We were delighted to host our 10th annual event in Singapore for the Digital Wealth Management Community. More than 300 CEOs, COOs, Independent Asset managers and other senior practitioners attended – from a mix of local and international Private Banks, Retail Banks, Insurance Companies, Independent Firms & Family Offices, Asset Management Companies, and IFAs.

Thank you to all of our event partners: FNZ, Refinitiv, 360F, IRESS, Pershing, a BNY Mellon company, Quantifeed, InvestaCrowd, Quo, Accenture, Onchain Custodian, Orbium, stradegi Consulting, Swissquote and Wealth Dynamix.

Below for your interest and reference are links to various content we captured from the day. Please click on the orange headlines – and do send any comments or feedback to [email protected].

Content Highlights 

Video Highlights
Video Highlights Summary PDF
Exclusive Insights
Testimonials
I Love Wealth Management
Photos
Event summary
Panel discussions
Presentations & Workshops
Videos
Post event Supplement

Post-event Report

You might also like to view the full Post Event Report – which is a consolidated summary, including photos of speakers & delegates, the attendee profiles & some delegate feedback, polling results, and more.

Event Summary 

Digital Wealth Asia Forum Singapore 2019 Summary
We were delighted to host our 10th annual event in Singapore for the Digital Wealth Management Community. More than 300 CEOs, COOs, Independent Asset managers and other senior practitioners attended – from a mix of local and international Private Banks, Retail Banks, Insurance Companies, Independent Firms & Family Offices, Asset Management Companies, and IFAs.

Video Highlights

We asked leading industry experts - what are the opportunities and challenges for the year ahead? View the combined video highlights, or click on the links to view the individual videos.

Full Video Highlights
Video Highlights Summary PDF
I Love Wealth Management
Testimonials

Bassam Salem, CEO & Founder, Obuhi
Urs Lichtenberger, Director, Client Platform, Asia Pacific, Credit Suisse Private Banking
Evy Theunis, Senior Vice President, Head of Wealth, Regional eBusiness Department, Consumer Banking Group, DBS Bank           
Silvio Struebi, Partner, Simon-Kucher & Partners
Timothy Neville, Chief Executive Officer, APAC, FNZ
Michael Gerber, CEO, 360F
Mark Wightman, Asia-Pacific Wealth & Asset Management Advisory Leader, EY
Will Lawton, Global Head, Quo
Alpha Baid, Business Development, Stradegi Consultant
Lawrence J. Grinceri, Chief Executive Officer, Skyhook Capital
Alice Chen, Chief Operating Officer, Co-founder, InvestaCrowd
Alexandre Kech, Chief Executive Officer, Onchain Custodian
Antony Lewis, Director of Digital Assets, R3

Exclusive Insights ​​​ ​​​

We asked leading industry experts for their exclusive and incisive insights. Click on the links to view the individual videos:

Exclusive Insights PDF

Urs Lichtenberger, Director, Client Platform, Asia Pacific, Credit Suisse Private Banking
How should banks decide what’s working? What KPIs should we use?

Evy Theunis, Senior Vice President, Head of Wealth, Regional eBusiness Department, Consumer Banking Group, DBS Bank
How should banks decide what’s working? What KPIs should we use?

Bassam Salem, CEO & Founder, Obuhi
What does the platform of tomorrow look like?

Silvio Struebi, Partner, Simon-Kucher & Partners
What is the future role of the RM when banks get digital?

Timothy Neville, Chief Executive Officer, APAC, FNZ
What is the client experience that clients are looking for?

Will Lawton, Global Head, Quo
What's next for these digital banks? How will this evolve in Singapore?
Who is QUO? What do you do?

Mark Wightman, Asia-Pacific Wealth & Asset Management Advisory Leader, EY
What is the evolution of digital advice?

Michael Gerber, CEO, 360F
What’s the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics?
How can AI and Data save money or drive revenue?

Lawrence J. Grinceri, Chief Executive Officer, Skyhook Capital
Blockchain - What are the real applications and implications in financial services?
What is Skyhook Capital?

Alice Chen, Chief Operating Officer, Co-founder, InvestaCrowd
What are the roadblocks/challenges for great adoption of the blockchain in the capital markets?

Alexandre Kech, Chief Executive Officer, Onchain Custodian
Blockchain - Dive into the Eco-system, what exists, what is being built, what is needed?

Alpha Baid, Business Development, Stradegi Consultant
What are the challenges of working with traditional, unstructured and alternative datasets at scale?

Antony Lewis, Director of Digital Assets, R3
Blockchain - What are the real applications and implications in financial services?

Panel Discussions 

We held 4 interactive panel discussions throughout the day – which involved senior industry practitioners who we invited to participate and share their thoughts. We have also incorporated into the summaries below the briefing notes which speakers sent to us in advance of the event. Plus, we have included the results of audience polling as well as questions we received from delegates. Click on each headline to view the PDFs.

