BNP Paribas Wealth Management’s co-CEO, Vincent Lecomte, was in Singapore today to showcase the private bank’s recently-developed suite of digital solutions that he hopes will shape the way it interacts with clients and prospects in the future.
On display at the private bank’s innovation lab were four tools, including myAdvisory, a mobile portfolio management app that provides custom recommendations, access to research and news flow and enables clients to send trade instructions to the bank, as well as The Leaders’ Connection, a platform for upper-tier clients to share co-investment ideas with one another, which has been live for around two weeks and currently encompasses 13 countries.
Asian Private Banker understands that myAdvisory will soon include trading functionality, as well as full biometric security that includes voice and facial recognition.
In total, BNP Paribas Wealth Management has developed ten solutions stemming from “75 client experience initiatives”, with five of the tools birthed in its Singapore lab. Seven have been rolled out, while the remainder are being trialled by early adopter clients before being launched across regions in a progressive manner.
The bank says that around 250 people contributed to the project, including clients, bankers and fintech vendors.
BNP Paribas has three digital innovation “factories”, located in Singapore, Geneva and Luxembourg. The development process leveraged on the ‘pizza teams’ concept popularised by Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, who said that innovation is most potent when decentralised groups are small enough to be fed with two pizzas.
Speaking at today’s launch event, Lecomte said that the bank will “continue to invest in [the client experience] area and strengthen [its] digital capabilities to cater for different client expectations”. He added that BNP Paribas WM, which managed US$74 billion in client assets in Asia at the end of 2016 according to Asian Private Banker data, aims to rank among the top five in the region.
Pierre Vrielinck, BNP Paribas WM’s recently appointed CEO for APAC, said that Asia is “the fastest growing region” for the private bank.
“These new digital solutions will enable our relationship managers to deliver products and services by offering a seamless user experience across multiple channels,” he said.
Also on display today were Voice of Wealth, a market news and content platform, and Youmanist, a thematic lifestyle magazine. Youmanist is currently only available with an Italian IP address.
The bank said that the ultimate goal is to bring all ten solutions together into a single platform.
With its new client-facing digital tools, BNP Paribas WM joins a growing list of private banks with mobile/tablet apps in the region. According to Asian Private Banker’s App Map, six private banks rolled out mobile/tablet apps in the region last year, bringing the total number of private banks with an app for relationship managers and/or clients to 14 by end-2016. This marks a 40% increase in the number of private banks with digital offerings since Asian Private Banker first surveyed the top 20 private banks in the region in May 2015.
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