Q: What is the biggest change you have seen in the industry since you joined?
It has to be regulatory change. In the years since the financial crisis, regulation has become part of every wealth manager’s working life – and regulation is imperative in order to protect consumers and give them a better experience with the right outcomes.
But the regulatory burden is onerous. From RDR and Mifid, to Know Your Client and Consumer Duty, regulatory change has become business as usual in the wealth management industry. Balancing the time spent integrating regulation into processes and operations with time required to service clients effectively is a challenge.
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Technology has also been huge, transforming wealth management propositions and helping us develop client relationships. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next game changer. The moral panic that it will irrevocably change society and take our jobs might be overstated. If used in a smart, ethical way, AI will improve efficiency and productivity, and enable investment managers and wealth planners to spend more time nurturing relationships – from that respect, it has to be a positive.
Q: What is the investment topic most brought up by clients/investors?
It depends on the client. Invariably an advisory client will have a different perspective and concerns to a discretionary one, with the advisory client being closer to the day-to-day fluctuations of stockmarkets and how that affects portfolios.
I would say that, on the whole, clients are now less concerned about big stories and how they impact the markets – the financial crash, sovereign debt crisis, Covid, the renormalisation of interest rates.
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Clients have become more pragmatic about these ‘big’ issues and more long term in their outlook. They like to know where their portfolio was last year, where it is now and where it might be in the future.
There are always topics of interest – the upcoming elections, inflation, the ‘magnificent seven’ – but on the whole, our clients trust us to manage the portfolios and believe in the long-term nature of investing.
Read the rest of this article in the June issue of Portfolio Adviser magazine
