Mobile and tablet solutions are where most wealth management firms will devote significant tech activity for the next two years, says Aite Group.

Mobile solutions and tablet solutions are where the majority of wealth management firms will be carrying out significant tech development activity over the next two years, a new report fromAite Group reveals.

When asked in which area their firm would be making significant developments in the coming 24 months, 64 per cent of the technology executives surveyed said mobile solutions and 49 per cent said tablet solutions.

The rest of the top ten development prorities were: virtualisation for both desktop and server (44 per cent); social media (24 per cent); big-data solutions (22 per cent); advanced monitoring (20 per cent) ; network acceleration (18 per cent); cloud computing (14 per cent); hardware acceleration (14 per cent); and complex event processing (12 per cent).

It is interesting that website development did not make it into the top ten, in light of a recent MyPrivateBanking report which revealed widespread weaknesses in the websites of the world’s top wealth management firms.

Having examined the websites of 40 leading wealth managers and private banks worldwideMyPrivateBanking found that most are still lacking crucial information and social media integration. Less than 20 per cent of the websites assessed provided comprehensive information on the performance or costs of the products and services offered. Language accessibility was also a problem, with a quarter of wealth managers’ websites being available only in one language. “International and global players must offer their content in the major languages worldwide to attract wealthy individuals from around the world,” the research firm said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lack of social media integration was widespread, with 70 per cent of sites having no links to social media channels. Followers of the industry will know that in general it is seriously lagging other sectors in terms of social media provision, although there are moves underway at many firms to amend this situation. Some, like Morgan Stanley, are even encouraging advisors to tweet and post on Facebook.