As recently as three years ago, the financial services industry—including wealth management—was still just exploring the possibilities enabled by advancements in technology and how they might affect products, channel alignments, and operational strategies.
It’s 2023 now, and Aite-Novarica Group has observed some of what these initiatives have rendered possible. We’ve seen examples of modern platforms centralizing all aspects of an advisor’s workflow; advanced analytics driving client engagement—and wallet share; new and innovative products coming to market faster than ever thought possible; integration of sustainable and impact investing within the client life cycle; and fully digital onboarding across brokerage, advisory, banking, and trust products.
Crucially, this level of innovation isn’t limited to the largest wealth managers or those with the most resources. Due in no small measure to the vendor community’s efforts to make their solutions more open for integration and easier to configure, firms of all sizes—and across all channels—can offer more seamless experiences, a broader selection of products, and more personalized service to their clients.
Not all of these advances have achieved ubiquity, nor have they all fully matured, but, to paraphrase celebrated election forecaster Dave Wasserman, “We’ve seen enough.” The critical mass of realized innovation signals that management has wholeheartedly accepted that the juice is indeed worth the squeeze. And, in the midst of challenging market conditions, building on this progress is imperative to prove the worth of professional investment management to investors.
With this in mind, Aite-Novarica Group’s Wealth Management practice is focusing its 2023 research on 10 trends that will shape the wealth market this year.
Some of these include:
- The convergence of manufacturing and distribution drives product revolution: This convergence is much more than just business unit reorganization. In 2023, Aite-Novarica Group expects two key trends will drive product revolution: the evolution from outsourced third-party asset management to on-platform TAMP and the democratization of products that were once only available to the wealthiest clients, e.g., ESG, direct indexing, alternative investment products, and digital assets.
- Wealth managers merge channels to serve clients from birth until death: Wealth managers with complementary and well-integrated offerings can demonstrate value to investors seeking partners to navigate a challenging economic environment. Pace-setting firms will drive referrals from self-directed and workplace channels to individual advisory, developing advanced analytics to target investors receptive to professional advice and management. Moreover, firms with mature banking capabilities will seek to bridge banking and investing.
- Wealth managers experience success and worry on the alternatives desk: More of the U.S. RIA market will capitalize on the P&L upside associated with greater private client allocations to high-quality, liquid alternatives. These practices will experience higher margins thanks to the greater adoption of alternatives through fund platforms that remove friction from manual processes. Many other practices will have to manage their doubts about digital assets and develop or establish partnerships with platforms to be (at the minimum) aware of their clients’ externally held assets.
- CRM comes into the limelight for its second act: Wealth management interest in CRM systems is expected to strengthen in 2023. CRMs are becoming the nexus of information and action for wealth management businesses. Financial advisors demand connected experiences; CRM tools will attract attention from wealth managers as customer-relationship-building platforms to help firms grow their books of business.
To learn more about the rest of the top 10 trends for wealth management in 2023, read our full report Top 10 Trends in Wealth Management, 2023: The Juice Is Worth the Squeeze or reach out to Director, Wealth Management Andy Besheer at [email protected]. You can also watch the recording of our February 2nd webinar where we explored each of these top trends in detail. Click here to access the recording.