Credit Suisse chose Singapore as the city where it launched its first-ever Digital Private Banking service, designed to let private banking clients enact their trading and banking decisions faster, in a variety of ways.
The Millenary Post met up with Benjamin Cavalli, Managing Director, Market Area Head Southeast Asia, Private Banking Asia Pacific, Credit Suisse, to discuss how his company desires to revolutionise banking and stock trading.
The Millenary Post: Why was Asia chosen as the pilot market for Credit Suisse Digital Private Banking?
Benjamin Cavalli: Asia Pacific is a natural launch region for our new digital private banking platform. First, Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region for our Private Banking business, with the opportunity of having some of the biggest and most rapidly expanding wealth pools in the world. Second, consumers in Asia tend to react very positively to digital innovations; and our clients are also younger, more tech-savvy and demand digital innovations in banking services.
Additionally, private banking is a relatively nascent industry in Asia, and we face the challenge of a shortage of talent. A digitalised multi-channel service delivery model will bring the bank and our RMs significant efficiency gains. And most importantly, enables us to serve our clients better and cultivate deeper client relationships.
TMP: Which types of clients is the Credit Suisse Digital Private Banking platform catered to? And what can it do for each type of client?
BC: In developing the digital private banking platform for clients in Asia, Credit Suisse adopted a highly client-centric approach in partnering and engaging with clients to define the value proposition, features and user experience.
Instead of looking at our clients by their assets under management or source of wealth, we analysed how they make decisions in relation to their finances. We identified that the majority of our private banking clients in Asia Pacific are what we describe as “validators”, that is those who want to understand investment opportunities and trade-offs to validate with their advisors, who think in the mid- to long-term and appreciate support in understanding global markets and refining their views and ideas.
We designed, developed and prioritised the features of our first product release based on what these clients expect from our bank and our digital offering. We also fully engaged with our clients in the process of designing and shaping the digital solution, with in-depth one-on-one Voice of the Client sessions held with around 100 clients across the region, and their feedback shaped the way our first release of the digital private banking app looks today.
The Credit Suisse Private Banking Asia Pacific app that went live to Singapore clients in March empowers clients with round-the-clock access to comprehensive information about their accounts, market insights and intelligence personalised according to their portfolio, while the built-in trading tools enable them to respond to moving markets. Designed with a simple user interface, the new digital private banking solution also facilitates multiple channels of connectivity and collaboration for clients with their relationship manager and Credit Suisse team.
TMP: I understand that the platforms of interaction offered by Credit Suisse Digital Private Banking will include video calls and instant messaging? What modes of communication will be available?
BC: The digital private banking platform features a built-in set of collaboration tools that facilitate connections between the client and the Credit Suisse team, in addition to face-to-face interaction. These include instant messaging, audio and video call, screen and document sharing and document annotations. Ultimately, the digital platform provides a lot more connectivity and flexibility in the way clients interact with their relationship manager and Credit Suisse team.
TMP: What other enhancements are introduced to your private banking service by this digital transformation?
BC: Digitalising our private banking services is good for our clients, our relationship managers and Credit Suisse as a whole. It empowers our clients, giving them better access to the knowledge and expertise from across the bank, customised to their portfolio, which they can then act on. It also enables greater collaboration with clients, giving relationship managers deeper insight into their clients’ preferences and investment objectives. Ultimately, this is about continuing to raise the bar in terms of serving our clients and helping them reach their goals.
In rolling out our digital private banking capabilities, we are redesigning the way in which we interact with, curate content for and advise our clients. It is not just an enhancement to the client experience, but a transformation of our private banking service model, with the client at the center of it.
In developing the digital private banking platform, the bank is constantly testing and improving the features and continually enhancing the capabilities and functionalities going forward. New features and enhancements will be released in phases going forward, for example tools for portfolio analysis, greater trading capabilities and alerts based on clients’ preferences.
TMP: So what do you think private clients today expect?
BC: Today’s private banking clients increasingly demand and, in fact do utilise, digital channels to contact their banks, execute trades and purchase financial products. According to a recent survey, a vast majority of high-net-worth individuals in Asia said that they expect their wealth management relationship to be conducted entirely or mostly through digital channels, and they are far more likely to leave wealth management firms that cannot offer an integrated digital and direct channel experience.
As a leading global wealth manager, Credit Suisse is making significant investments in digital technology to capture this opportunity and deepen the relationship with our current and next generation of private banking clients.
In the numerous Voice of the Client sessions held last year where we engaged with our clients in designing and shaping our digital solution, we asked them about their preferences in terms of the features, functionality, usability, and their decision-making behavior on a digital platform.
These are some of the key client feedback:
Core to our value proposition to our clients is our personalised advisory capability, hence the starting point of our digital private banking platform is a personalised portfolio view, so clients know where they stand on their portfolio. Our clients told us that they want a simple, consolidated view of financial status, performance, upcoming corporate events and the ability to drill down into details as they require. We worked with them to achieve this.
They also told us it was important to provide them with insights and options for how to respond to financial markets, all within the context of their portfolio. They also said that the bank’s research content is a key feature and most important value add, ie. ‘what is Credit Suisse’s view, how can I benefit from it’.
As expected in private banking, our clients also prioritise the ‘human touch’ of the relationship manager and the Credit Suisse team in the relationship with the bank, and they want the functionality of contacting the RM to be available across the digital platform, and they want to be able to consult their RM for investment decisions.
Filed under: Lifestyle Tagged: Credit Suisse
