A STUDY ON WEALTH

MANAGEMENT
A MINI PROJECT REPORT
Submitted to the

SRM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

By
RAJEEV RANJAN (Reg no:35080449)
RAKESH RANJAN (Reg no:35080461)
RANDEEP KUMAR (Reg no:35080472)

APRIL– 2009

DECLERATION
 STUDY ON
Certified that this mini project report title
PROFIT MAXIMIZATION
Is an original work done by?

RAJEEV RANJAN (Reg no:35080449)

RAKESH RANJAN (Reg no:35080472)
RANDEEP KUMAR (Reg no:3508082)

Of 1nd semester, SRM School Of Management, SRM

Institute of science and technology, Kattankulathur during

The academic year 2009, who carried out the research under my supervision? Certified

further, that to the best of my knowledge the work reported here in does not form part of any

other project report or dissertation on the basis of which a degree or award was conferred on

an earlier occasion on this or any other certificate.

Mrs.SANGHA BHALI Dr.Jayashree Suresh

Project Guide Head of the Department

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
 We would like to express our deepest

gratitude and thanks to Dr.Jayashree Suresh, Head of the

Department for her valuable support in doing our project. She

has been a source of encouragement and guidance in all our

endeavors.

We express our profound thanks to Mrs.SANBHAGA

project guide, for his consistent encouragement and invaluable

suggestion in completing this project, without his, the

completion of this project would be practically impossible.

CONTENTS
Chapter Description
1 Introduction of the study
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Profile of the company
1.3 Objective of the study
1.4 Scope of the study
1.5 Limitation of the study

2 Research Methodology

2.1 Methodology of the study

2.2 Period of the study
2.3 Source of data
2.4 Sample size
2.5 Sampling method
2.6 Tools used for analysis

3 Data analysis and interpretation

4 Suggestion and recommendation
5 Conclusion
6 Bibliography

LIST OF TABLES
Table No. Name of the table
1 Table showing age group of the respondents
2 Table showings education levels of the respondents
3 Table showings occupation levels of the respondents
4 Table showings monthly income of the respondents
5 Table showing purchase period of Colgate products
6 Table showings reasons for preferring Colgate
7 Table showings influences of Colgate product
8 Table showings mode of purchase
9 Table showings satisfaction level of the various
features of Colgate products

List of figures
Figure No. Name of figure

1 Chart showing age group of the respondents

2 Chart showings education levels of the respondents
 3 Chart showings occupation levels of the respondents
4 Chart showings monthly income of the respondents
5 Chart showing purchase period of Colgate products
6 Chart showings reasons for preferring Colgate
7 Chart showings influences of Colgate product
8 Chart showings mode of purchase
9 Chart showings satisfaction level of the various
features of Colgate products

ABSTRACT

This project is mainly aimed to study the consumer opinion

about Colgate toothpaste portal in the Chennai region.
The primary objective is to known the operation and
product awareness in sift and the secondary objective is to
find out consumer opinion and their satisfaction level in
market portal.
 The survey was conducted to the consumers who are
ready to supply their product and providing services to the
corporate companies. Descriptive research with probability
random sampling technique was used to collect the data.
The data obtained are then analyzed and interpreted.

INTRODUCTION:
Wealth management services area in financial sector has been witnessing more attention
during last
couple of years. Capgemini Merrill Lynch Wealth Report 2007 cites number of HNWIs
globally to be
around 9.5 million with wealth held by them totaling to US$37.2 trillion in year 2006. Value
of wealth held
by HNWIs represents an increase of around 11.4% since 2005.
Considering long-term high value business proposition, number of banks and niche players
has
started offering full range of wealth management services targeted to HNWIs and emerging
affluents.
While growing volume of premium services to affluent clients becomes the key driver for
most of the
service provider firms, many unique elements inherent to wealth management services
requires
completely different service offering model than the existing model for transactional
services. Greatly
accustomed in offering commoditized financial services so far, demand of unconventional
form of service
model poses a big challenge in charting growth path for these wealth management firms.

