Banking on technology
Thomas Wolfsenberger, CEO of Swissrisk forecasts the future of private banking technology: “In five years time, front office solutions will start to be proactive and quite a few obstacles will have been overcome. Data availability will improve and multi channel services will experience a major break through. Not only will private banks start to rely upon online services in order to cope with the ever-increasing needs of private banking clients, but they will be viewed as a high quality supplement to physical interaction with clients. Collaboration via the internet will increase.
The borders between retail, mass affluent and private banking will continue to blur, making it virtually impossible for private banks to segment clients according to their respective holdings. Some HNWIs will show identical behavioural characteristics to those clients effectively perceived as ‘retail’ clients – who actually might be clients who only expose a small fraction of their wealth to any particular private bank.
The evolution of mobile devices, as well as advances in multi-channel content display and usability, will improve the adoption of mobile front office applications both by clients and employees of the bank. Mobile applications will no longer be a substitute of laptop or desktop computers for use by the ‘mobile workforce’. Instead they will constitute a ubiquitous companion effectively supporting private bankers as well as their clients whenever the support is needed.
Front office solutions will be able to monitor client portfolios in near or real time simultaneously. They will constantly track market events and compliance rules, and interpret them in the specific context of the client portfolio. If, for example, the research department of the bank thinks interest rates in the US will be raised, the pro-active front office solution will generate a call list of clients who would be affected by such a scenario and should be notified. Due to the multi-channel nature of tomorrow’s front office architectures, clients will, for example, receive a text message on their mobile device telling them to either rebalance or hedge their portfolio or contact their client adviser to act on their behalf.”
Swiss Risk AG has merged with Imagnos AG to create Swissrisk – Financial Systems, employing 120 staff across Europe, offering software for portfolio management, trading and payments, custody and customer relationship management.
