A conference hosted by onboarding specialist Appway, and supported by this publication and others, tackled issues such as whether the focus on compliance is a net driver of innovation, or restricts it. It also examined developments in Appway's own solutions for the industry.

Switzerland-headquartered onboarding and technology solutions firm Appway set out its latest developments in London on 1 November, rounding out a 2017 global tour that has seen its executives and staff showcase its products and services in Geneva, Hong Kong, Singapore and New York.

And among several of the takeaways from the conference was debate around whether regulation fosters more innovation than would happen in more laissez-faire conditions, or whether the compliance wave seen in recent years is holding back business development. 

The Appway Sphere For Banking London, a conference featuring senior figures from the firm as well as industry practitioners, set out Appway’s offerings in the wealth and retail financial services space, and also featured a presentation around WealthBriefing’s own recent research report, Global Compliance and Innovation Trends in Wealth Management. That report was presented to assembled delegates by Stephen Harris, publisher of this news service. (The report walks across different regulatory developments facing the industry in the UK, US, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and Switzerland. It examines the extent to which firms’ spending on tech is being driven by compliance issues, and other areas such as business development.)

René Hürlimann, Head of Sales at Appway, introduced the line-up of speakers, with Hans-Peter Wolf, Appway’s CEO and Founder, exploring the theme of “Boundless Collaboration”. And Wolf had a blunt message for his audience: “It’s impossible to buy digital transformation and buy progress….it is about hard work.” “This [transformation] isn’t something you can buy off the shelf or about some sort of marketing exercise,” he said. 

Crucially, Wolf said, any business transformation in a space such as financial services must start with a firm’s own staff; it is a good starting point to work out ideas and changes in a company and among its employees long before clients see the change, he said. Such an approach will guard against the error of budgeting for one-off changes where there is no continuing development afterwards, he said. 

It is also important, in terms of serving clients, to be where they are physically, he said. Without such connections it isn’t possible to understand what clients actually want. And co-production and collaboration, which is central to how Appway works, requires a firm such as Appway to be close to its customers, he continued. 

Changing subjects, Wolf said that onboarding of clients is not a one-off process; once onboarded, there should be a constant process of “re-onboarding” the client by adjusting and updating information and requirements about clients so businesses have an up-to-date picture of what the client wants and is all about.

The next segment of the conference comprised a live demonstration on Appway’s Onboarding for Wealth solution. Andrea Buzzi, Head of Solutions at Appway, and Thomas Schär, Digital Innovations Lead, gave the presentation, walking the audience through Appway’s solutions. 

“Appway is an orchestrating system that gathers data from third-party systems,” Schär said. One eye-catching feature of the system is how documents are updated and tracked, with a clear audit trail of when, and by whom, information is added and updated. Another highlight was the system’s use of “chat” to rapidly update information, removing the tedious work of providing forms from scratch, as has been a chore for wealth management clients in the past. 

After Stephen Harris’s presentation of the report, which was produced in conjunction with Appway and Deloitte, a panel of industry figures discussed how modern technological innovations are playing out and whether compliance is a net benefit for innovation, or not. Speaking on this panel were Frank Capron, Head of Compliance at Bank Insinger de Beaufort; Jochen Dürr, Chief Risk Officer, SIX Group; Andy Peterkin, Partner, Farrer & Co, and Verona Smith, Head of Platform, Seven Investment Management. Audience members were able to vote on a number of questions, such as the priority areas for tech spending.

Oliwia Berdak, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, walked the audience through the present digital innovation landscape, pointing out, for example, the surge in the number of business “unicorns” – start-up companies valued at over $1 billion. Her talk was followed by a panel discussion around what will drive client experience in the future, featuring Tom Slocock, Managing Director, Deutsche Bank Wealth Management and Hans-Peter Wolf, Appway, Faris El Mahgiub, Innovation Manager from Lloyds Banking Group. Again taking feedback from the audience via electronic voting, they discussed how comfortable, or not, clients and industry figures will be by going to more automation of financial services, the “robo-advisor” phenomenon and the increased digitalisation of financial services. 

Please download the new Global Compliance and Innovation Trends study here.