Key Elements of Wealth Management Services

Wealth management services involve fiduciary responsibilities in providing professional

investment advice
and investment management services to a client. Depending on the mandate of the services
given to the
Wealth Manager, wealth management services could be packaged at various levels:

a) Advisory

b) Investment Processing (transaction oriented)

c) Custody, Safekeeping and Asset Servicing

d) End-to-end Investment Lifecycle Management

Wealth management services comprises of following key
function areas of:

(a) Financial Planning,

(b) Portfolio Strategy Definition/ Asset Allocation / Strategy Implementation,

(c) Portfolio Management – Administration, Performance Evaluation and Analytics, and

(d) Strategy Review and Modification.

Key Challenge Areas

Wealth management firms face many challenges in formulating winning services offering
meeting the
client needs. Some of key challenges faced by wealth management firms are:

1.Highly Personalized and Customized Services

2. Personal relationship driving the business

3. Evolving Client Profile

4. Client Involvement Level

5. Passion Investment (Philanthropy and Social Responsibility)

6. Limited Leveraging Capabilities of Technology (as an enabler)

7. Technical Architecture and Technology Investment

8. Intricate Knowledge of Cross-functional Domain

Wealth Management Services – Challenges and

Solution Framework

A HNWI client expects exclusiveness in services and key to success for a firm lies in
offering
exclusiveness in services delivery (high quality services on most personalized basis), going
beyond
client expectations.
A solution framework with considered inclusion of following key elements would help firms in
meeting
and exceeding client needs towards sustainable business growth:

1. Quality of Service Level: Highly focused around client needs, a broad framework of servic
offering would be revolving around: Anticipate, Analyze, Advice, Act and Monitor cycle.
2. Universal Service Offering

3. Investment in People Processes

4. Price not a True Differentiator

5. Unconventional Delivery Channel and Communication

6. Flexibility of Technical Architecture: Against the background of lack of clarity on business

model and involved process, A loosely oriented technical architecture with optionality and
mix of Build – Buy – Integrate components would be considered as a good beginning point.
To meet the information technology requirements, a firm has several alternatives (or
combination of alternatives) to consider:

- Integrated solution approach: Developing in-house applications to meet end-to-end new

business requirements.

- Service Bureau /ASP Model: Information technology service providers offering

integrated end-to-end processing infrastructure and services including core of business
processes of wealth management.

- Stand-alone commercial software product/solutions: Pre-packaged solutions that can

be focused to specific part of services or provide comprehensive end-to-end
processing.
To provide enough resilience and high business relevance, any of the considered option
and associated technical structure should keep due provisions for the following key
elements:

- Rule based processing to manage complex business rules and service definitions.

- Client profile / data management to cater a profile driven solution offering.

- Complex decision support and client oriented analytics.

- Flexibility to incorporate manual processing interfaces in applications .

Wealth Management – An Emerging Sector

Wealth management services area in financial sector, hitherto used to be the preserve of
some top
multinational banks and financial firms- offering exclusive services to a select few, has been
witnessing more attention during last couple of years.
A booming economy, rising stock prices and an increase in income and spending power
have brought

Wealth Management Services – Challenges and

Solution Framework

sharp focus on this sector. With an increasing population of High Net worth Individuals
(HNWIs)1, the
unsaid tagline of earlier days - "Don't call us. We'll call you (if you are that wealthy!)” seems
to be
completed altered in recent times. Considering long-term high value business proposition,
number of
banks, financial firms and niche players has started offering full range of wealth
management services
targeted to HNWIs and emerging affluents.
As per recently published Capgemini Merrill Lynch Wealth Report 2007, number of HNWIs
around the
world and value of their assets has been continuously rising. Number of HNWIs globally is
estimated to be
around 9.5 million in year 2006, an increase of over 8.35% over previous year. HNWI wealth
totals
US$37.2 trillion, representing an increase of around 11.4% since 2005.
As per report, number of HNWIs in India is increasingly growing – at a rate higher than other
region of
world. Number of HNWIs in India is estimated to be around 100,000 in year 2006 - an
increase of over
20.5% over previous year. Though, in absolute terms the above number appears pretty
miniscule (if we
compare that with the number of retail investors in India2), however, in terms of value it
really makes a
really huge sum of serviceable investment3.
While growing volume of premium services to affluent clients becomes the key driver for
most of the
service provider firms, many unique elements inherent to wealth management services
requires completely
different service offering model than the existing model for transactional services. To meet
the client
service expectations accurately, servicing model and framework has to be deeply oriented
with high level
of client satisfaction. It is not a surprise that many of successful firms in wealth management
sector draw
lessons from successful service leaders from hospitality, entertainment and retailing
industries, to learn the
trick of enhanced client satisfaction.
Greatly accustomed in offering commoditized financial services so far, demand of
unconventional form of
service model poses a big challenge in charting growth path for these wealth management
firms.
Before discussing about the challenges and possible solution approach in detail, we would
first take a
comprehensive view on the key elements of the wealth management services.

