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Financial Services Review | Tuesday, January 28, 2025
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As competitive pressures in wealth management intensify, the top four trends driving change include price and discount management, differentiation, the development of wealth-as-a-service infrastructure, and the increasing presence of women as wealth managers.
As competition intensifies in the wealth management market, consumers are increasingly demanding innovative products and services, such as private marketplaces, personalized advice, and seamless omnichannel experiences. To stay competitive, wealth managers must either adapt their business models or risk falling behind. To meet these demands and drive industry change, wealth managers are focusing on four key trends:
Price and Discount Management
Managing pricing is essential for wealth managers to maintain overall profitability and competitiveness, especially in the face of rising inflation and a challenging economic outlook. While aligning fees with market norms is the first step, examining discounting levels and procedures is necessary for long-term revenue growth. Successful wealth managers will take steps to identify clients with excessive and outdated discounts, review discount practices, reassess discount governance and procedures, and implement specialized, regular reporting and impact analysis tools. The sustained revenue growth can be realized in less than a year, helping to fund growth initiatives and alleviating pressure on the bottom line.
Differentiation
Private markets are the primary focus of the wealth industry, offering significant potential for development. Wealth managers must find ways to differentiate their product and advisory offerings as private markets become more mainstream. Successful wealth managers will provide their affluent clients with access to specialized, thematic, or ESG impact-focused funds and topbrand funds. To stand out, they should offer access to superior management to avoid potential downsides from overcrowding in the market. Furthermore, utilizing technology to address operational, regulatory, and efficiency issues will help them grow their products effectively and provide a seamless experience. Simply expanding teams and resources will not solve these issues.
Wealth-as-a-Service Infrastructure
Relationships between Wealth-as-a-Service providers and wealth managers are increasing worldwide. Wealth managers collaborate with technology companies to improve distribution, product, and technological capabilities. These alliances combine formerly separate enterprises in ways that enhance the consumer experience
Women in the Management
Men have controlled the wealth management sector for many years. Although initiatives have made the environment more diverse, there has been little advancement in client-facing procedures. Over the next ten years, the percentage of women among highnet-worth people is anticipated to increase significantly from over 40 percent. This will become a significant growth prospect in the next ten years. Given that women are projected to live longer than men and often outlive their relationships, research shows they can be more risk-averse and invested in their life objectives than males. Additionally, they feel less confident in their ability to make investments and request greater engagement and guidance from their financial managers. Entrepreneurs who have already begun this procedure have seen an increase in income of about 10 percent
