According to PWC’s Asset & Wealth Management 2017 report: Embracing exponential change; wealth management in APAC is poised to be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the next few years. While Southeast Asian banks have adapted well to technology and serviced the growing digital needs of its population India and China have leapfrogged when it comes to the digitalisation of the financial sector (including investments, personal finance, wealth management, etc.). “SEA is still catching up,” said CEO and Founder of WeInvest, Bhaskar Prabhakara.
After spending about two decades in the banking and financial industry and leading innovation in old-school style banking in Europe, Bhaskar Prabhakara found WeInvest in Singapore in 2015 to make wealth management in Asia more efficient. Enabled by Singapore’s favourable cost structure and regulatory climate for digital finance players; WeInvest is the tech solution for the “relationship manager driven” wealth management industry.
With new offices in Hongkong and Thailand this year and a strong base of existing clients, WeInvest is looking at Indonesia and India as well as expanding in the Middle East beyond their existing UAE office in 2020.
Looking east
“While financial literacy is more evolved in the West, on a macro perspective the scale in Asia is huge,” said Prabhakara. The existing relationship managers will just not be able to handle the upwardly mobile middle class in the region. And he believes the answer lies in tech innovation. It is not easy to fully replace or eliminate the role of relationship managers, especially, in the wealth management business but technology can surely aid their work process, he added. It can enable the manager to fulfill all tasks from advising, selling to executing orders thus making them mobile and self-sufficient. Harnessing the power of the information age, the relationship managers will have all access to all information at their fingertips and thereby enhance productivity. With a higher focus on UI and UX for consumers, technical barriers and hurdles that they often face can be eliminated.
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Regulatory authorities in the region are also waking up the digital needs and growth of markets. With the perpetual goal of enhancing financial literacy, governments are facilitating regulation to ease robo-advisory models and facilitate digital banking. Accessibility and transparency are key and governments should push for it, said Prabhakara.
Coexisting
“As a B2B2C business WeInvest will enable banks and other financial institutions to increase engagement with their customers,” added Prabhakara. Large banks are encumbered by complex solution architecture and legacy systems, they often employ a risk-averse approach and are slow to adopt new technologies. It takes about a year or more on average for a large financial institution to develop and offer a new digital product. Pre-existing digital platforms with the scope for customisation can shorten that process and roll out a holistic investment platform faster. Prabhakara said, “Asset management has not been a very tech-savvy industry. They are now starting to adopt technology and partnering with us can not only enable their digitalisation but also help identify and implement additional revenue channels.”
A strategic partnership or a prospective Series B from a corporate investor is what Prabhakara believes can help them expand to other geographies, tap into their existing network of clients, or diversify into insurance and other investment products.
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Image credit: Franck V. on Unsplash
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