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What Motivates Wealth Advisors To Up-Grade Banking Advisory Strategies?

Banking CIO Outlook | Monday, October 28, 2019

Emerging robo-advisors for wealth management sector encourage human advisors to gear up their advisory services and add new skills to tackle the market challenges.

FREMONT, CA: In recent years, wealth management advisors are rapidly approaching technology solutions for tackling the digital age challenges. From the fax machines, laptops, to customized software, the advisors look for innovative solutions to optimize their tasks and offer better wealth management and banking services to their clients. AI- integrated robo-advisor for wealth management is one such innovation that can perform a range of activities like delivering an asset for allocation, to trading the portfolios.

A recent study shows the majority of the wealth management advisors in banks are able to spend 10-15 percent of their professional hours for trading or dealing with the clients' finance, and the rest amount of the time goes on convincing and communicating their ideas to the clients. However, smart robots are efficient and capable of advising and convincing the clients about trust factors that are more likely to build in the presence of human advisors. Powered by solid, documented financial plans, customers prefer human advisors over the smart robots for comprehensive financial plannings, such as risk management, investment planning, income tax planning, retirement planning, family governance, estate planning, and take advice on other financial situations.

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As the acceptance of robot advisors is steadily growing while offering the wealth management services at lesser costs, it is time for human advisors in banks to rethink their roles and the value they are offering. The emerging robot advisors with high-tech capabilities for wealth management service create intense competition levels for human advisors. Today, human advisors are working on several aspects, such as soft skills as well as hard skills development. To convince the digital-savvy clients, human advisors look for advanced capabilities as add-ons to their management portfolios. 

Soft skill is one of the essential aspects for human advisors that allow them to continue adding value to their clients' banking requirements. Skills such as empathy, listening, natural conversations, and convincing skills add trust in the clients' relationships, which place the human advisors above the robotic counterparts. For instance, excellent listening skills can enable the advisor to access hidden meanings and understand the clients need. Apart from the above, an excellent financial advisor needs to be adaptable. As the advisor may come across various clients in a day, an argument or a statement that works for a client may not work for another. Moreover, the investment and financial sector is a highly dynamic zone, which has tight-regulations and ever-changing rules. Advisors need to adapt according to the new regulations as well as the updated technologies along the way.

Tech skills are another vital area where human advisors must be well-versed. A human advisor needs to be proficient with both hardware and software that are essential for everyday tasks. Apart from these, an advisor also requires working knowledge of the digitally disruptive applications, such as peer-to-peer lending, managing investments, bitcoins, and several other emerging applications in the field of banking. The advisors with the eyes on emerging technological trends have the higher probabilities of excelling. Further, a smart advisor tries to connect various technologies for efficiently managing workload. Tech skills also enable the advisors to save a significant amount of time, which can be utilized for more productive purposes, such as advising more number of clients.

Apart from soft skills and tech skills, the modern wealth management advisors offer better values to their clients than the robotic advisors by assisting the clients with long term investment plans and goals. A human advisor holds the potential to create even nuanced investment and savings plans for a client’s changing motivations and life circumstances. Thus, the future seems bright for advisors who are geared up for welcoming evolving technologies in the banking sector.

See Also: Financial Services Review 

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