I’ve written in the past that the human side of wealth management is becoming more critical in the digital age and it’s best for advisors to be their clients’ life partners.
With today’s complex business environment and ever-evolving legal and regulatory requirements, new situations arise where making the right decision requires careful consideration of many factors. So it’s becoming more important than ever to act with ethics and integrity, especially when handling client information and building long-term trust.
Acting with integrity and in compliance with laws improves our performance and reflects on our character as a business—to our clients, our business partners and the public at large—and enables us to attract and retain top talent.
Our CEO and CCO recently published six enduring core values to help shape the culture and define the character of Accenture:
1. Client Value Creation. Enabling clients to become high-performance businesses and creating long-term relationships by being responsive and relevant by consistently delivering value.
2. One Global Network. Leveraging the power of global insight, relationships, collaboration and learning to deliver exceptional service to clients wherever they do business.
3. Respect for the Individual. Valuing diversity and unique contributions, fostering a trusting, open and inclusive environment and treating each person in a way that reflects our values.
4. Best People. Attracting, developing and retaining the best talent for our business, challenging our people, demonstrating a “can-do” attitude and fostering a collaborative and mutually supportive environment.
5. Integrity. Being ethically unyielding and honest and inspiring trust by saying what we mean, matching our behaviors to our words and taking responsibility for our actions.
6. Stewardship. Fulfilling our obligation to build a better, stronger and more durable company for future generations, protecting our brand, meeting commitments to stakeholders, acting with an owner mentality, developing our people and helping improve communities and the global environment.
Accenture’s sustained commitment to ethical practices has placed us on Ethisphere’s list of World’s Most Ethical Companies for the last 10 years.
Why do I blog about this today? My strong belief is that principles like the above could be helpful to wealth management firms and their advisors looking to keep integrity and ethics front and center of their business and in becoming trusted life partners of their clients in the digital age. The wealth management industry is already very regulated today—and the scrutiny will likely keep increasing. So adhering to high standards in putting your clients’ interests first could not only become a differentiator for your firm but could also enable you to be a front-runner as new regulations are designed. Protecting your financial advisor’s clients’ information and finances has to be at the core of each and every situation.
If you would like to discuss this topic further or get additional information, please email capital.markets@accenture.com.
Learn more about our Code of Business Ethics.
