Wealth and private banking brands are undervalued as tools for rallying organisations around their clients and, as a consequence, the industry is constraining high net worth (HNW) asset growth. This is according to a recent study from global wealth management consultancy, Scorpio Partnership.
The study involved senior individuals with responsibility for brand and brand-related activities in some of the world’s largest and most influential wealth management firms and private banks. It was designed to investigate the impact of branding in wealth management – looking at the way private banks and wealth management companies both value and use their brands.
Commenting on the initiative, Sebastian Dovey, senior partner at Scorpio Partnership, said, “Brands are a critical driver for HNW asset growth and nearly 80 per cent of the total wealth market today is managed by 20 global financial brands. As a result, we wanted to understand how brand is not only seen, but managed and valued, and what issues and processes either enable it to flourish or constrain its impact.”
Scorpio Partnership’s study highlights a number of constraints to wealth brand efficacy. These include a lack of senior management engagement – as they generally show little emotional excitement about transacting and modest marketing-culture attitude, as well as a lack of real data on clients beyond what relationship managers shared, normally informally.
Other findings reveal that the sector suffers from a lack of standardised segmentation and pricing driving businesses and a failure to connect those with client information and contacts within each organisation.
Based on these results, Scorpio Partnership has developed a practical five-step programme, Brandology, to help companies address the issues. Sebastian Dovey explained, “Creating clear processes for supporting and managing an institution’s brand can really make a difference to initially engaging clients and then providing a consistent, high quality, differentiated experience. Clients will show the confidence that this elicits by allocating their assets to those with the strongest and clearest brands.”
For more information on how to improve your content marketing, download the Content Marketing: Best Practice Guide
