To debate the shadow IT trend is pretty common these days in the IT world: employees adopt digital tools outside the perimeter of allowed of recommended apps. Like, Dropbox instead of the company cloud, Whatsapp in place of the official messaging system and so on.

We noticed time ago that the same trend is applying to nearly every modern communication need in the world: moms talk to the physician about their babies through Whatsapp; for every classroom, there is an improvised mailing list for parents, or a Facebook group, or whatever else. In wealth management, people do want to talk to their advisor in the quickest and practical way. Data show that the delay of the advisor in answering emails is often enough for a client to switch to some other professional.

Every modern community in everyday life is shifting towards digital communication, and fintech is no exception. So we decided to enable in our tools true means of digital communication, also to overcome a certain lack of responsiveness that companies tend to show about the trend. We had to do that in a secure way, while respecting regulations like MiFID 2, that asks for the recording of every transaction and communication between advisor and client. So we opted for the concept of a digital workplace.

A Complete Omnichannel Solution

We see the digital workplace as a protected and enabled area, where client and advisor can freely and securely communicate. To make this true, we made the choice of tools irrelevant: whatever the device, whatever the technology, it’s always possible to initiate and carry on a conversation. PCs, notebooks, tablets, smartphones; chats, video calls, web… we took care of allowing every conceivable channel to be used and switched. Every conversation can take place through several devices and apps, in an actual omnichannel fashion. One can forget which device or software started the conversation, since it can continue without hassles on any other device or software. And everything is recorded and stored, in the proper way to follow the regulations.

This was just the beginning of our quest to solve the collaboration challenge and create an omnichannel digital workplace. We had to provide the missing link for a complete digital hybrid advisory experience: a digital signature process that is secure, easy, and compliant, and frees either the client and the advisor from the need of being physically in the same place and time.

Digital signature is not the simple digital translation of an analog procedure, but an entirely different process, with nuances that are not obvious and reverberate on the whole process chain from frontoffice to backoffice.