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Zoom is hugely popular even among bankers right now – but what about security concerns?

Mass-market products like those really should be used but only as a kind of a relationship-maintainer for the soft elements. For the harder elements – sending reports, prospectuses, or other confidential materials –increasingly tools are built for this market. It’s just that the market needs to start adopting them.

Ralph Hamers, UBS’ next CEO, says artificial intelligence and big data are technologies that fascinate him for banking. How could they be introduced?

What we're seeing now with big data and other technologies is not just these headline terms but real use cases.

«It's still not the cheapest, but trickle-down effect»

An example being that you can personalize the story, the proposal, and even the performance and make it feel right and personalized for the individual. It’s a means to put the right content in front of the right person based on their needs and preferences.

Smaller firms would argue many technologies are beyond their financial means.

A trickle-down effect is happening: a lot of applications might target smaller wealth managers. It's still not the cheapest thing in the world. There's still risk. But there are far more packaged products now, such as CRM, research tools, communication and marketing solutions. There’s actually a lot out there.

How much will it cost wealth managers to catch up with the lag you see in technology?

It’s a monstrous number across the whole market. You can get hung up on the cost based on the traditional way of thinking, or you can just start to think of paying for services you need.

«There's going to be a shock»

The SaaS [software as a service] model and providers are delivering it on the basis of paying comparatively small numbers for these firms. Packaged solutions are also becoming cheaper because, for one, they're posted on the cloud.

Wealth managers are heading into a perfect pandemic storm. Technology spend is a tough sell. A do-or-die moment?

If you're thinking about the longevity of a business and things like next generation client base, there's going to be a shock. I find it hard to believe the traditional model of wealth management is not going to be far more technology-enabled. What the technology vendor marketplace needs to do better is to build the return on investment knowledge base: «Why do I need it and what benefits will it bring to me?» 

 Stephen Wall is head of marketplace and content at Wealth Mosaic, a firm he co-founded in 2017 together with Simon Ramery. Wall previously worked as a senior consultant specialized in the private banking sector for Aite, as a freelance market intelligence analyst and writer, contributor to «Family Office Review,» and a director at Scorpio Partnership. Together with Ramery, he authored the first edition of the «Swiss Wealth Technology Landscape Report» this month.