In the rapidly evolving landscape of wealth management in Asia, firms are increasingly setting themselves ambitious growth targets and seeking innovative ways to stay competitive. An increasingly important tool for achieving these objectives? Generative AI (gen AI).

As highlighted in our 2024 research report “The Future of Asia Wealth Management”, gen AI is set to be a truly transformative force—redefining the entire wealth management industry by becoming integrated into nearly every aspect of the end-to-end (E2E) client journey.

Our study shows that wealth management firms’ CXO and Relationship Managers (RMs) have differing priorities when it comes to applying this groundbreaking technology. But it also finds that they agree on one common goal: harnessing the power of gen AI to enable more targeted end-to-end content creation and distribution.

Clients aren’t reading what you send them

It’s a solution that’s urgently needed. Today, one of the biggest barriers to effective use of content assets by end clients is the continued presence of siloed and fragmented data-processing systems within wealth management firms. This dislocation makes it much harder and more complicated to produce investment content that’s compelling and personalized.

Evidence? Take these insightful data points from our 2024 APAC wealth management research:

• • Clients open only around 2% of the investment content they receive—mainly because they feel it’s generic, lacks relevance and is provided only sporadically.
  • Nearly half of the clients surveyed say they receive overly lengthy, generic content—and that this is also not delivered through their preferred communication channels. The result is low overall engagement rates.
  • Every CXO in our survey says investment content is important. Yet just 8% of them are satisfied with what their firm produces.
  • Finally, RMs often feel overwhelmed with low-impact, non-value adding tasks – reducing their ability to focus on delivering high-quality investment content tailored to clients’ needs.

Time for a reimagined approach

Such findings underline the scale of the challenge—but also the size of the prize for those that tackle it successfully. The huge potential to use content to drive revenue growth within the wealth management sector is widely recognized. But realizing this opportunity demands a reimagined approach to content management throughout the entire content value chain—spanning creation, dissemination, and analytics.

This is where gen AI can come into its own. The Accenture Wealth Content Excellence Framework – described on page 64 of our 2024 report – offers wealth management firms an AI-powered way to define and address the end-to-end content needs of both clients and RMs. The goal is to bridge and close the current gaps in content delivery and personalization.

To close these gaps fully, wealth managers should consider six specific steps:

1. 1. Revamp the content lifecycle: Firms can deliver content more effectively and unlock significant revenue opportunities through a comprehensive rethink and overhaul of their content value chain, from creation to analytics.
   2. Identify content needs more accurately: It’s crucial to clearly identify and address the specific content needs of both clients and RMs. Providing the necessary support and tools to RMs will enable them to deliver this content more effectively.
   3. Leverage technology for engagement: Using in-house data, expertise, and gen AI to create personalized and timely investment content will not only boost client engagement but also increase client satisfaction and loyalty.
   4. Combine content with product recommendations: Integrating tailored content with relevant product recommendations (anchored against a target, personalized portfolio allocation) can enhance cross-selling opportunities, thereby increasing both revenue and profit margins.
   5. Adopt an omni-channel approach: Clients’ channel preferences for receiving investment content are becoming increasingly diverse, encompassing email, mobile messaging apps, internet banking services, and more. An omni-channel approach is essential if firms are to meet these expanding needs and expectations.
   6. Implement continuous improvement: To continue to meet clients’ needs, firms need to measure and refine their content strategies continuously based on client feedback and engagement metrics. This type of adaptive approach is key to remaining competitive in today’s dynamic wealth management market.

Envisioning – and realizing – your gen AI-enabled future

These six steps would provide a wealth management firm with a solid basis for transforming its content strategy. And to guide the journey, we recommend envisioning a target end-state solution that reimagines the entire content lifecycle through a next-generation digital engagement platform—one that features advanced content personalization capabilities and addresses existing pain points in content creation and formatting, engagement analytics, and distribution.

Drilling down into the practicalities, the platform’s capabilities should include content-to-client matching, ensuring that every piece of content is tailored to the specific interests of each client. This should be overlaid with a content-to-product predictive cross-selling capability, enabling relevant products and services to be recommended to clients based on the content they engage with.

With Asia’s wealth management landscape continuing to evolve at pace, leveraging gen AI to reinvent content for clients is no longer an option, but an essential components of core operations that will be pivotal for remaining competitive. And those players that move first to seize the opportunity will have the edge. So don’t delay: the time to start building your gen AI-enabled content process of the future is now.