News
COVID 19’s impact on CX in asset management
The shift to remote everything
In the spring of 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments implemented emergency stay-at-home orders, or ‘lockdowns’.
Asset managers executed the logistical and welfare tasks of moving staff and equipment to their places of residence.
By early April, 3.9bn people worldwide were under some form of lockdown – more than half the world’s population. Modern society shifted to a state of remote everything, some effects of which will be temporary, and others will endure.
Through this research project, we highlighted COVID 19’s impact on CX in the asset management industry and firms’ future direction of travel.
A client-led impact assessment
To understand COVID 19’s impact on CX we looked at things from the client’s perspective. Specifically, we looked-into whether their behaviours changed, whether there were things they wanted more of or less of, and whether they wanted any new services.
To enable this research, the asset management CX community humbled us with an 84% response rate from across all individuals in the European Asset Management CX Forum. Respondents were heads of distribution, strategy, client services, and CX. Collectively, their firms were responsible for €2.6tn of institutional AUM.
The timing was critical, and we resisted the temptation to ‘rush in’ during the height of the crisis. Instead, we agreed with everyone that we would wait until after the quarter-end. As a result, we captured not just the immediate response, but also the end of the first remote quarter, stabilisation activities once firms had ‘taken stock’ of the situation, and an early view of the longer-term direction of travel.
COVID 19’s impact on CX
Accordingly, we are pleased to publish these findings on how clients’ needs changed, how asset managers responded, what this means for CX, the future direction of travel, and the steps firms expect to take as they develop their CX strategies.
We hope you find them a useful indicator of what the future may hold and, like us, use the findings about COVID 19’s impact on CX as part of your continual alignment with your clients’ changing needs.