Wealth and asset managers are lagging the rest of the financial industry in the development of mobile applications — just 31 percent of the wealth and asset manager respondents had developed a mobile app, versus 81 percent of banks.
Most of the asset and wealth managers responding to the survey, 58 percent, believed that no more than 20 percent of their clients would use an application — yet 78 percent of respondents thought that at least 40 percent of their clients would be using a mobile app to access their services over the next five years.
“There’s a complacency on the part of the old regime of asset and wealth managers,” says Spellacy. “They think that they already have their customers, those customers are sticky, and thus they don’t have to worry about adapting to all of these external changes.”
PwC recommends that asset and wealth managers collaborate more closely with fintech firms to update and improve their traditional offerings.
“In reality, everything is being shaken and asset and wealth managers must reinvent themselves for a new reality,” says Spellacy. “That includes technology at a lower cost basis, and a greater emphasis on performance.”
For its study, PwC surveyed 544 respondents from 46 countries among asset and wealth management firms.