Sparebanken Møre, a Norwegian savings bank, hopes to become a leading player in the wealth management space. To achieve this, it is working with TietoEVRY and its WealthMapper solution.
For some context, the WealthMapper platform lets organisations leverage a variety of partners within an ecosystem to build new retail wealth management services. The modular digital tool kit is designed to be simple and create end-to-end wealth management services. Through the open architecture, which allows tools to easily be plugged in or out, clients can implement a variety of features. These include goal-based savings and financial planning, automated and hybrid advisory, micro-savings, data-driven customer experience, portfolio management, loans and mortgages, insurance, compliance and more.
Sparebanken Møre is on a mission of growth and is a pioneering force for asset management in the northwest of Norway. It currently has 28 branches across the region and has experienced strong growth in terms of assets under management and its customer base over the past few years. But, it is hoping to continue this growth momentum with modernised and digital tools.
Trond Moldskred, EVP of Wealth Management at Sparebanken Møre, said, “Wealth management is a strategically important area for the bank, where we have high expectations for market growth. The investment area is now further strengthened by consolidating the services in a separate unit, Wealth Management.” Due to this, the company is looking to hire more staff to expand its direct customer relationships.
It is also enlisting the help of the WealthMapper solution. This will help it build a modern and interactive self-service tool that provides our customers with a complete overview of their total wealth portfolio, boosting the offering for private customers, investment companies and corporates with liquidity surpluses, Moldskred explained.
The wealth management sector is very competitive in Norway, with banks all fighting for the same group of customers. To ensure it can win, the team wanted to improve its Aktiv Forvaltning customer portal solution. Through this tool, customers can access a tailor-made portfolio based on the individual’s specific risk profile and time limits. Sparebanken Møre’s local managers continuously monitor the portfolio and act on the person’s behalf.
After searching the market, they found the WealthMapper solution. What stood out was the fact this tool could be scaled for future growth initiatives and use cases that banks might have. Svein Ola Egseth, SVP and Head of IT Operations at Sparebanken Møre, said, “Seeing WealthMapper we soon realised that it could serve as a platform for that specific need, but also be a platform for future cases. WM integrates well with our internal systems, trading and portfolio system and our ETL tool which lifts data to the secure platform.”
Speaking on how exciting the partnership is with Tietoevry and the WealthMapper solution, Sparebanken Møre SVP and head of innovation Bjørn Petter Haugen said, “When I saw the WealthMapper solution for the first time, I really liked the way the system was built and how agile the development methodology was. I also like the short time-to-market opportunities in Wealthmapper, this enables us to give our customers rapid new functionalities continuously. These are some of the reasons why I introduced Wealthmapper to Sparebanken Møre. We choose WealthMapper because we believe that the bank will benefit from the platform if they keep on innovating and adding new functionalities and features rapidly.”
Haugen continued to explain that there are two types of customers in the wealth management space. The first are those who want to fix everything themselves and the second are those who want assistance and counselling. However, there is a greater shift in those that want self-service. As a result of this, Sparebanken Møre wants to be ready to give good services to both segments.
WealthMapper will help the bank enhance mobile and web self-service capabilities for customers, giving them better visibility, accessibility and actionability. Wealth management advisors will also be able to use an improved portal experience to orchestrate and enhance customer engagement and relationships.
Keeping ahead of the market
It is no secret digitalisation has been at the forefront of most wealth management firms growth initiatives over the past couple of years. While the industry had steadily replaced legacy systems, the pandemic forced them to shift up a gear.
One of the biggest challenges firms have with their IT operations is ensuring everything works seamlessly. The most important aspect, Egseth explained, is ensuring customers have modern and responsive tools for both web-based and mobile devices, which are supported by fully automated and integrated back-end solutions. Through this, customers can reduce the time and effort needed for manual processes. It also ensures customer satisfaction is high.
To ensure Sparebanken Møre can keep up with these needs, it is leveraging technology, such as big data, AI and robotics, to understand its clients better. It even helps them pre-emptively predict what their clients will need in the future.
As part of its effort to stay ahead of the curve, the wealth management firm has been structuring its business workflows so manual tasks can be automated. As such, over the past couple of years it has improved workflows for trading, deal capture and client onboarding, by investing into technology that can improve the efficiency, reduce operational risk and increase audit trails.
Its next big focus will be on the customer experience. Reporting, client communication and information distribution are some of the areas marked for improvement.
Sparebanken Møre portfolio manager Arne Humlung said, “WealthMapper will be our main client communication/experience platform. This will be a place where the client can do an in-depth analysis of his portfolio, read articles and news about the financial markets, find documents and chat with their financial advisor. The platform isn’t only meant to make the client experience seem more seamless; it is also meant to automate a lot of the manual tasks we do today. This will make our current business model more scalable by spending less time on administrative tasks and more on value creation for our clients.”
Speaking on the new partnership, Sameer Datye, head of insurance and wealth solutions at TietoEVRY said, “WealthMapper will help Sparebanken Møre to strengthen existing customer relations and grow their business. The solution will enable them to engage with their customers in the channel of their choice and at the same time provide robust and engaging advisory support. With our open ecosystem partners, it will be possible to deliver the latest technology as well as distribution accelerators to the market smoothly and cost-efficiently”.
TietoEVRY is constantly looking at how it can scale the WealthMapper platform and meet new market demands. Last year, it teamed up with FinScience, an AI-powered software that analyses alternative data to help financial services improve their investing and environmental, social and governance (ESG) scoring workloads. As a result of this development, users of the WealthMapper platform can see their ESG scores across their investment portfolios.
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