Core Elements of Wealth Management Services

In most basic sense, wealth management services involve fiduciary responsibilities in
providing
professional investment advice and investment management services to Institutions, funds
(Pension/mutual/Hedge), corporations, trusts as well as HNWIs. In the present context of
our discussion,
we would keep our focus limited to HNWIs.
1 There is no accurate definition of level of wealth to be considered into category of High
Net worth Individuals (HNWI).
The most commonly quoted figure for an individual to be considered high net worth is $1
million in liquid financial assets. An
investor with less than $1 million but more than $100,000 is considered to be "affluent". The
upper end of HNWI is around $5
million, at which point the client is then referred to as "very HNWI". More than $50 million in
wealth classifies a person as "ultra
HNWI".
2 Though, no authentic figure on population of retail investors is currently available. It was
accounted that UTI’s flagship scheme US-64 had more
than 20 million investors.
Further, as per figure quoted in Economic Survey of India (2005-2006), number of
depository accounts in NSDL and CDSL together was 8.5
million in 2005.
3 Considering wealth of around 9.5 million HNIs globally sums up to US$ 37.2 trillion, an
average HNWI would be possessing wealth of around
US$ 3.91 million. Taking this average figure in context of HNWIs in India, wealth of HNWIs
in India works out to be an astronomical amount of
approximately US$ 391.5 billion.

Wealth Management Services – Challenges and

Solution Framework
Some of analogous terms used for wealth management could be considered as Portfolio
Management,
Investment Management and many times Fund Management or Asset Management.
Depending on the mandate of the services given to the Wealth Manager, wealth
management services
could be packaged at various levels:
a) Advisory
Wealth manger’s role is limited to the extent of providing guidance on investment / financial
planning
and tax advisory, based on client profile. Investment decisions are solely taken by the client,
as per his
/her own judgment.
b) Investment Processing (transaction oriented)
Client engages wealth manager to execute specific transaction or set of transactions.
Investment
planning, decision and further management remain vested with the client.
c) Custody, Safekeeping and Asset Servicing
Client is responsible for investment planning, decision and execution. Wealth manager is
entrusted
with management, administration and oversight of investment process.
d) End-to-end Investment Lifecycle Management
Wealth manager owns the whole gamut of investment planning, decision, execution and
management,
on behalf of the client. He is mandated to make financial planning, implement investment
decisions
and manage the investment throughout its life.
Wealth management services comprises of following key function areas:

a) Financial Planning

b) Portfolio Strategy Definition/ Asset Allocation / Strategy Implementation

c) Portfolio Management – Administration, Performance Evaluation and Analytics

d) Strategy Review and Modification

Detail description on each of these areas has been presented in the succeeding
paragraphs.

