Leading out of lockdown: Five key priorities for post-crisis asset and wealth management :PwC

The road opens

As the road out of lockdown opens, asset and wealth managers are turning their strategic focus to how to compete in the much-changed marketplace emerging from the crisis. The markets may be challenging, but there's more scope for innovation, differentiation and winning new business. If you're an asset and wealth manager, how can you put your organisation in the strongest position to succeed?

The immediate challenge will be in meeting heightened client-service, regulatory and reporting demands, especially if social distancing and limits to face-to-face interaction persist well into next year. It also will be important to help employees through what continues to be a stressful and uncertain time. Firms will have to put the temporary measures they’ve taken to get through the immediate crisis onto a more sustainable footing.

Longer-term considerations include how to accelerate digital and workforce transformation while redefining purpose to meet the changing expectations of investors, employees and wider society. Further questions you’ll have to address are how to align cost structures, operational capabilities and ways of working with growth opportunities and changing investor demands.

Coming through the crisis stronger than before

We believe that a response to these strategic challenges should take the form of five key priorities:

Zero in on the customer

Optimise productivity for the return to work

Accelerate digital transformation

Prepare your workforce for the new world

Ensure that your capabilities match your strategic ambitions

In this brief, we’ll outline which actions we believe you should take and which potential benefits you should target. Some of these actions reflect today’s unique circumstances. Others should already be part of your growth strategy. COVID-19 has made implementing all of them more urgent.

Reinvention and differentiation

The COVID-19 crisis is reshaping investor demands. It’s also providing a catalyst for creating a more capable, efficient and client-attuned enterprise. Those already equipped with digital capabilities can build on the skills that have proven valuable at the height of the crisis. Others need to make up ground fast. We believe that our five key priorities offer a valuable starting point for meeting evolving expectations and making the most of unfolding opportunities.