Customer experience: A pillar of operational efficiency

21/10/2021

Following SIBOS 2021, It is clear that the lessons learned from the pandemic and its impacts on our profession are leading us to rethink our business models by putting the customer at the heart of this transformation and by activating all the levers offered by the digitisation and dematerialisation of services. This is the strategy pursued by SGSS, which offers asset management players an extensive range of innovative solutions.

Putting the customer back at the centre of transformation is a given, as is the need to take advantage of digital innovations to make the customer experience more fluid and efficient. This is however the observation made by many SIBOS 2021 players, in particular Yawar Shah, chairman of SWIFT, who notes a “quantum transition towards Digital” to transform our exchange infrastructures.

In a regulatory framework that requires us to enrich our work (CSDR being just one example), the customer relationship requires the business of the depositary to adapt, with the latter having to provide more data, to enrich it and to offer bridges of exchanges greatly facilitated by new technologies and open platforms.

The customer experience materialises through enhanced and more available information that provides greater visibility on the evolution of our markets. With the emergence of new asset classes (such as digital assets), the growth of the ETF and alternative investment markets, the investor wants to maintain a high level of security in their investments while gaining in speed of execution, and to ensure the liquidity of their assets. All this calls for an enrichment of portfolio management applications and for better quality reporting, made available via "data visualisation" tools, allowing the manager to steer their performance and risks as best as possible.

SG Markets is a pillar of the customer experience serving the financial markets

The provision of information in near real time, the ability to automatically generate alerts or comments in natural language and the consolidation of data from multiple sources are all challenges the depositary has to meet if they want to transform the customer experience, at the heart of recent digital transformations. Technically, a platform such as SG Markets offers a range of services that are regularly enriched as clients' needs evolve. We have all entered a new digital experience where the end user easily appropriates the data made available and makes use of it in their own environment; whether they be a trader, a manager, an operations manager in charge of the proper execution of orders or a risk controller, everyone will have access to quality data inventories offering a more in-depth and relevant track record.

Our alert systems have evolved and cover a wider range of information. Execution monitoring has also been enhanced, gradually replacing paper and e-mails with more efficient applications and dashboards facilitating the selection and consolidation of operational data.

Artificial Intelligence, fed by big data, is establishing itself as an essential component for creating value

To make the best use of this consolidated and quality data, we can now rely on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our respective professions. A new generation of players is coming, making the most of data, working in an agile method to create new, more efficient models.
Partnerships with fintechs have facilitated the generation of natural language comments, automatic correction of “fails” and assisted contract writing. It’s about developing new partnerships, but also integrating new services on our platform and making them available via APIs in our customers' tools. It is in this spirit of Open Architecture that IT can benefit asset managers.

We are now talking about “augmented managers” to qualify this new generation of bankers able to take digital environments onboard without losing the fundamentals of our business in asset management and investment. But this “increase” is reflected in the cognitive capacities of new applications, making this much-vaunted customer experience simple and intuitive. In the same way that a motorist today is assisted with his or her driving and knows exactly when they will arrive and how to avoid traffic jams, we can envisage ourselves being able to control and secure our assets.
Also, by entrusting part of their activities to a partner (outsourcing), the investor or asset manager will today choose the best digital offer providing the best customer experience.

SGSS, a pan-European organisation serving asset management companies

At SGSS, we have put the “digital” customer at the heart of our strategy: develop turnkey services tailored to each customer’s needs, develop an “end-to-end” service to cover all or part of the value chain, empower the customer by providing them with all the elements they require to focus their energy where they create the most value. SGSS will greatly enjoy sharing this vision of the future, which is becoming more and more a reality every day.