Reimagining Wealth: Intellect Design on Empowering Relationship Managers

Sudhir Marwa, EVP and Business Head - Wealth and Capital Markets at Intellect Design Arena, gave delegates a lively and informative presentation at the Hubbis Digital Wealth Forum in Dubai in November, covering current trends in the Middle East wealth market, the role of the Relationship Manager, ways and means to improve RM capabilities and productivity, and how Intellect Design brings solutions to the empowerment of RMs and to boost their capabilities significantly. This is a short summary of his talk.

Sudhir Marwa is the EVP and Business Head of Intellect Wealth and Capital Markets. He is an operations & technology professional with over 29 years of experience in Retail Banking, Off-shore Wealth Management, Private Banking & Commercial Banking across Asia, Europe, Middle East & Africa. He has a long career spanning more than 30 years and has worked with leading banks such as Citibank, DBS, ABN AMRO, Barclays, ANZ and Mashreq Bank.

He first offered delegates a snapshot of his firm, Intellect Design Arena (see box below). And he then zoomed in on the Middle East, noting that private wealth and wealth management are both growing apace, with the HNW segment rising fast and bringing with it many challenges for the banks and other providers, who are often struggling, especially around digital delivery, data, insights, personalised solutions and boosting the capabilities and productivity of the RMs.

Needs to address

“What do we need?” he pondered rhetorically.

“We need a hyper-personalised service for the clients, hyper-automation to ensure a seamless STP experience. We need to increase productivity, emphasis on sustainable revenue generation, and remain compliant to regulatory requirements.”

He explained that they see the RM as front and centre of the wealth management, and technology must support and empower them to drive sustainable business, especially as the cost of those RMs keeps rising.

Human advisory is key

He said robo advisory has not been so successful; it is there to lend support, but the future is personal advice and technology supporting the client-facing bankers, centred on several key areas reducing mundane daily tasks - generating new business, planning & goal setting for the client, monitoring activity and progress, and engaging the client and keeping them happy to ensure that they meet personal objectives, and seamless execution.

Boosting customer engagement

Pointing to slides in his excellent slide show, Sudhir explained how Intellect Design is working with banks and other providers to enhance the RM’s customer engagement across the four key areas.

First is the 360-degree view of the clients to provide a holistic view of customer portfolio. Second, virtual advisory using collaboration tools for proactive cutomer engagement. Third is what he called the explainable-AI based client engagement indicator. And lastly, there is the Peer-to-Peer Portfolio Benchmarking.

Enhancing planning and advisory

He then reviewed technology accelerators for Planning and Advisory, including algorithms to understand customers’ needs, an AI-based portfolio optimiser to help achieve maximum return, advanced ‘What if’ scenario analysis, and deep data analytics to provide hyper-personalised recommendations.

Elevating execution

Sudhir turned to technology accelerators for Execution, noting that these would include hyper automation for advanced end to end order fulfilment, real time validation and compliance check protocols, voice to text data capture, and the delivery of a single platform with dynamic rule engines for multi-asset support.

Enhancing Monitoring Capabilities

He then explained some of Intellect’s technology accelerators for monitoring. These include facilitating more Socially Responsible led Investing under the rapidly growing ESG banner, delivering the smart portfolio health score, and the ability to highlight portfolio deviations to RMs and customers.

The Intellect Wealth Suite

Sudhir then offered brief details on the Intellect Wealth Suite, zooming in on the firm’s wealth offering, which centres on its proprietary Wealth Qube solution, which spans the entire wealth spectrum in terms of client segments, from retail customers to UHNWIs.

Its six modules cover the Relationship Manager Office, the Customer Personal Office, the Operations Office, the Risk and Compliance Office, the Fund Manager Office and the Trust Office.

Sudhir closed by focusing on a veritable and highly impressive ‘who’s who’ of clients around the world that work with the firm across a wide range of wealth management areas and solutions, remarking that Intellect Design is at the very cutting edge of technology and digital solutions to empower and advance private banks, wealth firms and many associated businesses across the globe.

About Intellect Design Arena

Intellect Design Arena presents itself as the world’s largest cloud-native, API-led microservices-based multi-product FinTech platform for the world’s leading financial & insurance clients, offering a comprehensive suite of financial technologies products across the full spectrum of consumer banking, central banking, transaction banking, risk and treasury and insurance, wealth management and capital markets

The company is listed in India and has evolved over several decades from a business that came to the fore, firstly serving Citibank, and then expanded broadly across the world of banking, insurance and financial services. Intellect Design today counts some 260 financial institutions around the world in over 97 countries as clients.

The key themes are composable technology, cloud native, and contextual, with 12 product lines run through four businesses. Intellect is well established across Asia, working with leading banks such as UOB, DBS, CIMB and many others, including global banks and some central banks across ASEAN markets, and of course, the Middle East, working with most of the leading banks in the UAE and having fairly recently launched a lifestyle super app in record time for a prominent UAE bank.

“We are today working with the top eight global banks worldwide, and we have structured ourselves according to the customer,” Sudhir told delegates. “We provide software across the entire range of banking products. We have a solution for corporate banking, consumer banking, central banking, risk management, and capital market and treasury, and I look after wealth and capital markets.”