzegorz Prosowicz, Consulting Director and Parida Leelaniramol, Business Development Manager, combined to offer delegates a fascinating Workshop at the Hubbis Indonesia Wealth Management Forum. They turned the spotlight on how as wealth management firms evolve, well-thought-through digitalisation is more critical than ever. Improving the customer experience is not enough to stand out in the market, they told the audience and underlined how the employee experience is just as important a driver for business growth. They stressed that digital means both high tech and high touch and must achieve both a great user and provider experience to be truly effective.

Comarch is a Polish company founded more than 25 years ago and is a highly experienced provider of innovative IT solutions for many industries, including telecommunications, banking, airlines, resources and utilities. The firm has been intently focusing on the private banking and wealth management segment in Asia, building relationships and winning valuable new clients in the region.

Prosowicz began by focusing the audience on a survey Comarch had conducted in 2017 in which the hundreds of bankers they surveyed globally said digitalisation and operational efficiency as well as optimal tools for relationship managers are the keys to their future success. He also explained that the focus on robo-advisory had diminished rapidly as firms in the wealth sector find the outcomes less than satisfactory.

“Our clients now have turned more again to educating and liaising with their customers, rather than aiming to produce some sort of ‘robo’ self-service, which has not been working,” he reported. “Personal relationships first.”

He also debunked another major hype in the market, namely chatbots. “While it could be the future, it is not much good for handling more than straightforward conversations,” he said, “and as we know, the wealth business is very complex. And AI is not yet there, either. No, as things are now, the way forward is direct communication, person to person, and especially for HNWIs.”

Instead, he explained, HNWI clients want to interact with their banker. “So, we built a digital application which we have delivered to many banks that serves to e digitally enhance the personal connection between the bankers and the clients. It helps with personalisation, helps tailor ideas and solutions, helps them with trading solutions, portfolio rebalancing, and is therefore certainly not limited to simply digital reporting.”

With that, he gave delegates a detailed interactive demonstration of the Comarch app, highlighting the user experience and the ease of interface, as well as the range of features on offer. The ease of communication between the customer and the RM is central to the proposition, with all the simple and more subtle features embedded available at great ease for both parties.

“Our app is the core of the communication,” he reported, “which is a change because before the regular communication was more usually email. The RM can so easily share the portfolio ideas, proposition and rebalancing advisories via the digital app, thereby enhancing the value of the personal meetings that will then usually ensue between that RM and their client.”

And of course, the engine is based on various critical parameters of the customer, such as their financial situation, current allocation, investment behaviour in the past, available cash, his or her satisfaction with the bank, the success of past recommendations, and so forth.

But, he added that besides automated recommending, some investment proposals may be also shared with the customer directly by the RM, who may choose the product, may put individual comment to support the recommendation, may give some suggestions about value/amounts, supporting research or documents, to help tailor everything tidily and effectively to the client.

“And personalisation can come in the form of keywords the client selects to give them more relevant content or recommendations,” he reported, “which of course also helps the RM focus attention on key topics that will make discussions even more relevant and personal. And we can help remove some of the more onerous tasks, and digitalise wherever possible, for example relating to documents and signing protocol, while keeping things also as personal as possible too.”

“How many of you think about your employees as your first customers?” he asked rhetorically. “Nowadays, an estimated 90% of businesses compete primarily on the customer experience, but actually according to consultancy and research firm Gartner, developing the employee experience is just as vital.”

He then referred to a report from Cognizant, which found that most facets of the touchpoints of employee experience will be automated in the future. “However,” he added, “we see that even well into the foreseeable future there will be a place for the regular forms of contact with a traditional wealth management approach and this should satisfy millennials that will still prefer this high-touch protocol.”

Parida Leelaniramol then took the microphone, focusing then more on the employee experience, and how that impacts businesses. “There is little doubt,” she said, “that every business in financial services has recognised the importance of customer experience, but how many of you focus intently on how the employee experience affects your organisation? The solutions in wealth management delivered to end client must be well-designed, faster and user-friendly, with potent technologies. But you must also think of your employees as your first customers, so choose technologies that are employee-centric, where you help them and they, in turn, can better serve their customers.

She then asked delegates if they knew how many employees routinely use the non-corporate applications downloaded from the internet. She said it was over 27%, which of course poses a massive risk. “Honestly, if well thought out in this area,” she stated, “this figure should be zero per cent.”

She then reiterated the importance of the technology of the digital workplace in achieving optimal ecosystems. “Based originally and still today in Poland, we are global and provide our solutions worldwide,” she reported, “and we have won clients today here in Indonesia and also across this region, for example in Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. We build our own software and are ever more focused on the private banking and wealth management space.”

In conclusion, she reiterated how Comarch’s wealth management software is dedicated not only on the customer side but also on the employee side because both sides of the equation must balance ideally to create an overall optimal experience and to support the business growth of the client firm.