The client experience concept has gained a huge amount of traction right across the global wealth management industry in recent years and is now stated to be central to the strategic thinking - and technology development plans - of most institutions. It is the advisor experience, however, which will be the focus of this new research report.

WealthBriefing and its sister publications are now surveying their global member base to discover just how much of a help, or indeed a hindrance, wealth managers’ technology systems are in advisors’ day-to-day work. Front-line professionals are just as invested as their employers are in them being as productive as possible, but the key question which remains is how far advisors are actually facilitated in this by the technology systems provided by their institutions.

To unpick the relationship between advisor productivity and technology provision, key areas of investigation will include how automated and “joined-up” wealth managers systems are – which in turn will largely dictate how long advisors have to spend on developing proposals and preparing for meetings, and therefore how much time they have for left over for face-time with clients once investment management, compliance and administrative tasks are taken care of as well.

Legacy systems and disconnects

As is well known, the perennial problem of integrating legacy systems, along with the industry’s historical underinvestment in technology, has left many advisors struggling with a patchwork quilt of disparate systems that require a high degree of manual intervention and duplication of work. Advisors regularly tell this publication that the amount of time they are able to spend with clients is continually being whittled away by the burden of compliance and administration tasks.

Yet the study will not just tackle where inefficiencies can be stripped out. Rather, its true focus will be on how technology innovation can help advisors to really “shine” and showcase all of the skills and expertise which make their time so valuable – to both the client and institution. The report will therefore also explore how well wealth managers’ systems support innovative investment solutions and give advisors the tools to really engage with clients and so boost both satisfaction and investment levels.

In addressing the extent to which advisors feel facilitated in their work by their firms’ systems, the research report will also aim to gauge just how much of a recruitment and retention issue technology is – or could be in the near future - for wealth managers. Working on the assumption that the quality of an institution’s technological set-up can make a significant difference to an advisor’s own bottom line, it is easy to foresee the savvier ones carrying out quite an extensive amount due diligence on a prospective employer’s systems and being put off of joining if they do not hear good things.

The advisor productivity and technology report will be officially launched at the WealthBriefing GCC Summit in Dubai on May 14, 2015. However, participants in the survey (take part here) will receive priority access to the report ahead of the event, as well as being entered into a prize draw to win a case of champagne.

WealthBriefing is looking forward to gathering survey responses and views from right across the wealth management industry globally and would like to encourage as many advisors as possible to take the short questionnaire on which the study will be based. We would also welcome any comments front-line advisors, senior executives or consultants may like to make and these should be directed to wendy.spires@wealthbriefing.com.