Financial Planning

Client Profiling
Client profiling takes in account multitude of behavioural, demographic and investment
characteristics
of a client that would determine each client’s wealth management requirements. Some of
key
characteristics to be evaluated for defining client’s investment objective are:

- Current and future Income level

- Family and life events

- Risk appetite / tolerance

- Taxability status

- Investment horizon

- Asset Preference /restriction

- Cash flow expectations

- Religious belief (non investment in sin sector like - alcohol, tobacco, gambling firms, or
compliant with Sharia laws)

- Behavioural History (Pattern of past investment decisions)

- Level of client’s engagement in investment management (active / passive)

- Present investment holding and asset mix

Investment Objective
Based on the client profile, investment expectations and financial goals of the client could
be
clearly outlined. Defining investment objectives helps to identify investment options to be
considered for evaluation. Investment objective for most of the investors could be generally
considered amongst the following:

Wealth Management Services – Challenges and

Solution Framework

- Current Income

- Growth (Capital Appreciation)

- Tax Efficiency (Tax Harvesting)

- Capital Preservation (often preferred by elderly people to make sure they don’t outlive
their
money.)
Portfolio Strategy Definition / Asset Allocation
Defining Portfolio Strategies and Portfolio
Modeling
After establishing investment objectives, a broad framework for harnessing possible
investment
opportunities is formulated. This framework would factor for risk-return trade-off of
considered
options, investment horizon and provide a clear blueprint for investment direction.
Investment strategy helps in forming broad level envisioning of asset class (Securities,
Forex,
Commodity, Real State, Reference and Indices, Art/Antique and Lifestyle Assets (Car, Boat,
Aircraft)), market, geography, sector and industry. Each of these asset classes is to be
comprehensively evaluated for inclusion in portfolio model, in view of defined investment
objectives.
While defining the strategy, consideration of client preference or avoidance for specific
asset
class, risk tolerance, religious beliefs is the key element, which would come into picture.
Thus,
for a client with a belief of avoidance of investment in sin industries (alcohol, tobacco,
gambling
etc.) is to be duly taken care of. Likewise, for a client looking for Sharia- compliant
investment,
strategy formulation should consider investment options meeting with the client
expectations.

Determination of Portfolio Constituents and

Allocation of Assets
Guided with the investment strategy, constituents in portfolio model are determined, which
would
directly and efficiently contribute towards client’s investment objectives. Thus, a broad level
investment guidance of – “investment in fixed income in emerging market” would
further
determine classification within Fixed Income such as Govt. or corporate bonds, fixed or
variable
rate bonds, Long or short maturity bonds, Deep discounted or Par bonds, Asset backed or
other
debt variants.
Return profile, risk sensitivity and co-relation of constituents within portfolio model would
help to
determine the size (weightage) of each individual constituent in the portfolio.

Strategy Implementation
Having decided the portfolio constituents and its composition, transactions to acquire
specific
instruments and identified asset class is initiated. As acquisition cost would be having
bearing on
overall performance of the portfolio, many times process of asset acquisition may be spread
over a period of time to take care of market movement and acquire the asset at favourable
price
range.

Portfolio Management
Portfolio Administration
Portfolio Administration involves handling of investment processes and asset servicing. This
would also require tax management, portfolio accounting, fee administration, client
reporting,
document management and general administration relating with portfolio and client.
This function would involve back office administration and custodial services to manage
transaction processes (trading and settlement) - interfacing with brokers/dealers/agents,
Fund
managers, Custodians, Cash Agent and many other market intermediaries.

Performance Evaluation and Analytics

Performance evaluation of the portfolio is an ongoing process. Portfolio return is
continuously
monitored and analyzed with respect to defined portfolio objectives. Analysis dimension
could be
varied – simple and complex. These may include - absolute return, relative return (in
comparison
to chosen benchmark), trend, pattern, cost impact, tax impact, concentration, lost
opportunity
and other form of sensitivity and what-if analysis.
Any deviation of portfolio performance observed during performance evaluation would lead
to
strategy review and any possible alignment of portfolio strategy.

Strategy Review and Alignment

Recalibration of Portfolio Strategy
Based on performance evaluation and future outlook of the investment, portfolio strategy is
evaluated on periodic basis. To keep it aligned with the defined investment objectives,
portfolio
strategy is suitably re-calibrated from time to time. Many times, review of portfolio strategy
would
be necessitated due to change in client profile or expectations.

