Private Banks Can Win Clients Using Online Dating Techniques, Scorpio Says

Wealth managers should apply online dating or betting techniques to capture a share of the estimated $10 trillion that rich individuals have yet to invest, according to Scorpio Partnership.

“Most online competitor industries are far ahead of you in understanding clients,” Sebastian Dovey, managing partner at London-based wealth researcher Scorpio, told a conference of private bankers today in Zurich. “People are prepared to put their romance in the hands of technology so why wouldn’t clients be willing to do the same with their money?”

Dovey said bankers can learn from sophisticated sports- betting tools to better understand their clients’ wealth and risks by profiling behavior patterns online. Global assets under management rose 17 percent to $16.5 trillion last year as markets recovered, while inflows of new money fell 60 percent to a median of $900 million among the 230 financial firms surveyed by Scorpio earlier this year.

“It’s critical to ask what the industry needs to do to attract new assets as the engine room for its revenue performance,” said Dovey. “Most clients would rather talk to family, friends or no-one than a private banker and think of it as about as enjoyable as going to their dentist.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Warren Giles in Zurich at wgiles@bloomberg.net

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