The WEALTHTECH Book

Making Digital Advice Personal is as Important as Making Personal Advice Digital

By Shashidhar Bhat

Ex-Head Digital Banking, EMEA, Citi

and Kunal Goklany¹

Director, Operations and Technology, Citi Bank

Wealth management customers are individuals whose needs go far beyond basic financial products. Attracting these customers and retaining them is very challenging, but is also likely to result in the biggest payoff among all client segments. The world has never seen so much wealth so widely dispersed in so many households globally. Propelled by high earnings and robust investment returns, this growth is projected to continue.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU research – Spotlight on the New Wealth Builders, 2015, sponsored by Citi), as shown in Figure 1, since 2010 the number of households in the new wealth builders (NWB) and high-net-worth (HNW) segments has grown faster than the mass market (households with financial assets <$100K) segment. This strong wealth creation looks set to continue, with average growth in NWB wealth matching the strong growth seen in the much smaller HNW segment over the 2014–2020 forecast period. Conversely, the mass market population (<$100K investable assets) is contracting.

Figure 1: The New Wealth Builders (2015)

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit (sponsored by Citi)

Historically, wealth management thrived on personal advice, ...