Rebalancing, Reallocation and Divestment of

Assets
Any re-calibration of strategy and consequent change in portfolio model would require
rebalancing of the assets in portfolio. This would be achieved through rebalancing the asset
(divesting over-allocated part and acquiring under allocated), relocation (from one sector the
other or from one instrument to other instrument in the same class) or complete divestment.
Key Challenge Areas:
While immense business potentiality of this emerging sector is a driving point for most of the
firms,
they face many challenges in formulating winning services offering meeting the client needs.
In the
following section, we would briefly take a look on the key challenges area in the present
context.

Highly Personalized and Customized Services

Unlike other stream of financial services, mostly being transactional /commoditized in
nature, wealth
Wealth Management Services – Challenges and
Solution Framework

management services require client specific solution and service offering. No one solution
exactly meets
the needs of other client. In a situation of highly personalized and customized nature of
service offering,
developing any form of generic service model does not support growth of the business.

Personal relationship driving the business

To meet client expectation of personal attention, mode of communication in wealth
management
services tends to be highly personalized. Thus, the conventional grids of communication,
such as call
centre, data centre does not fit well. Success of wealth management services heavily draws
on personal
interaction with the dedicated relationship manager, who takes care of whole investment
management
lifecycle for bunch of clients on one-to-one basis. This essentially requires service firm to
invest heavily
in human processes to groom and retain a team on competent relationship managers with
crossfunctional
skills.

Evolving Client Profile

The biggest challenge in providing wealth management service offering is to factor and
reckon the
evolving nature of client profile, in terms of investment objective, time horizon, risk appetite
and so on.
Thus, a service model developed for a particular client cannot remain static over a period of
time. Any
service model has to be flexible enough to consider the dynamic nature of client profile and
expectations
arising out of it.
Client Involvement Level
The conventional adage – the more money you have, more effort is needed to
manage it – proves to be
otherwise in case of HNWIs. Generally, client involvement in managing the finance remains
on the lower
side. This brings onus of managing the whole gamut of investment and due performance
single-handedly
on the shoulders of investment manager.

Passion Investment (Philanthropy and Social

Responsibility)
In the recent years a trend has been observed that bulk of investments by HNWIs has been
directed
towards passion investments (art, antique, jewellery, coins, unique assets, luxury),
philanthropy and
social/community causes.
As per World Wealth report, 11% of HNW investors worldwide contributed to philanthropic
causes with a
contribution over 7% of their wealth in year 2006. Ultra-HNWIs contribution was even more -
17% of
Ultra-HNW investors that gave to philanthropy contributed over 10% of their wealth. In total,
this equates
to more than US$285 billion globally.
Against this backdrop, new breed of HNWIs expect to strategically manage the wealth and
personal
resources allocated to philanthropy purpose, in order to maximize its impact. This demands
a
relationship manager not just to be a passive financial advisor rather a passionate partner
sharing
interest and inclination of the associated client.

Wealth Management Services – Challenges and

Solution Framework
 Limited Leveraging Capabilities of Technology
(as an enabler)
In the recent times, we have witnessed technology a key enabler to help business to
expand its market
reach with reduced cost of services offering. Online banking and online trading/brokerage
services are
the best examples in this regard. Technology leveraging has helped services firm to achieve
universal
proliferation of market with substantially reducing transaction cost.
As business rules and service definitions to guide the applications tends to be quite
composite in wealth
management services, leveraging the capabilities of technology to meet the business
requirement may
not be highly feasible in the initial years.

Technical Architecture and Technology

Investment
As business architecture is still evolving, a proven basis of resilient technical architecture
and framework
to support the emerging business greatly remains missing. In absence of this framework,
any investment
commitment towards application development / system implementation would be fraught
with severe
risk.

