Our participation in the AM Tech Day by L’Agefi in Paris has been a valuable opportunity to share opinions and ongoing projects among industry peers around this edition’s topic: democratising investment.

Setting the scene

We’re currently operating in a fast-changing scenario, which is leading to massive asset shifts within the market. Global shocks are threatening the stability of financial markets. Furthermore, we see a growing segment of wealthy people: large assets are being transferred as the generation of heirs increases. Young and tech-savvy investors are entering into the market. In addition to all that, new asset classes like cryptocurrencies are arising, accelerating the democratisation of investments.

Such an environment has produced increased and strong competition in the wealth management and banking industry, together with accelerated innovation. Main drivers of this innovation are changing customer behaviors, tight regulation and new competitors entering in the market. Customers are nowadays looking for hybrid offerings, seamless, digital services and providers that incorporate expertise, perfect data management and analysis, and technology support.

Setting the competition

Neobanks are driven by this impulse for innovation. Their volumes of customers and transactions are growing year on year. This increase of market share can only be achieved through innovative services, since digital channels are their only way of communication with their clients.

To remain competitive, Wealth Managers and Private Banks are also investing in native front-end platforms for end-to-end client servicing, hyper-personalised advisory and portfolio management to support advisors and bankers in their relationship with clients. What Bill Gates already told back in 1997 “We need banking. We do not need banks anymore” is becoming true to a certain extent, as far as players in the investment market understand that it is not the question ‘if’ they should implement innovative digital investment solutions, but only ‘how’.

Setting the opportunity

The formula for success of innovation? Technology is fundamental. It’s all about relying on cloud to increase efficiency, scalability and resilience, simultaneously leveraging on a collaborative API ecosystem with an open platform approach, focusing on creating a unique customer journey with a high level of personalisation and using the treasure of data to the customer’s advantage along the entire value chain.

Traditionally, the investment world has excluded certain groups of investors. However, the digitalisation of investments has been charting a new course. The very nature of digitalisation is democratic: it makes the same quality of service accessible to everyone, every time and everywhere, regardless of the assets invested. When we talk about the digital innovation, we cannot avoid considering a fundamental change that it brings into the sector: the democratisation of service.

To find out more on the topic, you’re welcome to download the case study here and learn how we supported our client novobanco in their positioning strategy as a market innovator in investment services by democratising their wealth offering.