Wealth management industry needs to innovate to stay relevant, says Nutmeg co-founder

Wealth managers need to generate relevance and remain attuned to the seismic changes the wealth management industry is likely to square up to over the coming years, according to Nick Hungerford, co-founder and non-executive director of online investment management company Nutmeg.

Speaking at the Wealth Management Associations' 2016 Fintech conference in London on Wednesday (7 September), Hungerford said: "Customers demand personal service in the digital age. For wealth managers, it is all about generating relevance and developing platforms to cultivate customers.

"This could range from generating innovative pricing models for products and client content to pension schemes for quasi self-employed people in the gig economy or shared economy.

"Furthermore, the gig economy, hitherto largely unregulated, would become commonplace and increasingly customers would want to use investment accounts as current accounts they can dig into."

Hungerford said it was not about the run up to the 2020-2030 decade, but had more to do with having answers before the financial services sector arrives at that juncture.

"I hope that come 2020, financial services sector players, large and small, are ahead of the game rather than just wondering where they should start."

In an age where the sector is beyond merely flirting with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in terms of asset management, Hungerford also opined that the rosy prospect of computers generating better capital returns for clients, compared to human wealth managers, was less than clear cut.

"Although from a cost perspective, they might be cheaper to run as businesses, I am not sure computers will deliver massively better returns than physically-managed wealth funds."