Awards for Excellence 2018
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Morgan Stanley was an early adopter in using technology to better serve its wealth management clients – and to improve revenues. The bank’s wealth management unit notched a record $1.16 billion in profits during the first three months of this year, up 1% from the fourth quarter and up 19% from a year earlier. Client assets grew 8% from a year earlier to $2.4 trillion, earning it the award for North America’s best bank for wealth management.
What the bank has done better than its peers is to bring the benefits of technology to its advisers. That has improved revenues per adviser – annualized, it was 8% higher than a year earlier in the first quarter.
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Andy Saperstein |
“We’ve always thought the debate about whether technology would replace the human adviser was misguided. It is the technology-enabled financial adviser, the combination of the two, which will lead the industry,” says Andy Saperstein, co-head of Morgan Stanley wealth management.
That technology toolkit for its advisers is hard to compete against. While its peers may use BlackRock’s Aladdin platform, at Morgan Stanley it is fully integrated.
It also has Next Best Action, an artificial intelligence system that alerts advisers to events, suggests trades and takes over tasks, and Access Investing, a robo-adviser for younger clients.
This year the company introduced a new way of viewing client assets that may well inspire change among its competitors in the industry, with the Goals Planning System. This allows advisers to see clients’ assets at other institutions in an aggregated fashion and tell them whether or not they are on track with their own financial and personal goals, rather than just tell them how their investments are performing.
Morgan Stanley hopes this will attract assets into its own asset management business. It also positions the bank perfectly to be able to respond to the increasing desire for investments with impact, rather than just a financial return.
