It’s that time of year again. The time when personal and professional goals are being revisited and business plans for the fiscal year ahead are beginning to move to execution mode. So whether you’re already revising your New Year’s resolutions, or finalizing your business investments planning, getting to grips with your goals is probably top of mind.
Working with leadership teams across the North America wealth management industry, I am fully aware of the time and effort that is being dedicated to planning and standing up programs effectively. It’s important to mobilize your teams and prioritize your dollars so that you keep up with the fast pace of change and remain well positioned for growth. And this year, I’ve noticed there’s a hint of something new in the air—the frequency and emphasis on the word digital as a key ingredient within those plans. Instead of digital and mobility being aspects of new business models or the latest activity from the Marketing department, we are seeing a significant proportion of the resources of incumbent firms moving toward completely transforming the digital client and advisor experiences—and introducing new, “digital only” value propositions.
In a recent cross-industry Accenture Strategy survey, 96 percent of executives said they see a competitive advantage in becoming a digital business and 82 percent said they expect to be a digital business within the next three years.[1] The wealth management industry is poised to take advantage of digital disruption. Advisors are already aware of digital demand—more than three-quarters (77 percent) of advisors we surveyed say client demand for digital is increasing, and 75 percent believe the trend will be stronger in the next five years. And partnerships are forming between the industry members and institutions to drive digital innovation—the FinTech Innovation Lab is an annual program run by the Partnership Fund for New York City and Accenture for early and growth companies that have developed cutting edge technology products targeted at financial services customers.
I expect to see a real shift in the wealth management sector’s use of digital capabilities over the next 18 to 24 months. So unless you want your digital investment’s New Year Resolutions to go the same way as those plans to exercise more and eat more healthily, you may want to talk about digital solutions sooner rather than later.
Interested in this topic? Then contact me, Kendra Thompson, for more.
[1] *Source: Accenture Strategy Executive Research 2015, https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-being-digital.aspx