Knowledge Base Articles

Skandia Case Study II: Building Channel-Agnostic Wealth Experiences

Skandia strives to build communication channels in a digital space that would match the physical experiences in engagement levels and even improve the service quality in a way that has not been achievable before.

OutRank User Guide: The Walkthrough of the Digital Investments Use Case

Welcome to our brand-new series describing the elements of digital financial experiences you can build using OutRank API!

Steps to heaven - How to take your customers on a journey to the land of digital trust

Fredrik Daveus, CEO at Kidbrooke®, explores how to build trust in digital wealth management for the Swiss WealthTech Landscape Report 2021 by The Wealth Mosaic.

Skandia Case Study: Pioneering Seamless Digital Wealth

The financial guidance and advice services, which constitute the life insurer’s core business, were among the first to go through the transformation. Joakim Pettersson, the digital strategy and innovation lead at Skandia, believes that digitalisation is “the only way to scale financial advisory services”.

Evida Case Study: How to build an innovative financial advisor in under seven months?

Evida began its path as a family office managing a wide range of assets for wealthy families. Initially, the Swedish financial advisor outsourced the management of equity and fixed income positions to other parties. However, the combination of their interest for factor-based investments and dissatisfaction with wealth management services provided by the largest banks in Sweden, Switzerland and Luxembourg convinced Evida to build their own digital advisory service.

Beyond Modern Portfolio Theory: Expected Utility Optimisation

The modern wealth management industry still relies on the 50-year-old approaches to portfolio management, widely popularized by Markowitz's Modern Portfolio Theory (1952). Despite heavy criticism within the academic circles, the alternative methods remain undeservingly overlooked in practice. In the context of the modern leap for hyper-customization, we look into one of the alternatives to Modern Portfolio Theory in greater detail - the Utility-based approach.

Part II - Portfolio Construction - Sampling & Optimisation

The second part of the “Portfolio Construction”-series explores whether introducing parameter uncertainty to the model would improve the out-of-sample performance of the optimal portfolio. Additionally, the article proposes and tests two adjustments to regular utility optimisation.

Part I: Asset and Liability Management Using LSMC - Introduction to the Framework

In the first part of the ”Asset and Liability Management using LSMC” article series, we outline an ALM framework based on a replicating portfolio approach along with a suitable financial objective. This ALM framework, albeit simplified, is constructed to provide a straightforward replication of the complex interactions between assets and liabilities. Moreover, a brief introduction to the LSMC method used to generate all underlying risk factors is presented.

Blog Articles

Trends Shaping the Wealth Management Industry - First Quarter 2023

The past year has been witnessed to slow growth and the ongoing battle against inflation causing widespread layoffs, lean payrolls and difficulty in filling skilled positions. 2023 has already seen its first casualty. California lender Silicon Valley Bank collapsed after tech investors and startups set off a bank run. This became the second-largest bank failure in US history, after Washington Mutual in 2008. The threat of a global economic slowdown looms and businesses look for ways to thrive through the downturn. Certainly, the interplay of the factors put together will ultimately shape the story of economic growth for 2023. In wealth management, the implementation of generative AI tools, a rise in interest in embedded wealth and the consumer duty requirements are reshuffling wealth managers’ approaches to business.

Top Trends to Watch in WealthTech during 2023

Global consultancy firm Bain & Company released a new study predicting that customer demand for wealth management services will double over the next eight years, growing to more than $500 billion by 2030. Moreover, with total global financial wealth in 2021 reaching $250tn, 12% of UK adults are using at least one investment app as of July 2021, proving that the industry is only to get stronger. But with inflation roaring again, will the explosion in retail investing built around bull markets take a hit? Let’s delve into what trends are shaping the industry.

Supporting Wealth Planning for the Next Generation

Over the next decade, between 30 and 68 trillion dollars will be transferred by families to their children. In the UK alone, estimates are $15.4 million over the next decade, according to a Russell-Cooke study. Succession planning by wealthy families and family offices is a hot topic in those rarified circles. But for many affluent families, wealth planning has not been priority. According to a report by Russell Investments, only 26% of families have a full strategy on wealth transfer, and once the transfer occurs, 90% of the heirs change advisors. In some countries, such as Switzerland, strict laws prohibiting advisors from contacting the heirs of a deceased client can eliminate communication. Sadly, 70% of families lose control of their assets after the transfer.

Forecast: The Core Ingredient of Engaging Financial Experiences

It has been a few years since digital transformation appeared on the priority list of the financial industry executives. While the evolutionary process of tapping into the latest technology is continuous, the pandemic has accelerated it dramatically. Even the most conservative branches, such as wealth management, now contemplates transforming their businesses into more digitalised operations. Some financial advisors embrace innovation wholeheartedly, reaping all the benefits and facing all the risks of early adoption, while others take a more cautious strategy. OutRank® advocates an incremental, forecast-driven approach when building digital journeys for your customers or financial planners, regardless of where your competitors are in their digital transformation efforts. At Kidbrooke®, we provide Forecast, the module of OutRank®, which delivers predictive forecasting functionality applicable to various financial planning use cases and digital journey elements.