Notes

How can wealth management companies be ready for turbulent times? [Farnoush Farsiar]
Generational change. Global mobility. Technological change. Farnoush Farsiar writes for EU Today that these are only a few key changes that affect family offices and fundamentally threaten their structures of operation.

Increasingly, family offices are catering to the younger, more tech-savvy and mobile generation. Every client, no matter their age, have become more concerned, regardless of financial situation, in managing their own investments. That means they are looking for more information and involvement and not just an investment manager to manage.

These changes happen at a time of extreme political and economic instability. If a business tries to maintain its old practices, they will find it abandoned by those they supposed to be advising. They must change and be more entrepreneurial with their approach to investment management, to provide a real value proposition to UHNWIs.

Although family offices can vary in both size and their scope, they should prioritise agility over trying to be an expert in all areas. A smaller group of advisors that can swiftly introduce new technology and add external experts when needed will provide an improved service for clients. These changes will require the blurring of family offices and private banking. https://www.platocapital.com/our-people will maintain the trust and loyalty of family offices, while staying ahead of the curve in technology and the sourcing of deals.

It is crucial to be able draw upon the old-fashioned, network-based, and reputation-based methods for deal sourcing. Online tools can also be utilized to spot opportunities and deals. Wealth managers can make use of deal sourcing sites online to identify opportunities and deals. They are much easier than the large, cumbersome banks that are entangled in big-firm bureaucracy. Dealmakers can utilize these platforms to browse and evaluate a variety of deals, which results in substantial savings of time and money.

Wealthica and other dashboard services like Wealthica are also revolutionizing the way family offices communicate directly with their customers. These services consolidate investments in a way that is automated from multiple sources, and allow clients to be in constant communications with their investment portfolios. This is a vast improvement from the past when wealth managers providing only intermittent updates on the status of their clients' funds.

These tools aren't the only way wealth managers can increase the efficiency and speed up their processes. Their investment strategy is what matters most. Again, the edge is in bringing together traditional and modern - continuing to search out deals in real estate and other areas as well as exploring investment opportunities in fields that were previously unexplored, such as climate science or food security. Impact investing has certainly "arrived" in the family office industry. According to the UBS Global Family Office Report 2018, one third of family businesses are engaged in impact investing and the majority of them are planning to increase the amount of involvement they have in the coming years. There are definitely challenges in this area, such as the difficulty of measuring impact and carrying out due diligence, the coming generation of HNWIs and UHNWIs will anticipate family offices to be able determine and secure these kinds of investments. Plato Capital, which I founded, is an investment bank which focuses on entrepreneurs. Our extensive network and intimate knowledge in the local area allows our clients to reduce risk and maximize their capital return.

Wealth managers can prosper during turbulent times through mixing the past and the future and adapting to the demands of the young generation and making a risk by establishing their own structure.
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