5 key learnings in Social Media & Wealth Management
While working closely with a small group of wealth advisors, I recently discovered two interesting studies on Wealth Management (our key focus market):
From PWC: Global Private Banking and Wealth Management Survey (2013). Although it's ~ 2 years old, it is still a very interesting white paper, highly quoted in numerous recent publications and full of interesting insights.
From Cap Gemini: Cap Gemini World Wealth Report (2015)
and I am highlighting below 5 critical facts for the industry (related to social).
#1 "New Wealth" is a huge & competitive market
PWC reports that "new wealth, including that created by entrepreneurs, continue to rise steadily as a proportion with respondents anticipating it will reach 60% of their assets in just two years" (i.e 2016 ;-) ).
If we correlate this with the Cap Gemini World Wealth Report, this means that there are ~2M new affluents in the US and more in emerging countries (including China).
One interesting attribute of the younger segment is that they have relationships with many banks (see graphic below).So the result is that the new affluent market is big ... and will be very competitive.
#2 Social Media is key
In this context, "Quality of the Client Relationship Managers" and "Brand Reputation" are listed as a top differentiating factor for the future (PWC).PWC, quoting a CEO, Americas of a Multi-Family office "Connecting with the younger generation is a key challenge" and a Private Client: "would like to be able to make full use of technology including social media and mobile".
They conclude: Mastering Digital and Social Media is becoming best practice.
If we correlate this with #1, it is clear that mastering social media to grow Relationship Manager's networks with new affluents will be a competitive advantage for Private Banks and Wealth Management firms.
#3 Segmentation is changing
When people think "social media", they usually see "another communication channel"(i.e social vs phone or face2face).
Well, it's not just a question of a channel.PWC tells us that understanding the "new demographic" / Generation Y is critical and that Women are becoming a critical segment.
This is consistent with the more recent Cap Gemini report: "Segmentation of clients has evolved from traditional techniques based on HNWI age , wealth level and risk profile to advanced approaches based on behavior".PWC recommends Relationship Managers to "understand better the different network of influence on which many female clients rely for decision making". PWC list "Client Segment Service Model" as a top differentiating factor for the future.
Social data clearly enables marketers to identify and address new segments.
In wealth management, even micro-segments (100's of people) can be very profitable. As an example:
Early employees of a Unicorn
Alumni of an Ivy League School in a specific city
Employees of successful startups in a building in Manhattan
Women entrepreneurs interested in crowdfunding
Affluent interested in buying wines
This is not a big data challenge per se. The challenge is more to sell and market to 1000 times 1000 people and to collect "smart data" on 10's of millions of people (not billions).
As an example see below a segment of Women investors in the Bay Area who are interested in crowdfunding:
eCairn tribe of Women investors in the Bay Area interested in crowdfunding
#4 CRM is the top priority
PWC's survey on top priorities for technology investment for the next two years (i.e now) has two clear winners:
Historically, CRM system’s #1 function has been for Sales Rep to record and document private phone and real life conversations with prospects and clients in a database so as to manage the customer/sales lifecycle.
With the advent of Social Media, especially when the prospect/client is a public figure and needs to manage his/her own personal brand, conversations more and more happen on public channels and are text-based.
The challenge for CRM and for Sales Rep is clearly moving towards harvesting clients and prospects conversations and from collecting sparse data from Sales Reps to building meta-data and private data-stores from the vast amount of public data available on the web.
#5 Human Capital and Change Management
Last but not least, the generational/ digital divide between wealth managers and new affluents makes it imperative for Wealth Management companies to rethink their Human Capital.
The average age of financial advisors is 50.9 and 43 percent are over the age of 55; only 5 percent are younger than 30. In contrast, the median age of new affluents is only 45. Add the millennials into the mix who are also getting more affluent and you see the call for change. A major opportunity for Change Management and Training firms.