Investment Firm of the Future: Distribution Model Shifts

This research takes a structured approach to analyzing the future by identifying investment firm shifts that the industry may need to accomplish collective goals.

Find ways to engage clients - Better engagement is needed, using technology in a way that speaks the customer’s language. New data provided by clients, customers, and end investors add opportunities for customization. New levels of engagement are possible if new forms of trust can be established.

The investment firm of the future will:

Gain a client edge through client intelligence
Use CRM principles, drawing from extensive customer data, to extend the opportunities for personalized, simple, and speedy engagement. Build trust through excellence in engagement, appropriate use of data, and connection to client-specified goals.

Extend customization into wealth and defined contribution
Seek opportunities to build out customized investment products to wealth and defined contribution business segments using consumerization success principles that are in other sectors (e.g., technology nudges such as “people like you will like products like this”).

Speak in an accessible language
The combination of people and technology affords the best opportunities to make the complex into simple propositions that retain sophistication. Such engagement reaches out to customers, drawing on their values-based preferences and using intuitive dashboards. Use of personal data must balance cybersecurity with customer convenience and experience.

Commit more heavily to the creation of trust
Trust has great value to both the saver giving trust and the firm receiving it. Use technology to facilitate trust, as well as client audits and other measurement to help manage trust.