«The financial industry still needs a huge digital transformation in Asia,» says Dominic Gamble, head of APAC at Wealth Dynamix, in an interview with finews.asia.
«Customers are demanding it,» Dominic Gamble, head of APAC at Wealth Dynamix (WDX), insists, «and if banks don’t deliver it they will die.» The transformation Gamble would like to see spans a wide arc – from client onboarding, going paperless, client lifecycle management, sentiment analysis, amongst others.
WDX specializes in providing client lifecycle management and business intelligence solutions for the wealth and investment management market and offers consulting services and products based on the Microsoft Dynamics platform.
Banks Could Be More Responsive
Surely a lot of this is more visual than utilitarian in its value, you could say. «If a client is upset and sends an email or text message to his banker, imagine if the platform could immediately flag the grievance to the relationship manager or his manager? A bank could be much more responsive and tailored in its approach to individual clients even if it is a behemoth,» Singapore-based Gamble explains.
He is also convinced that the industry needs a system where the requirements are standardized, where supporting documents are digitized and logged so the client is not asked for the same piece of paper repeatedly. Not surprisingly, Gamble believes cumbersome account opening is the primary deterrent for new clients.
What About Costs?
«One of the largest wealth managers in the U.K. brought their onboarding time down from 25 days to one day – using the digital platform, counters Gamble. But, what about costs? Can Asian private banks, already struggling with inflated headcount costs, afford to invest in digital transformation? «Cost/income ratios are being damaged by all the new regulations,» says Gamble, implying it is not tech spend that is tipping them over.
The real issue, he believes is the fragmented way in which technology is being sold and consumed in the region. «Any institution can only have so many third-party vendors,» he says, «so even though API (Application Programming Interface) enables you to be vendor neutral, the reality is institutions favor fintech that has a wider solution set.»
Asia Favors Cool Looking Stuff
Often, an institution is forced to use one system to onboard clients and a different one for client management and a third for prospecting. «No one in Asia offers the full spectrum,» Gamble says. «Asia is a market that favors cool looking stuff but is also increasingly savvy about whether the product is deep in functionality or tailored to wealth management,» he adds.
But crucially, given the shrinking institutional bandwidth, the same interface or vendor needs to capable of servicing the entire value chain. «CRM, for example, goes from boring to cool when it can be pieced together in one orchestrated dashboard,» he says.
