How are PBs in Asia progressing along the path of personalisation?
Personalised advice services in Asia’s private banking space took off in 2014 when UBS Global Wealth Management introduced its digital Advice tool — the first of its kind in the region. Five years on, and the flat-fee advisory model has blossomed as rival banks followed suit to provide tech-enabled offerings that deliver tailored investment advice aligned to their house views.
But just how far along on the personalisation journey are Asia's private banks?
To find out, Asian Private Banker conducted a survey of COOs and CTOs representing businesses with a combined Asia AUM of around US$950 billion, which revealed that the region's lenders are certainly progressing along the path, albeit cautiously.
As it stands, however, only a number of features are getting the personalised treatment, including account statement and portfolio analysis, which respondents said are 43% and 29% personalised to individual clients, respectively. Meanwhile, features such as news and research delivery as well as investment ideas are not completely tailored to each customer but 86% of the offerings has been "somewhat personalised".
On the device front, Total Wealth Advisor — Citi's collaboration with Privé Technologies which emerged two years after UBS Advice — was the first automated advice tool that prioritised mobile capabilities. The Swiss lender then followed suit that same year, rolling out Advice via a mobile platform.
A delicate balance
Personalised advice walks a fine line between providing individualised services and obtaining, using and securing data in accordance with clients' best interests and regulators' demands.
In a bid to continue developing tools to better tailor services to individual clients, private banks are pulling back the curtain on what data they are utilising and why.
The survey highlighted that lenders particularly rely on clients' transactional data for descriptive (88%), diagnostic (50%), and predictive (13%) purposes, compared to behavioural information, 63% of which results in descriptive, 25% in diagnostic, and 13% in prescriptive data. Neither transactional or behavioural data is yet used for prescriptive means.
Overall, respondents said technology at their respective banks is 40% ready to carry out meaningful and efficient gathering of behavioural client data, with the majority of responses sitting between 19.5% and 50% ready. However, as private banks continue pouring resources into data analytics, personalised prescriptive ideas could be available to the region's HNWIs sooner than expected.
