Rebuilding Trust in Private Client Businesses

The key factor in building better, more lasting customer relationships in wealth management is trust. And yet trust in financial institutions has been seriously undermined by the recent fall in asset values and revelations of unethical behaviour. The effect of low trust may not be readily apparent, it is most often experienced as an opportunity cost, ie in what is not done by clients and introducers, and therefore invisible but nonetheless stifling to growth. To restore trust, it is necessary to understand its different dimensions. Valuable lessons can be learned from recent research on the nature of trust and loyalty.

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Improving Performance in Private Client Wealth Management

There is now an air of some stability in the private client markets. Even though there are still costs to be cut, the attention is turning to asset gathering, and this in turn leads to a close scrutiny of the processes by which private client firms go about acquiring new clients and increasing their share of managed assets of existing clients. In this article, we argue that the concept of ‘sales force management’ can have much value for the private client business, if applied sensibly to take account of the nature of the clients and sales processes involved.

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Impact of Depolarisation on the Retail Financial Services Sector

In this paper, we argue that the depolarisation initiative as represented in CP121 is a potentially good initiative to simplify regulatory processes and reduce costs for an important part of the financial services distribution system to affluent markets, but will not have much immediate impact on the fundamental concerns facing the retail financial services sector, in particular lack of competitiveness, high charges and failure to ‘close the savings gap’.

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IBC Advice Conference Presentation - The Future for Advice

With the collapse of equity markets, financial institutions need to reconsider the type of advice they offer their clients. Frequently, the advisory process is used to sell a product or a brand, not always in the best interests of the client. In this presentation given at an IBC conference in London in September, John Lawrence defines different types of advice, the contexts in which they are relevant, comments on on-line advice, and offers some views on how the institution’s stance on advice will shape the whole business model.

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Private banks need to rethink their business models

Most institutions in the wealth management markets have experienced a decline in assets under management in the last year, and so have much lower revenues than were anticipated. Many are reviewing their business plans, and making adjustments to operations to get as near to acceptable financial performance as possible, but few are reconsidering the underlying business model being used. In particular, few institutions are asking what value the institution adds over excellent relationship managers with technology and the ability to procure services. If this question is not thoroughly addressed, large institutions will face new competition and erosion of their relationship base. In this article, John Lawrence sets out some of the key questions to address in determining how institutions add value.

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