How You Can Boost Efficiency and Satisfaction by Adopting Digital Wealth Management
Panellists at the first discussion of the day focussed upon the recent innovations that digitalisation is bringing to the banking industry. The digital revolution is fully underway, and banks and wealth advisory businesses need not only to keep up but also be smart in their application of technology, so that it pays it way, and more. Numerous topics were covered by the experts, but the underlying thrust of the conversation can be summed up in the view that the race to digital is being propelled first by rapidly rising client demand for digital interaction, and secondly by the urgent need to make providers’ back-end operations more efficient and their front-end revenue generation more productive.

Panel Members

Urs Lichtenberger, Director, Client Platform, Asia Pacific, Credit Suisse Private Banking
Evy Theunis, Senior Vice President, Head of Wealth, Regional eBusiness Department, Consumer Banking Group, DBS Bank
Jihyun Lee, Managing Director, Head IT Asia, Bank Julius Baer
Silvio Struebi, Partner, Simon-Kucher & Partners

Digital Banking and Wealth Management – The State of Play and the Outlook
The wealth management industry is learning not just to live with digitalisation, but also to embrace the enhanced capabilities it brings. However, a heavyweight panel of experts conceded that the industry is not yet using the new technology to its full potential, advising delegates that a clear vision of the multiple objectives of digitalisation are essential from the outset of the project.

Panellists agreed that the key to success is combining human expertise and superior technology to deliver wealth management advice and services that offer genuine value-added, but that are also delivered both simply and efficiently. If this is achieved, customer engagement and retention will be improved across all the segments of wealth management. The greater the wealth, the higher the relative involvement of face-to-face advice, as this is economically possible for the wealth management firms and also because HNWIs and the ultra-wealthy demand more personal contact. Digital, the panel therefore advised, will be especially valuable to boost the proposition for the mass affluent market, where it is not as cost-effective to provide high levels of human advisory engagement.

Panel Members

David Wilson, Senior Vice President, UOB Bank
Nicolas Huras, Head of Sales and Relationship Management, APAC - UBS Fondcenter, UBS Asset Management
John Robson, Chief Commercial Officer, Quantifeed
Will Lawton, Global Head, Quo
Mark Nelligan, Chief Executive Officer, Singapore, Pershing, a BNY Mellon company
Timothy Neville, Chief Executive Officer, APAC, FNZ

Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics - their Impact on Wealth Management
Panellists at the third group discussion during the Hubbis Digital Wealth Management Forum agreed that we are on the brink of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, with the fast-advancing algorithms enabling machine learning at speeds and with relevance like never before. The assembled experts were optimistic that AI will enhance value propositions in the wealth management industry, although there was somewhat divided opinion as to whether the visions will be realised within a few years or nearer to 20 years. 

Panel Members

Nakul Kurup, Vice President, E-Business - Global Consumer Financial Services, OCBC Bank
Michael Gerber, Chief Executive Officer, 360F
Tatiana Collins, Director, Head of Digital Wealth Consulting, AAPAC, Accenture
Mark Wightman, Asia-Pacific Wealth & Asset Management Advisory Leader, EY
Ayla Kremb, Ecosystem Manager – Applied Innovation Asia, Refinitiv Labs, Refinitiv

The Evolution of the Blockchain & Tokenisation: The Revolution Begins
A fascinating panel discussion amongst some genuine experts on blockchain and tokenisation took place to close out the Hubbis Digital Wealth Management Forum. Will distributed ledger technologies turn the world of investment digital? Will private or public blockchain dominate the future landscape? Can any type of illiquid assets suddenly become liquid, tradeable and will pricing be wholly transparent? How will the world’s existing exchanges react? What does this all mean for the wealth management industry? The experts provided many answers and where there are no clear answers as yet, they gave their best insights into the future.

Panel Members

Julian Kwan, Chief Executive Officer, InvestaCrowd
Antony Lewis, Director of Digital Assets, R3
Lawrence J Grinceri, Chief Executive Officer, Skyhook Capital
Alexandre Kech, Chief Executive Officer, Onchain Custodian

Presentations 

Below are summaries of the Presentations and Wealth TALKS delivered at the event. These were 10-minute slots hosted either by senior industry practitioners who we invited to speak (Wealth TALKS), or by some of our event partners (Presentations). Also listed with each summary are links to the presentation slides (where these are made available by speakers). Click on each headline to view the web versions of these – from which you can also access the 1-page PDFs.

The Regionalisation of Wealth Businesses - a Digital & Platform Perspective
Timothy Neville, Chief Executive Officer, APAC at FNZ, addressed the audience at the Hubbis Digital Wealth Management Forum, explaining more about FNZ and its missions in Asia Pacific. Supported by a very detailed slide presentation, he highlighted how, through one core platform, the Fintech firm can service multiple jurisdictions, offering multi-channel, multi-lingual, multi-asset, multi-currency solutions. He told delegates why in a market afflicted by margin compression this is ever more vital to address, and why agility is critical in a world that moves faster than ever.
View Slides

