Thomson Reuters: boosting efficiency and client satisfaction through digitisation

Deepak Khurana, Head of Business Development - Buyside South Asia at Thomson Reuters, made the third presentation of the Hubbis India Forum and explained how the products the firm offers empower private bankers with state-of-art digital resources to become more informed of markets and customer portfolios, as well as helping those bankers improve customer engagement and services. Moreover, the products and services that Thomson Reuters provides also extend to improving investors visibility of their portfolios and the market developments that will affect their investment decisions.

Khurana began his talk with some insights into the industry. Referring to the performance of the India Sensex Index, which has roughly doubled in value in the past five years and which is up around 43% since January 2017, he noted that investors are evidently well satisfied.

“However,” he elucidated, “there are notable shortfalls in the satisfaction of clients compared for example to markets such as Brazil and even China. Why should that be? The answer to some extent is that the key pillars within our typical private banking organisation, the private bankers and the investment advisers, as we perceive things, are only receiving information flow and propositions from their central teams in what I can term a ‘static’ form, such as emails, pdfs and so forth. But what we need are real-time resources that create efficiencies and empowerment of the bankers and advisers and that also result in greater client satisfaction.”

He then explained how Thomson Reuters can bring about the changes required by setting up a complete integrated workflow, or a platform, for the private bankers and advisers. “Think of a situation wherein these professionals then have client reports available to them at a click of a button, in a very concise and a very comprehensive snapshot, as well as plenty of other information, research and news available on the markets. The result, as I said earlier, is service provider empowerment and client satisfaction.”

He then explained that Thomson Reuters delivers this framework, this concept in two ways. The first one is using the flagship terminal, Thomson Reuters Eikon, while the whole plethora of the different applications that are available within Thomson Reuters will be available at the terminal.

“At the same time,” he added, “some of the other applications the wealth management bankers might use, for example, Finacle, Miles and others, can be in fact made available as a part of acquisition within this terminal. We thereby provide what we believe is one comprehensive solution through one terminal which actually combines all different functionalities for a private banker and that can make a huge difference to his efficiency, his professionalism and to the customer’s satisfaction and enjoyment.”

Using a fairly complex slide, Khurana then explained to the audience more about the content coverage within the Thomson Reuters flagship terminal. “In brief, you can see that we have a very extensive coverage of equities worldwide, we have the time series data with backtesting to see the results of the companies, we have the complete index constituents, all adding up to highly comprehensive information on the equity side.”

“And in the fixed income arena and the pricing side,” he added, “we also provide the key terms and conditions and other data points that help to analyse specific bonds, all Thomson Reuters proprietary information that empowers the platform, so we actually go out with every security and then come up with a security level of valuation.”

He also highlighted the flow of estimates. “This is one of our key strengths through our flagship proposition IBES. “This provides immense historical information as well as future estimates and projections,” he explained. “We have many brokers and a very extensive set of financial metrics for each company covered.”

He also highlighted the importance of Reuters as a source and as a filter of credibility. “We have award-winning information and perspectives which have a major impact on the financial markets,” he commented. “These are all available within the platform, and the search function and efficiency are outstanding, with archives and summaries and so forth. We also come up with a security level specific view, which also actually impacts our specific prices. Moreover, clients can also create their own newsletters, their own alerts on the basis of specific securities or specific event they want to monitor or highlight. And we also have third-party news coming in constantly, free of additional cost within the system itself.”

Khurana also explained the Thomson Reuters execution platform. “This is state of the art, with all the securities that are listed on exchanges able to be bought and sold through our platform, along with all the different channels for executing those,” he reported. “We have a whole host of tools through which clients can actually have great controls and risk management protocols.”

Khurana closed the talk by highlighting another capability called World Check. “As a wealth manager, you also need to do the AML screening of all the investors that you engage with. This can be done seamlessly and efficiently via World Check, which also even offers a deeper investigatory resource, Enhanced Due Diligence, which produces in-depth reports on those individuals flagged during screening.