The shifting nature of customer value in Portfolio Management

From my perch in the UK, I continue to observe an increase in the pace of change in the wealth management industry. We all know that the contemplation period for change is over - the future is no longer the future.

Speaking to clients in the past few days, it is clear that running a successful portfolio management is now about much more than designing and implementing individual portfolios.

A new era of customer proposition has emerged: one that is as much about transparency as it is about portfolio composition. The implications of this are enormous: genuine transparency suggests business processes that allow clients (in addition to wealth managers) to work intensively with their portfolios and in genuine collaboration with their wealth advisors. This has resulted in a new paradigm for customer value in wealth management today - value is received as a living entity as opposed to be sold like a commodity.

Clients as partners, expect to receive value in a multi-faceted, dynamic way as opposed to a linear deliverable. To achieve this in a sustainable manner, wealth managers must not only be responsible, they must be responsive. Responsiveness is a full-time, intensive proposition. This is not just the way of the future. The future is already in play.