Banca Generali: Blending confidentiality with top-notch technical skills

Some studies suggest heirs will look for a new financial advisor after inheriting their parents’ wealth - What are you doing to cultivate family loyalty and prevent heirs from moving their money to different institutions?

At Banca Generali, we chose to adopt a wealth management business model that is fully consistent with our mission to empower our financial advisors to build long lasting inter-generational relationships with their clients. In this framework, we believe there are two recent initiatives with the most impact. The first one is the development of a full set of estate planning services, ranging from simulation tools and operational support to highly specialized advisory services for complex family issues. The other is the continuous upgrading of our investment services in order to meet the new generation’s needs: For example, putting in place smart investment advisory processes thanks to massive use of technology and the adoption of a best-in-class online trading platform through a partnership with Saxo Bank.

How do you approach advice in terms of inheritance? How does it differ from typical financial advice?

Our main goal is to enable our financial advisors, who already have the trust of their clients on financial investments matters, to become the family-trusted reference point on wealth management, protection, and planning issues, which generally deals with extremely delicate topics. 

We pursue this goal through a distinctive approach that blends graduality and confidentiality with top-notch technical skills, which are made available to the relationship manager thanks to the open architecture network put in place.   

How different are Millennials compared to their elders? How different are their expectations and behavior?

Apart from the differences in expectations due to the different life-cycle phase, a recent behavioral analysis of our client base (focused on investments and banking), shows a slightly stronger attitude towards innovation, a slightly lower propensity to delegate, and a slightly lower risk appetite for younger generations, probably due to a stronger impact of uncertainty on investment decisions. Younger generations also show higher propensity toward ESG matters compared to their elders.

How have you transformed your wealth management offer to satisfy the new generation? And how do you engage potential new customers?

As mentioned before, in recent years we performed a general review and upgrade of our investment services platforms in order to meet the new generation’s needs. The result is an omnichannel service offering model through which clients can access information and data they need and get in touch with their advisor in the most flexible way, regardless of time, location, or device used. The wealth management services catalog itself has been enriched – in the open-architecture framework that defines Banca Generali’s business model – in order to grant the financial advisor full coverage of a family’s needs through the entire life cycle.

Regarding the next generation’s engagement, the pivotal role is of course assigned to the financial advisor, which is backed up by the bank both with the wealth management services platform made available and specific marketing initiatives (e.g. new generation training seminars on wealth management, events dedicated to networking, etc.). 

According to research by Accenture, the current wealth management advisory model is not working for women. Do you notice differences in terms of investment behavior by women compared to men? What are some examples? And how have you tailored your offerings to serve female clients better?        

The client base behavioral analysis cited above showed no substantial differences in terms of investment behavior by women compared to men. We also observe a growing role for women in investment decision processes.

Technology is being implemented to digitize almost every area of a bank, but advisory remains complex to automate. How is your bank approaching the integration of AI into its advisory services? Will it be a mix? Will the human touch always be required when it comes to wealth management?

Human touch will always be required, both in relationship management and in advisory services, but technology is having a tremendous impact on efficiency and productivity.  Focusing on AI applied to advisory, our goal is to automate all the steps of the advisory process with low added value (e.g. information & data search, gathering, and mining) in order to leave the last mile to the advisor/specialist (e.g. drawing conclusions and taking consequent actions). One of the most promising features of that approach is the opportunity to feed a virtuous cycle thanks to machine learning. A recent successful application of this approach in Banca Generali is a dashboard that produces insights for the financial advisor on corporate advisory opportunities regarding his entrepreneur clients through AI-powered analysis of publicly available enterprise data.

How do you see wealth management evolving in the next decade? (open banking, platformication, new players, new technologies…)

All cited trends are already affecting wealth management industry, although we believe that players who will make the most of platformification/open banking will probably gain a competitive advantage. The pursuit of productivity and efficiency will also lead towards a more concentrated market, while new players’ market share will probably grow, especially in the lower affluent and mass market segments.