Amy Lo, co-head WM APAC, UBS Global Wealth Management, head and chief of UBS Hong Kong shares her views with Asian Private Banker in ‘The Final Word’, a year in review by the region’s private banking leaders as they share their thoughts and opinions on key issues around industry trends, business performance, investments, regulations, and technology.

Industry Trends | What is the single biggest challenge and the single biggest growth opportunity for your business today?

Digital transformation is the biggest challenge and the biggest growth opportunity faced by the industry in the region and globally.

The digital revolution is up and running and has the potential to further disrupt business models in almost every sector, including wealth management. Disruptors and incumbents are in nothing short of a technological arms race, which involves the continuous development of hardware and software to transform the world around us. Enabling technologies such as 5G, AI, and cloud computing, supported by the exponential growth in data gathering, are the primary drivers of change. 5G, in particular, will trigger significant innovation because it will offer accelerated connectivity, greater capacity, and more flexibility.

The new landscape will generate tremendous opportunities to change how we do business, allowing wealth managers to provide an enhanced client experience. At the same time, the proliferation of tech entrepreneurs will expand the universe of prospective clients and provide momentum to the growth of the business. But the rapid pace of change will also increase client expectations so the industry will need to adapt and remain agile.

UBS’s digital strategy aims to leverage digital platforms for enhanced client experience and better service. Instead of asking clients to adapt to us, we are seeking to anticipate their needs and then innovate to satisfy them.

Technology | If we can agree that effective private banking relies on banks having a deep understanding of client needs and behaviours, how are you leveraging tech and data to deepen this understanding?

There has been an inexorable and growing demand from both clients and advisors for an effective and compliant instant messaging platform. After months of close cooperation with the regulators, UBS became one of the first wealth managers to offer clients an official communication channel on both WeChat and WhatsApp. Feedback to the initiative has been universally positive suggesting that our efforts to combine user-friendly and secured technology with a ‘human touch’ have been successful. The solution archives the conversations, which supports our commitment to operating best-in-class risk management.

Data analytics will be the critical path to enable us to better understand our clients and anticipate their needs. At the same time, our enhanced digital banking platform facilitates online trading and monitoring which provides clients with unprecedented autonomy, security, and choice. We plan to continue to make significant investments in technology in the region in cooperation with internal and external partners to create better client experience.

Meet 2019’s industry leaders in the full round up of of Asian Private Banker‘s The Final Word 2019..