Digitisation of
the Investment Industry
The operating environment for investment firms continues to evolve. With technological innovations and shifting investor preferences at the heart of this change, those left behind are under pressure.
In the wake of market volatility due to several factors, there are three imperatives on which the firms should focus for delivering next-generation services – bending the cost curve, enhancing the client experience, and implementing new operating models.
Digitization is actively fuelling the investment sector as a whole. But what do we mean by “digitization”? It is a culmination of multiple changes as follows:
Adoption of Online Portals
and Mobile Applications
The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in reduced visits to physical locations and hence the investment industry had no option, but to push online and mobile applications. Pre pandemic, it was just the young tech-savvy generation that was hooked to online platforms, but, post pandemic we have seen all age groups adopt digital solutions.
Neo banks
a.k.a. Challengers
The rapid adoption to digital banking has also accelerated the growth of mobile-only banks, the neo banks, which have no physical branches. The secret sauce to this growth is customer experience. Neo banks offer not just a better online experience and functionality, but also more appealing rates with better quality of services.
A report on digital banking from GlobalData states: “Artificial intelligence [AI]-powered money management helps digital banks such as Monzo drip-feed highly personalised spending tips to build trust and engagement in the absence of in-person interaction, just as Amazon once did with real-time notifications on order progress.”
A boost
by Fintechs
Digital transformation of financial services like tracking expenses, chatbots that prompt replies to queries, and tools that help manage budget and investments have increased digital adoption. Traditional players have been seen scrambling to catch up to this consumer behaviour and often partner with fintech companies to meet customer expectations.
Robo advisor rises!
Robo advisors are digital platforms that provide various financial and investment advice based on algorithms. These algorithms are designed by portfolio managers and keep in mind the financial capabilities and goals of the client. Along with advisory services, Robo advisors also offer account set-ups, portfolio management, goal planning and customer services.
Blockchain
Blockchain has boosted digitization as it solves the fundamental issue of “trust”, that the world of finance runs on.
“The original purpose of blockchain technology was to enable the transfer of value within trustless networks; where the different parties did not have to trust each other to conduct transactions involving the exchange of value,” says a GlobalData report on blockchain in banking.
Customers are increasingly comfortable viewing assets in digital form, hence the shift in the way customers approach money, wealth, and trade on markets.
Technological
Advancements
AI, data analytics, cloud computing and IoT (Internet of Things) enable are enabling financial service providers to react and adapt faster to changing environments.
For example, AI has introduced applications like virtual assistance identity verification and fraud detection, whereas cloud computing has lowered costs and enhanced security and provided flexibility. Automation is helping to process large amounts of data and hence reducing the workload for staff.
Our experience of working in the investment industry has helped us to build a platform that can help investment firms transform and get competitive advantages at scale.
- Completely automate the customer onboarding journeys and related processes.
- Reduce the TAT for different processes to industry minimum for best in class customer experience.
- Help in easy compliance checks across products.
- Become a preferred and reliable partner in digital transformation journeys for the investment industry.
- Help the institutions to better manage the ever-rising risks from frauds and forgeries and implement the internal and external policies in the best possible ways.
- Help the institutions in better managing the domestic and international compliance requirements by enhanced mechanisms for KYC, AML, TBML etc.
- Become one stop solution for non-banks and fintechs for their API based needs.
Use Cases
Brokerage Account
Onboarding
The onboarding process is a vital part of a user’s experience with your business. With heightened regulatory requirements and due diligence processes, this process can make or break a user’s impression of your company. As such, it has become increasingly important to ensure that the process is flawless from start to finish.
Signzy, through real time checks and a robust onboarding platform, serves the purpose of addressing all compliance requirements diligently and aiding the process of brokerage account opening more efficiently.
Customer Onboardings
Signzy’s platform can cater to different forms of investment provided by various financial advisors and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) by providing a simple, modern and quick journey for customer onboarding, along with taking care of all the compliance necessities. These are a few investment routes where Signzy’s solution can help:
- ETFs
- Bullion
- MFs
- F&Os
- G-Secs
