I’ve previously mentioned that the main beneficiary of a mobile app for a wealth management firm was the investor client. In my mind this should always be the case but there are many others.
A very important one is the back-office admin. Why? Let me answer this one using a story about Sarah:
Saving the back-office admin
Sarah worked for a wealth manager that had over 10,000 client accounts. She had been the head of the back-office administration for over 20 years, since inception, when client numbers were far less. She was highly respected in the company and the guardian of access to the banking system. All the responsibility ended with her.
She had so many requests for cash withdrawals flooding her desk every month. Some of them telephonic, some via email and even more from in-house staff leaving post-it notes on her monitor and desk. (Some in different colours to indicate priority).
Over time, Sarah spent more and more of her day, capturing these requests, validating, co-ordinating and executing them. In cases where there were insufficient funds, she had to send requests to the trading team asking for shares to be sold and waiting for their confirmation that this was done.
Capturing the payments on the banking system was also an error prone process which required intense concentration. A single keying error could mean client frustration at the least and business loss at worst. All bad for the reputation of the business.
Sarah was very stressed. She hated this type of work which just seemed to increase over the months and years. No-one seemed to understand how time consuming the work was and the pressure, knowing the cost of the smallest mistake, was severe. Although a loyal employee for many years, she was seriously considering quitting.
Clients were also getting frustrated by delays, irritating verification calls, mistakes in payment accounts and payment amounts. The list went on and it was undermining the reputation of the wealth management firm.
Our knight in (digital) shining armour.
The wealth management firm, conscious of their client’s frustrations and sensing the potential loss of a key employee, decided to use a mobile app to solve this problem. Their new mobile app included features such as instruction workflow handling and client authorisations using biometric authorisation.
The app provided a cash withdrawal request feature which was automatically linked to their chosen investment account. The client hit the withdrawal request button on their account, captured the amount. Before submission, the client was asked to verify their auth details using biometric security. If the account had insufficient cash, then the client user was immediately asked to choose from a provided list of actions.
Once the request was received and logged by the system; all the relevant parties, including the client, were notified. With the new mobile app, there was no work for Sarah to do until the traders and advisors had completed their work. When these had all been done, with the client being notified with push notifications every step of the way, Sarah did a bulk export of all client requests to the open banking payments processing system with one click of a button.
Her entire work effort took less than 10 minutes with full client communications, audit trailing and secure messaging. Rather than do manual labour she once again become the manager of her environment.
Think of how many other scenarios this process could be applied to. Corporate action approvals, document authorisations are just some of many.
The other beneficiaries
The main beneficiary is the wealth management firm themselves. From this story it is easy to see:
- It puts the client in control and keeps them in the loop and offers them a better service.
- That automation means less tedious manual labour, happier staff and a great ability to serve more customers.
- Allows better audit tracking and compliance.
- Enhances business image and reputation.
A mobile app provides an additional channel to service clients. It’s what clients want. The back-office team is happier, compliance is happier, and the business is more efficient.
Additionally, it provides a business with a USP and more channel to do marketing and business promotion.
It sounds like a win all around!
What do you think? Any other thoughts on the benefits? Share them on my LinkedIn
Dean Casey is a solutions architect with over 25 years building trading and portfolio management systems that help wealth managers and brokers to automate and enhance their businesses.
