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The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated many issues of concern to family services clients, Lombard Odier's head of family services in Asia Pacific told finews.asia in an interview.

The Swiss private bank's high net worth family services practice is one of its core offerings in Asia, apart from investment services. However, the Covid-19 pandemic is changing the way it is engaging with clients, said Lee Wong, head of family services in Asia Pacific.

The wealth panning expert also discussed the realities and concerns of family businesses today and said that the wealth transfer process happening in Asia is «only the tip of the iceberg,» with the virus outbreak only serving to accelerate the process.  

Lee Wong, what changes have you observed in client behavior and demand as a result of Covid-19?

The wealth planning space is primarily driven by client aspirations and their hopes and fears. So what this crisis has done is to accelerate and bring to the forefront a lot of the issues of concern to our clients. What we've found is that that the typical hopes and fears – providing financial security for the family, creating a lasting legacy, mitigating tax exposure, fears about wealth erosion or about ensuring a smooth transition of family inheritance, and more – are of heightened importance.

The demands are not different, but clients are revisiting issues that were not as urgent in the past. Clients that already have plans in place are asking, «Where are we today?» and «Are the existing plans good to go?» They want to ensure service providers are capable of operating as they need them to, in case they need to take action.

How has the firm adjusted operations in relation to the partial lockdown in Singapore?

We are operating 90 percent from home, as many firms do so today. As a private bank, and particularly in the family services space, we are traditionally a face-to-face business. It requires building relationships and trust, and when you are talking about transitions, generally speaking you would have had a fairly good relationship with the client and they trust you well enough to want to go further to plan for transition.

«For us to reinvent ourselves and how we operate is a challenge once the face-to-face component is gone»

The gestation period is very long for a wealth planning solution to be put in place, and we typically have several meetings with members of the family. So for us to reinvent ourselves and how we operate is a challenge once the face-to-face component is gone, and we've had to rethink how we can stay engaged. 

Has the nature of your work changed?

The nature of work is similar is before, but we've had to re-think the mode of delivery to ensure we can still stay engaged with both the bankers, so they are aware of some of the concerns and anxieties of clients, as well as with clients themselves, so we can show them that we're still here around to walk them through their challenges.

We started off by doing various remote training sessions with our bankers, just to stay engaged with them, and to educate them on the needs of our clients in this space. Later on, we started to have dialogues directly with clients who were prepared to chat and had conference calls together with bankers to talk through some of these issues in relation to planning.

«We've had to adjust the delivery mode and find a way to continue to stay engaged in a way that is still professional»

But other than that, it's the same. We have partners in various jurisdictions that we work closely with, and we've had to re-think how we work with them as well. In the past, I serviced them by speaking at client events, running workshops for them and more, but we've had to shelve them for the next year and find other ways to stay active and support their clients. Similar to how we used to run events and push out content to encourage clients to rethink their universe in the family services space, we've had to adjust the delivery mode and find a way to continue to stay engaged in a way that is still professional and keep the content relevant and provoking, so we can continue the journey that we've been on in the past.

Where do you see family services headed in the next few years in Asia?