Global wealth management platform provider FNZ is transforming the industry with its full-service, end-to-end wealth platform.
In an interview with Philippe Bongrand, Managing Director Switzerland and Private Banking at FNZ, we discuss the firm's growth strategy and how the company is best placed to support private banks to adapt to the evolving marketplace.
FNZ helps financial institutions worldwide with its single state-of-the-art wealth management platform. What are the challenges facing the private banking sector and how can FNZ support the banks?
An essential part of being a successful private banker is providing personalized and specialized service holistically to clients. Meanwhile, private banks are under significant pressure amid a continuously changing regulatory environment, increased client demands for personalization and the requirement to remain profitable.
Unfortunately, the niche, unconsolidated, legacy technology which is still so common in the industry leads to complex delivery processes, lacks the agility needed to meet regulatory changes rapidly, and ultimately keeps the sector from evolving alongside its clients’ needs.
FNZ’s single state-of-the-art platform is absolutely unique in the industry in providing the tools to deliver personalized offerings at an industrial cost while being able to innovate quickly
Can you elaborate on how you achieve this?
Our success is based on the fact that we help our clients to grow their businesses. Our digital-first platform is designed to deliver a full end-to-end range of capabilities as it integrates all front-to-back-office operations into a single platform that is continuously evolving, always up-to-date and is consumable as-a-service.
At the same time, the platform provides the ability to personalize at scale. It facilitates the customization of investment solutions, advice and market access using the latest technological advances. Moreover, the platform fully integrates with the larger ecosystem of apps and services, making it simple to develop, launch, and optimize new propositions.
Ultimately, our platform frees up time for our customers (the management but also the relationship managers) so that they can focus on what really matters, while also offering improved personalization and cost savings.
Why do you think has FNZ been so successful globally and why did you expand in Switzerland?
FNZ has created a wealth growth platform – the industry's only global, end-to-end wealth management platform. We have fully integrated an easy-to-use advisor and end-client experience with sophisticated investment administration and business operations.
This combination of full-stack application software, cloud technology infrastructure and business process outsourcing provides a unique proposition that helps our clients rapidly transform their businesses. We are truly global with operations in 21 countries serving over 650 global customers such as banks, wealth managers, insurers, and asset managers.
In total FNZ has about $1.5 trillion in assets under administration. As part of our growth strategy, FNZ expanded its footprint in Switzerland, as well as its offering in the private banking sector. As a sign of our commitment, we acquired two companies to accelerate our growth.
New Access — a Swiss platform provider specialized in the private banking and wealth management industry- and Swiss tech innovator Appway, whose award-winning, low-code, no-code workflow automation solutions allow our customers to achieve up to 90 percent faster client onboarding times and a ten percent increase in margins on average per onboarded client.
Once we have integrated these new capabilities we will have an unrivaled full-service, end-to-end wealth management platform that will help our clients deliver significant operational efficiencies and improve the customer experience. Through the acquisitions and the offering, Switzerland has become the key private banking competence center for FNZ with over 220 Private Banking specialists.
We intend to continue our growth and investment in line with our customers' needs.
