Top left, clockwise: Helen Leung, Mercer; Jame DiBiasio, DigFin; Eric Neo, RF; Kai Mak, WeLab Bank
This week, DigFin‘s Jame DiBiasio moderated a panel on digitalization in wealth management and opportunities in the Greater Bay Area.
He and his panelists spoke on three big trends shaping wealth management: platforms, distribution, and product.
First, Eric Neo Say Wei of RF International (pictured bottom right), a venture capital group, talked about the platform businesses gathering steam in Asia. These include consumer-facing robo-advisors, tokenized investments and digital banks. These are becoming important cross-border players helping make assets more accessible to a broader range of investors, as well as transforming the nature of investment products.
Second, Helen Leung, Asia solutions leader at Mercer FundWatchTM (pictured top left), discussed new distribution models. Digitalization, especially in the wake of COVID, has transformed the way distributors communicate with investors – with automation making the process far more efficient. To stay on top, more wealth managers are partnering with fintechs, particularly ones that help firms collect, generate and analyze customer data.
Third, Kai Mak, head of wealth management at WeLab Bank (pictured bottom left), spoke about new products enabled by digital technology. Although traditional distributors are also digitizing, they are relying on traditional funds or stocks. New players are offering diverse portfolios as well as shifting towards advisory-based services.
Finally, the speakers talked about how digital players, channels and services are likely to take the lead in the Greater Bay Area. GBA is the term for connecting Hong Kong, Macau and major cities in China’s Guangdong Province, across three currencies, three jurisdictions, and three market structures. Authorities in mainland China and Hong Kong have already launched WealthConnect, a new program to enable the sale of mutual funds into the other market. Wealthtech is likely to take the lead as GBA-related liberalization unfolds.
This webinar took place during VFF’s WealthConnect Forum. VFF is a partner for the AMTD DigFin Innovation Awards, with our buy-side and insurance awards to be hosted during VFFs fintech summit in August. See our awards section for details.
