Technology

Only 11 percent of UK wealth and retirement firms will significantly increase their technology budget for cross enterprise in 2021, FIS has claimed.

The happenings of the past 18 months had remarkable consequences on how wealth firms manage their digital tools, and inevitably led to overly rethink the relevance of customer experience to remain competitive and reliable in clients’ mind.

Digital transformation, client experience and sustainable finance are the top themes setting wealth managers’ digital agendas.

Seccl, the Octopus-owned custodian and platform technology provider, is running a training programme on the basics of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for financial advisers and investment professionals.

The pace of change has undeniably accelerated hugely in the past 18 months, and it can be hard to keep up. One major change has been the emergence of NFTs. Although they have existed for a while, they really came onto the radar this year. “Now everyone’s talking about it,” David Lee, an associate at law firm Fladgate, told thewealthnet.

Wealth and investment management technology provider SEI has extended its contract with Netwealth for a further five years.

Credit Suisse and LGT Bank have joined Swiss-based OpenWealth Association.

Wealthtech firm Wealth Dynamix has joined an accelerator programme which helps UK scale-up firms expand internationally.

HSBC Private Banking has launched an online trading platform for private banking clients in Asia.

For several years now, the way wealth managers work with clients, and the expectations they face, has been changing. To a certain extent, this is due to a demographic shift as a new generation of investors emerge, but it is more than that. On the one hand, wealth is rising and clients’ circumstances are becoming more complex, and on the other new technologies are creating new ways of managing investments and accessing financial products.