Today’s wealth management tools. Are they able to cope with Financial Advisors and Investors’ modern needs?

Paul Graham - Group Managing Director @ M2Wealth International25 August 2016

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Financial institutions worldwide are focusing strongly on High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) having determined that these customers consume the greatest portion of high margin services and generate higher profits.

The range and capability of investment facilities offered to customers is emerging as a significant competitive differentiation factor between institutions.

Younger professional people are now used to getting the investment information they want, when they want it, and they expect it 'online' from the web, mobile devices and social media.

At the same time, the aging population of 'boomers' is significantly expanding the number of people actively managing investments for future retirement or current income.

As more people become involved in their own investments and increase the scope of their portfolios and strategies, they require more sophisticated wealth management tools and a new collaborative relationship with their advisors. 

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The investor clients understand their own requirements well and are actually looking for a new 'collaborative' relationship with the Advisor that takes into account their own knowledge and preferences, their busy life-style and the online tools they prefer to use. In addition, another major problem is looming. Many Investors actually deal with multiple asset managers: banks for cash and loans, brokers for stocks and bonds, financial advisors for funds and property, fund managers for pensions, accountants for private lending etc.

Systems designed for the Financial Services industry are typically built from the perspective of the Financial Institution to fulfil their own vision of the way they want to provide services to Investors. This has compounded the mismatch problem and has severely limited their ability to react to the changing requirement - the existing systems often lock the institutions into the out-dated practices. The irony is that in this age of internet, social media and mobile devices, the investor client often has the same access to wealth management information as the Advisor and is aware of broader investment opportunities and strategies than they are being presented with.

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Portfolios are becoming more active and diversified and 'statements' of all shapes and forms are rolling in almost every day making it impossible to keep control over the big picture without resorting to complicated spreadsheets or accounting packages or getting the accountant to manage it all. These affluent people and their advisors who are usually employed by an asset management firm, wealth management company, single & multi-family offices and bankers constitute the primary audience for sophisticated yet easy to use wealth management systems.

‘’M2Advisor’’ is a perfect example for a wealth management system. It is the brainchild of group of people with extensive trading, investment and settlement systems experience and with the vision and resources to create advanced new systems for the evolving 'wealth management' sector. M2Advisor set to work and built a range of interlocking solutions using a range of modern, 'open', web-enabled technologies. These are completely new systems that can plug-in seamlessly to existing environments and integrate into the new technologies of the web, social media, and mobile apps.