Avaloq Blog

We often observe that large financial firms operate on separated systems to serve their retail and wealth management clients. This lack of integration is increasingly disruptive to the relationship management experience, as it significantly impedes growth and limits the wealth managers service to investors.

Discussing investments with clients is done differently now. Hybrid ways of managing wealth, which complement classic advisory with such innovations as conversational banking, are proliferating. The task for banks and wealth managers is to balance client demands for a rich, flexible, premium experience with the need to keep costs under control. This is where Avaloq, and specifically the Avaloq Engage App, an ideal tool for conversational banking, can help.

At our recent Townhall meeting with NEC’s leadership, we discussed many exciting synergies between Avaloq and our new parent company. Our clients have much to look forward to. 

For the foreseeable future, instant payment (IP) models will exist side by side with traditional payment schemes. Person-to-person (P2P) transactions constitute the most common and talked-about IP use case today. But with businesses recognizing the potential of IPs, further use cases for real time payments have begun to blossom. 

Forget the world — robots are more interested in taking over our wallets. This year, the amount of assets under management by robo-advisors is projected to reach $1.4 trillion USD [1]. By 2025, that figure is expected to double. As the industry evolves and the amount of money pouring towards robo-advisory grows, so should our understanding of three key questions: Who uses robo-advisory? What factors influence its adoption? And might it share more with human advisory than we expect?

The day is fast approaching when the payment your clients make for an e-bike, or any other good or service, could be deducted from their account and processed by your bank instantly. The person or entity they transact business with would receive immediate confirmation of the payment in the form of, say, a text message. In fact, that day has already arrived in many countries, including EU member states. As processing systems evolve and proliferate, instant payments (IPs) will make lightning-quick settlement of transactions possible worldwide, around the clock. Considered the closest equivalent to cash now available, IPs are changing the payment experience of clients and becoming fundamental to what they expect their financial services provider to deliver. 

A traditional wealth management portfolio typically consists of shares, bonds and funds. These are, by definition, financial assets and therefore “bankable”. Other things that make up personal wealth may be of value as well, but are often excluded or managed independently from more traditional assets in a wealth management portfolio. Think of direct investments in companies or private equity funds, the purchase or co-acquisition of primary or secondary residences, pieces of art and rare collectibles, and the like. These items do not appear on your bank's portfolio report and are, by definition, non-bankable assets. In saying that, they have a current value, an expected value development, and an inherent risk – just like any other asset. 

The Operations teams of the financial industry are looking back on a turbulent year, dominated by topics of resilience, remote working and the handling of huge transaction volumes. For us as a business-process-as-a-service (BPaaS) provider, as well as for the back offices of our on-prem and software-as-a-service (SaaS) clients, it is time to refocus on the future again - a future full of new technologies and digital transformation.

Data-driven insights are a real supercharger for a wealth advisory business. And the main ingredient, the data, is already inhouse and waiting to be uncovered. However, most banks and wealth managers are confronted with the complexity and incalculable difficulties of the task early on in their data science journey. With this blog, we help you bring your high-flying expectations into alignment with the sometimes-harsh reality of data science implementation.

Simple works; what's more, it wins. A 2019 study from Deloitte revealed that 36% of US banking consumers chose their primary bank because of its ‘simplicity’ [1] – a concept that organizations should reflect not only in the products and services they offer, but also in the language they use to speak about them. As we learned from industry experts in our latest research report, The Front-to-Back Office Report, clients speak in benefits.