Let’s take a look towards the year 2022 to see what kind of a landscape, trends, and new possibilities it has set up for the Asset & Wealth Management industry after the exceptional years of 2020 and 2021.
The year 2021 turned out to be very much as we expected at the beginning of it in our report. It was indeed a year of transformation for the world, mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences. It speeded up some existing trends that are likely to make our life more flexible and better in the future, such as digitalization and an increase in remote working.
But now, it’s time to look towards the year 2022 to see what kind of a landscape it has set up for the Asset & Wealth Management industry.
We want to make a base hypothesis of the following factors to predict the essential things to develop and maintain business in 2022:
- The low-interest-rate environment will remain for 2022, investment in business growth remains highly lucrative.
- The remote working environment is the new normal
- Alternative asset class investments remain high
- Banks and Asset Managers are going to use cloud computing to power up the business environment and streamline the costs of on-premises computing
Every Asset Manager needs to evolve according to the customer needs. A significant thing in 2022 is building the capabilities to report ESG impact in a manner that suits both retail and institutional customers. Also, digital transformation is not anymore just about Banks’ or Asset Managers’ internal workflows; instead, they need to consider how customer journey and satisfaction could be a part of the design.
Two main factors drive new growth opportunities. First, a greater ecosystem is built on cloud technology and business collaboration and data services. Connectivity is the key- being fast and agile. Two, hybrid advice and product launch will open new revenue streams. Time to market is essential for all new products launched.
‘New normal’ enterprise value will be realized in the years to come. Behavioral analytics enables firms to serve better and gain a quality brand image. Cybersecurity will become a top priority, not only due to remote working but also due to high-quality standards and regulations. Consolidation of business units will provide extra operational efficiency while cloud computing and platforms-as-a-service will enable all this.
We at FA see that these trends will take us towards a brighter future if we will just be prepared to embrace the change and seize the new opportunities instead of seeing them as obstacles.
All the best for 2022,
