Jaideep Poondir, Senior Vice President, Banking and Financial Services, Cognizant

OREANDA-NEWS. “An all-inclusive, cross-platform application for private banking can be a game-changer for both customers and wealth managers,” writes Jaideep Poondir. “The increasing use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has prompted banks and other financial institutions to offer platforms and applications that enable their private banking customers to use mobile apps to increase their interaction with banks as well as help them to manage their wealth digitally.” Excerpts:

“Customers’ evolving private banking needs have widened the scope of private banking, which is no longer restricted to managing their investments. Today, it can encompass activities such as estate planning and managing customers’ philanthropic endeavours which, by their nature, are highly customised. Developing a mobile app that captures the entire range of pri­vate banking services and persuading customers to use it becomes a real challenge for the banks.

As smartphones and tablets become more integrated into the lives of private banking customers, banks must maximise mobility and consider offering multichannel, round-the-clock wealth-management experiences. Also, the younger high net worth (HNW) individuals are likely to be more receptive to newer technologies for their private banking and wealth-management needs.

Australia has a relatively higher smartphone penetration (75 per cent)—a key indicator of mobile banking usage. Furthermore, 60.5 per cent of HNWI Australians with wealth between $1 million and $5 million expect most or all of their wealth management relationships to be digital within the next five years. This category of HNWI’s is most likely to embrace private banking functions over their smartphones or tablets.

An all-inclusive private banking app will succeed because while existing apps may have some or most of these attributes, integrating all in a single application can result in a superlative private banking app for mobiles and tablets.

Digital private banking will increasingly become a great enabler in improving the customer experience. 

By giving the mobile and tablet banking channels their due, and providing apps with comprehensive functions and features for these channels, private banks and wealth managers can poten­tially reduce expenses through lower transaction costs, retain more clients and increase penetra­tion in previously untapped areas.

Given the speed at which mobil­ity is impacting existing industries and creating new ones, the private banking app might very soon become the top channel for banks, rather than just an add-on.”