Smarter Humans = Smarter Machines. Smarter Machines = Smarter Humans
Patrick Donaldson is Head of Market Development, Wealth Management for Asia Pacific & Japan at Refinitiv, the USD6 billion plus revenue global provider of financial markets data and infrastructure. He highlighted how AI will be the single greatest enabler of competitive advantage in the financial services sector, but that data quality is the biggest barrier to the adoption and deployment of machine learning. Refinitiv is a global provider of financial markets data and infrastructure. The company was founded in 2018. The company has an annual turnover of USD6bn with more than 40,000 client companies in 190 countries.
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How to Harness the Full Value of Research Using Data
The next digital ‘arms race’ will be around data. Just how do you process the ever-proliferating amount of information and turn commoditised content into actionable insights? As an investment adviser or portfolio manager, how can you identify which sources to trust? Steven Carroll, ASEAN Managing Director at Refinitiv, presented an absorbing Workshop to explain how building superior analytics can help better understand the investment landscape and ultimately deliver wealth management clients better performance with lower risk profiles. The Refinitiv solution is on the form of its multi-functional ‘StarMine’, which provides analysts, directors of research, advisers and wealth advisory relationship managers with a unique set of tools to measure and manage analyst performance and generate new ideas, or perhaps cautionary alerts, for investors worldwide.

360-ProVestment: A Digital Advisory for Holistic Financial Recommendations
Michael Gerber, founder and CEO of Fintech 360F, believes his firm’s patented ‘360-ProVestment’ advisory solution offers the ideal combination of automated and completely unbiased product recommendations that are continuously refined via the built-in machine learning and tailored ultimately to the client’s exact situation and numerous possible changes in their lives ahead. The outcome 360-ProVestment unfolds will, he told the audience at the Hubbis Digital Wealth Management Forum, significantly improve new business and also cross-selling and up-selling potential for private banks and wealth managers, as well as making the RMs’ lives much easier and the client experience more fulfilling. 
View Slides

Views on Digitised Wealth Management: The Evolution of Advice
Mark Nelligan, Chief Executive Officer in Singapore for Pershing, a BNY Mellon company, believes that robo-advisors, not long ago considered to be a disruptor to the wealth management space, have failed to have the effects predicted, and as a result most of them have actually already been sold to larger firms that can offer a full wealth management model with digital tools. However, digital transformation continues apace in the wealth space as firms realise that they must evolve their solutions and offer a ‘full service’ approach to meet the needs of clients. Nelligan gave his views in a presentation at the Hubbis Digital Wealth Management Forum in Singapore. 

Stepping Out of The Box: Solving Pressure Points and Opening New Doors
The social marketplace named Obuhi has been created to connect independent workers to those seeking their services. Bassam Salem, CEO and Founder of Obuhi, formerly CEO of Citi Private Bank, has a huge wealth of experience in wealth management in Asia, and is aware of the enormous pressures facing businesses, not least of all from the perspective of talent. He delivered an animated Keynote Address, explaining to the delegates exactly what Obuhi offers, and why digital can help make wealth management businesses both more efficient and more imaginative.
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Digital Client Onboarding: Overcoming the Hurdles
Amar Bisht, Head of Wealth Strategy and Advisory for Orbium, knows that onboarding is a significant hurdle to overcome for any private bank or wealth management firm. He addressed the delegates at the Hubbis Digital Wealth Management Forum to explain the Orbium ‘ecosystem’ approach, which combines the client perspective, operational excellence and addresses regulatory requirements. Swiss-headquartered Orbium is the largest services provider for the Avaloq Banking Suite, a leader in digital and core banking software for the banking and wealth management industry, used by more than 150 banks and wealth managers worldwide.

Building out the Client Proposition – Key Findings from the 2019 EY Global Wealth Survey
Mark Wightman, Asia-Pacific Wealth & Asset Management Advisory Leader at global accounting and professional service group EY, gave a talk at the Digital Wealth Management Forum to highlight findings from the 2019 EY Global Wealth Survey. He told the audience how digital advice is evolving, how higher value-added solutions can be offered, and how wealth management firms can better align pricing with value.
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Mission Possible: Mastering the Behavioural Science of Client Investment Decisions
Tatiana Collins, Director and Head of Digital Wealth Consulting for APAC at Accenture, believes that mission impossible can become mission possible if the wealth management industry can much more efficiently understand the client and their motivations before they make a financial decision. To do so, she told the audience at the Hubbis Digital Wealth Management Forum that wealth advisers must make use of digital ‘crumbs’ and behavioural science technologies and techniques to increase the probability of lead conversion and to improve the relevance of investment recommendations to clients. Advances taking place in the US already in the retail market and now evolving into the wealth management space, including new experimentation in Asia.

Using AI and Machine Learning to boost the RM’s Ability to Advise Clients
Alpha Baid believes in AI. He understands the many challenges of working with traditional, unstructured and alternative datasets at scale. He knows that by incorporating data science into the investment process wealth management can be made both better and more efficient. And clients end up happier, especially as the advisers they use are reacting faster by using AI to monitor and quantify the impact of critical events. Baid is Business Consultant for consulting firm stradegi, which was voted one of the top 10 AI Consulting Companies in APAC for 2019.
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