In the last few years, the client has increasingly grown far more front and centre of the private banking and wealth management sector, and one of the primary concerns is nowadays how to effectively align the needs of the wealth industry – boosting engagement, gain and retain the trusted advisor status – to the needs of those clients and the ongoing demand for client-centricity. All in the age of Covid-19.

In the contemporary everchanging scenario it is actually possible to win the best of both worlds, by start looking in depth at the whole art and science of communicating with private clients.

Digital to conquer client-advisor communication

We all know that from the very beginning communication has represented a key, essential element to optimise client engagement and build a strong client-advisor relationship. Back in the day, the perceived distance between analogue and digital communication was wider and few advisors really felt the need to bridge the gap. Indeed, advisors typically relied on face-to-face activities to interact directly with their clients.

Try to think about it for a minute. The digital tools we have at hand, not to mention the Covid-19 procedures of the last year and a half make it seem quite unfamiliar on present day. Clearly communication with private clients worked best when meetings happened in-person, but with remotisation dominating today’s landscape, the wealth management industry had to promptly adapt and then shift to a remote-first, digitally driven model for clients’ meetings and communications.

Also, delivering carefully curated, relevant, and tailored advice is no longer enough; the rate at which modern technology is advancing results in the need to leverage client behaviour, data, analytics, AI, machine learning, which are all so vital for client engagement and loyalty.

In broad terms, digital communication has moved up to the first place on the list of must-dos for 2021 and beyond.

Reshape the aesthetics of your business

As digital communication is making its way through effectively build a long-standing client relationship together with an engaging client experience, there’s a new area of focus that is increasingly gaining its place in the wealth management industry and it is recognised as the holy grail of client communication; we are talking about aesthetics and it all comes down to how your visual presence matches your client communication.

Let’s take the client-advisor relationship; a meticulously-built, tailored, time-lasting relationship based on the advisor’s ability to effectively and regularly communicate and promptly respond to clients’ needs. The dream ends when the client meets an incongruous brand communication, a messy website, a client portal that takes ages to log in, an overall “pale” appearance.

To communicate is maybe an easy activity, but to forge and cultivate an effective, empathic, proper dialogue with your client is something else. It does not happen merely by adopting digital, it does not begin in a specific moment in time, nor it ends. It is a continuous flow of interaction that involves different facets of your brand.

While delivering hyper-personalised advices in an opti-channel approach will continue to be the key to always upgrade client experience, digitalisation carries with it the need to rethink and reshape the aesthetics of your business, from your website, to your client portal, from your client app to your social media appearance, to deliver and communicate a consistent, dynamic, vibrant, business to your client.