After the exceptional years of 2020 and 2021, let's look ahead towards the year 2022 to see what could be the new trends, possibilities and opportunities for the Asset and Wealth Management industry.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 was the year of digital transformation for the world; it accelerated some trends which made our lives more flexible and adaptable to the global environment. Most notable of which were the new remote working lifestyle and corporate digitalization trends. It is predicted that these trends will remain in effect for a while, and thus we should look forward into the development of the Fintech industry based on these trends and additional factors listed below to ensure competitiveness.
- Implementation of digitization in all corporate process to support a remote working lifestyle.
- Digitization of client-related services to simplify client transactions remotely.
- Increased implementation of cloud-based services as a result of the digitalization movement to improve business performance and reduce costs.
- Increased adoption of a more customer-centric approach in their digital strategies as the competitiveness in reaching to clients virtually increases.
- Cryptocurrencies and NFTs are set to become part of the modern investment infrastructure.
- Advancements in AR/VR are expected to add more valve to a user’s digital experience.
- AI-based technologies such as machine learning will be the next great step forward in wealth management analytics.
COVID-19's residual presence will continue to have a substantial impact on the wealth management industry, wealth managers' operations, but having overcome two years of the pandemic the fintech industry and global economies are expected to become more resilient to the existing difficulties with acquired expertise.
The year 2022 will witness more development and use of advanced financial analytical tools as reported in Gartner’s 2021 Financial Services Technology Survey. As 88% of the wealth management executives believe that such systems are highly effective and needed in the fast-paced developing world that was further enhanced by the global digitization movement.
The coming year is nevertheless expected to still pose some risks for the wealth management industry related to market uncertainty and increased global inflation, but those do not outweigh the foreseen opportunities. Wealth managers simply need to adopt the new global trends, accept the unescapable challenges, and be ready to overcome the difficulties through innovation, improved client relations, and a better use of technology overall.