Wealth management is about to undergo a revolution

Hymne Landman, Head of Momentum Wealth at Momentum Investments

At Momentum Wealth, we believe that the time is now for investment platforms like ours to invest capital to make sure that our business models remain relevant, can adapt to disruption, and enable financial advisers and clients get ready for a new era of wealth management.

Every year Momentum Wealth partners with NMG Consulting to obtain in-depth market insights from around 150 face-to-face interviews with South African independent financial advisers. Key insights that came out of the 2021 study indicated that financial advisers anticipate significant disruption in three areas within the retail wealth industry. These include advice models, practice management and linked investment service provider (LISP) platforms, with the latter being most susceptible to disruption, in their option.

We believe that the experience of receiving financial advice and managing one’s wealth will evolve materially over the near future. For that reason, we are making the necessary investments in technology and proposition, specifically designed for our financial advice partners to enable them to significantly strengthen and simplify their advice and practice management processes and their value proposition to clients.

As a platform, we are working towards increasingly embracing the power of data and information in our systems to hyper-personalise client experiences, such as communication and reporting.

With us, investing is personal. We believe that people will remain at the core of client relationships. Partnering with digital technologies in the right way will enable us and our financial advisers to serve our clients in a more effective and personalised way.

Despite advances in artificial intelligence (AI), we think there is no substitute for the value that a financial adviser brings to their clients’ lives. By combining technology and humans, we can enable advisers to spend more of their limited time where it matters most: with their clients, optimising the investment strategy and giving tangible, bespoke advice. Advisers who successfully move away from paper-based processes, will not only protect the environment but also bring their operating costs down, savings which could be passed onto their clients or used to optimise their practice’s operations.

While many platforms have been experimenting with blended models, local capabilities are still evolving, and adoption rates have been relatively low. Our future will require a seamless blend of human contact and technology interactions, where clients will increasingly want to self-serve and interact in digital formats. This will allow the adviser to do what they do best – enhance the journey to success.

The moment has come for platforms to increase their own capital expenditures in order to ensure that we can construct the fundamental technologies that will give us the agility and flexibility to meet the needs of financial advisers and their clients in the future. That is precisely what we are doing as we take Momentum Wealth into the future.

ENDS