Knowledge of Cross-functional Domain Intricate

By very nature of wealth management, it not just involves matters of plain vanilla finance but
has intricate
relationship with many elements of domestic / international law, taxation and regulatory
norms. In order
to provide sound investment guidance, a relationship manager is required to have intricate
knowledge of
domestic/cross-border finance, accounting, legal and taxation subjects.
Solution Framework
Generic services offering model is going to draw big blank in case of wealth management
services. A
HNWI client expects exclusiveness in services in a normal manner. In highly competitive
market, key
to success for a firm lies in offering exclusiveness in services delivery (high quality services
on most
personalized basis), going beyond the client expectations.
A solution framework with considered inclusion of following key elements would help firms in
meeting
and exceeding client needs towards sustainable business growth.

Wealth Management Services – Challenges and

Solution Framework
Quality of Service Level
Quality of service level provided by the service provider firm would the key determinant of
growth and
success in client acquisition, client satisfaction and client retention aspects.
In a sense, service offering could be developed in the form of partnership with the client
based on trust
and integrity, where the relationship manager remains highly responsive to client
sensitivities and
expectations.
Without over-emphasizing, a satisfied client would provide multitude of opportunities of
growth of
business – through deepening the relationship, direct / indirect referencing as well as cross
selling of
products. In the other situation of deficiency in service level, he would not hesitate to move
the business
to another firm.
This keeps strong emphasis on continued engagement with the client on the aspects of
client
expectation and servicing, rather than showing extra attention only during the period of
client acquisition.
Focused around client needs, a broad framework of service offering during whole lifecycle
of client
investment management would be revolving around: Anticipate, Analyze, Advice,
Act and Monitor
cycle.

Act

Monitor Anticipate

Analyze

Advice

Universal Service Offering

To meet the client needs in holistic manner, product and service offering range of the firm
should be wide
enough to cover the investment spectrum across its lifecycle.
In an ideal situation, a client would expect to deal with a single firm to get complete range of
investment
management services. However, for various business considerations of the service provider
firm, in
many situations it may not be a viable proposition to offer those services.
While universal service offering with assortment of services under single umbrella is not
attainable inhouse,
it could be achieved through active partnership and affiliation. But, due consideration is
required
that quality of service level provided by partners/affiliates does not get compromised in any
manner. Any
shortcoming in service quality, even if caused by partner/affiliate’s services, would be
ultimately impairing
client satisfaction towards the firm.

Wealth Management Services – Challenges and

Solution Framework
Investment in People Processes
As relationship manager remains the face of the firm to a client, success of the firm would
be greatly
dependent on the skills, drive and enthusiasm of relationship managers (to take an extra
mile), while
bonding and dealing with any of client issues.
This aspect is more challenging than as it appears. This necessitates transformation of
organizational
philosophy towards its people and people processes contributing to business success.
Firms would be
required to invest heavily in human processes to attract, groom and retain a motivated team
of
relationship managers, who will make the real difference between winning and losing the
game.

Price not a True Differentiator

Pricing as a key differentiator to distinct the service offering from one firm to other may not
be highly
relevant in case of wealth management services. Focused on performance and quality of
service, pricing
in isolation will not make much meaning to service seeking clients. Client would always
value the pricing
from the quality of services received. He will certainly not mind paying extra, if he finds
services offered
to him meeting and exceeding his expectations.

Unconventional Delivery Channel and

Communication
Delivery channel for service content and mode of communication has to be greatly
customized - aligned
with the client-desired vehicles. This would require a process of continuous re-inventing and
re-defining
the grid of delivery and communication channels to meet client expectations. Impact of
technological
advancements and its interplay on service delivery and communication method would
certainly be an
equally challenging aspect to be factored in, while designing such strategies.

Flexibility of Technical Architecture

While business potential appears to be quite high, existing business architecture still does
not provide
any sound basis to formulate technical roadmap. Added to that, dynamic characteristics of
client profile
bring an increased challenge in drawing a firm implementation blueprint.
In the given situation, any big-bang commitment towards technical implementation plan
would not be a
wise idea. A prudent approach would be to get started on modular basis with progressive
integration of
functional components in order of its functional significance. Gaining insight and confidence
around the
business processes, this could be gradually scaled over the period of time.
To meet the information technology requirements, a firm has several alternatives (or
combination of
alternatives) to consider:

a) Integrated solution approach: Developing in-house applications to meet end-to-

