COUNTING ON THE HUMAN TOUCH

Technological advancements have disrupted the wealth management industry while global uncertainties continue to unsettle the fortunes of many of the world’s richest. But Swiss private bank Julius Baer’s head of Middle East and Africa Régis Burger is confident that people will remain at the heart of the business. Here’s why

- AARTI NAGRAJ

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT THE MONEY, ACCORDING TO SEASONED WEALTH MANAGER RÉGIS BURGER

“In many ways wealth managers are behavioural coaches; the most important service we can provide to a client is to mitigate, and ideally neutralise, their behavioural biases,” explains the managing director and head of Middle East and Africa for Swiss private bank Julius Baer.

The rise of the robo-advisor has been hard to miss. As the name suggests, these platforms offer algorithm-based financial advisory services with little to no human intervention. The estimates of the actual size of the industry vary, but it is projected that robo-advisors will handle anywhere between $7 trillion to $20 trillion assets under management by 2025, up from roughly $2 trillion in 2020.

Several major banks and financial institutions have also adopted the technology and started offering robo-advisory services, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, among others.

Burger confirms that Julius Baer has also made significant investments in the tech space to improve the client experience; over the past five years, the bank has invested over CHF1bn (over $1bn) in digitisation efforts. It further plans to increase investments in technology by 20 per cent in 2020 and 2021.

“We are giving our front-office teams sophisticated tools to serve their clients better and more efficiently. We are also investing into new digital touchpoints and processes that connect clients and prospects directly to Julius Baer. The goal is to combine personal and digital interfaces,” he says.

Julius Baer’s robo-assistant, called the Digital Advisory Suite – or DiAS – combines suitability checks with investment proposals and portfolio monitoring.