Research distribution in the banking industry is in the midst of a shift in both regulation and customer expectation.  Customers demand more transparency and a personalised experience, while regulators try and create greater transparency with changes such as in MifId II.

This is a wake up call for the financial services industry. Investing in flexible technology that helps you understand who your customers are and what they want is not only required by new regulation, but it just makes business sense.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the research field.  Today, fund managers are inundated with research.  Approximately 8,000 research reports are produced a day, adding up to 3 million each year, most of which is not read.  Although MifId II continues to evolve, regulators’ intentions to unbundle research commissions remains clear.  Fund managers will now have to provide an auditable trail of payments for research and, for the first time, will be able to choose what research they are getting value out of and what they are actually going to pay for. 

It's time for researchers to adapt

So what does this mean for researchers and how will they have to adapt? Researchers, much like retail bankers, now need to be experts on knowing their customer.

• Successful researchers will need to be more intelligent about their content by asking:
• What are my fund managers interested in?
• What research do they actually read?
• How do I know if they have read it?
• How do I know how I rank against other researchers?
• How do I know what research they should receive next?
• How do we determine which research adds value?

Researchers must master this new necessity for “content intelligence.” They are going to need to set up historical records on each fund manager.  Using predictive intelligence, these records could be used to generate bespoke communications of optimal research for each fund manager, resulting in a more impactful and relevant product.  Ultimately, researchers need to reach the true client nirvana: understanding what a fund manager wants before they even know they want it.

Imagining true client nirvana

Let’s all imagine a day when a fund manager sits down at their desk and gets an interactive email with one piece of research based on exactly what they have been working on all week. And then they are so interested that they log onto a portal and view similar articles that are outlined specifically for them.  Their day continues and they walk to their meeting while reading other articles on their mobile phone.  

Finally, during their meeting they refer to some of the research they read and they share it with their client on an iPad.  How dependent would they become on that research?  How integral would that research be to their success?  And how much would they be willing to pay? 

As Frank Underwood says, “You can’t purchase loyalty.”  But by delivering a personalized bespoke product you can earn it.  

On Tuesday 8th March in London, we are launching our first product built specifically for wealth advisors, we'd love to see you there. Find out more and register on the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud Launch page.