end new business
requirements. These applications are based on existing technology architecture of the firm
and are
closely integrated with the existing service models. It would be a least preferred choice in
the
current situation, on count of cost, time, lack of clarity and complexity of solution.
b) Service Bureau /ASP Model: A recent trend has been witnessed in the solution
provider’s
landscape. Many of information technology service providers have come out with novel
solution for
investment management / investment processing platform in the form of service bureau /
ASP. This
platform provides integrated end-to-end processing infrastructure and services including
core of
business processes of wealth management.
On the part of a wealth management firm, paying agreed charges to service bureau
provider, option
Wealth Management Services – Challenges and
Solution Framework

of service bureau completely eliminates the requirement of ongoing resource commitment

and cost
of maintaining information technology infrastructure.
While total cost of owning may be the key motivating point for a wealth management firm to
adopt
service bureau model, the key consideration of providing high quality of service level with
enhanced
responsiveness may not be adequately answered. The question remains to be answered is
– what
would be the key differentiator in service offering of two wealth management firms operating
from
the same service bureau?

c) Stand-alone commercial software product/solutions: Pre-packaged

solutions that can be
focused to specific part of services or provide comprehensive end-to-end processing. These
can be
deployed independently or could be integrated with existing systems. Cost, customization
and
integration difficulties would be the challenging points.
A loosely oriented technical architecture with optionality and mix of Build – Buy –
Integrate components
would be considered as a good beginning point. To provide enough resilience and high
business
relevance, any of the considered option and associated structure should keep due
provisions for the
following key elements:
- Considering the complexity of business processes and involved business rules, rule based
processing would be the core of processing.
- Client profile acquires many new dimensions with plethora of attributes. Client data is
required to be
appropriately managed (aggregate / segregate) to build a profile driven solution offering.
- Decision support and client oriented analytics acquire more importance.
- Applications should provide adequate flexibility to incorporate manual processing
interfaces.
Conclusion
Generic services offering model is going to draw big blank in case of wealth management
services. A
HNWI client expects exclusiveness in services in a normal manner. In highly competitive
market, key to
success for a firm lies in offering exclusiveness in services delivery (high quality services on
most
personalized basis), going beyond the client expectations.
Service offering developed in the form of partnership with the client based on trust and
integrity, with
relationship manager remaining highly responsive to client sensitivities and expectations
becomes the
winning point in client acquisition, client retention and enhanced client satisfaction.
Continued engagement with the client throughout the relationship lifecycle would greatly
help in
understanding dynamic client expectation and providing desired level of services. A broad
framework of
service offering revolving around: Anticipate, Analyze, Advice, Act and Monitor cycle, would
provide a
sound basis to cater evolving client needs.
Organizational human process requires re-oriented strategy to attract, groom and retain a
motivated team
of relationship managers with cross-functional expertise, who will make the real difference in
delivering the
service content.
SConsidering the complexity of business rules and service definitions in the business
processes, leveraging
the capabilities of technology to meet the business requirement may not be highly feasible
in the initial
years. Further, in absence of proven business architecture, basis for resilient technical
architecture and
framework to support the emerging business still remains desired. This requires adopting a
cautious
approach towards investment commitment in technical implementation
A loosely oriented technical architecture with optionality and mix of Build – Buy – Integrate
components
would be considered as a good beginning point. Rule based engine, profile driven solution
offering, client
oriented decision support and manual-processing interface would be some of the key
considerations in
implementation plan.

References
a) World Wealth Report 2007 by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch
b) The Journal of Wealth Management, Winter 2007 (Editorial by Jean L.P. Brunel, Editor)
c) Beyond the Back Office – Technology’s role in Wealth Management by Bob Stewart (
http://www.investedge.com/pdf/beyond-the-back-office.pdf )
d) 2007 Wealth Management Best Practices: A practical guide by Vicki Morris, NorthStar
and
Sonaimuthu N, Infosys Technologies Ltd
e) Boomers Need Wealth Management Services – CU360 – Online Research and advice
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(http://cu360.cuna.org/articles/story.php?doc_id=2180)