In brief
This article explores how inefficiencies in asset management client service operations – slow onboarding, wasted RFP efforts, and redundant reporting – drain profitability. With rising competition and shrinking margins, firms must streamline processes or risk falling behind. In 4 moves, we show how asset managers can cut waste, optimize their client journey, and stay competitive. Those who don’t could lose clients, revenue, and jobs.
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Sprinting to stand still
In the market for asset management, decades of over-supply of products into the global market has commoditized investment returns and forced most asset managers into ‘price-takers’. As a result, the drive towards internal efficiency isn’t a fad – it’s a vital corporate and career survival skill.
Yet, many firms’ client-facing cost centres – client service operations – unknowingly waste time and resources. Accomplish’s dataset indicates that some RFP processes can be strikingly unproductive, slow onboarding processes can force material levels of foregone revenue, and non-regulatory reports that receive low or even zero client engagement are a stark waste of money.
These inefficiencies add up, leading to unnecessarily high running costs and draining valuable resources that could have been used more productively. Lean, the efficiency methodology, tells us to IDENTIFY and eliminate inconsistency, waste, and ‘overburden’ if we want to remain competitive.
Common symptoms of this in client service operations:
- Inconsistency: “customization-as-standard” with even client-facing staff not understanding the client journey and different teams delivering inconsistent experiences.
- Waste: low engagement with client touchpoints whose original purpose may no longer be relevant, indicating wasted resources on processes that may no longer serve a purpose.
- Overburden: “We’re drowning in internal data” and “spending more time measuring KPIs than doing the work” – phrases like this imply that not all data is a net asset and can be signs of excessive, non-value-adding activities.
Despite growing pressure to improve client experience while lowering costs, many firms don’t know where they lag competitors. Finding the inefficiencies is vital – the benchmark is the most cost-effective way to do this, and it enables firms to stay one step ahead of the competition.
Winners vs. losers: the brutal inevitability of inefficiency
As the asset management market becomes more data-driven and client expectations continue to rise, the divide between winners and losers is growing. Firms that use new tools and datasets to eliminate wasteful processes, streamline client interactions, and optimize resource allocation will gain a competitive advantage: they will provide outperforming service at a lower cost.
By contrast, firms that fail to address their inefficiencies will face risks:
- Declining profitability due to persistent inefficiencies, such as wasteful overproduction of RFPs and reports, or over-processing as a result of manual aspects of onboarding.
- Frustrated clients due to inconsistent service standards from different teams, such as unpredictable responsiveness to client queries.
- Operational bottlenecks that slow decision-making and reduce agility, such as overburdening teams with redundant processes.
Asset management isn’t the only industry tackling inefficiencies in client service. Many professional services firms (such as consulting and law firms) have already adopted automation-driven document processing and client portals to streamline interactions. Similarly, digital banking has drastically reduced onboarding times by implementing real-time verification and AI-driven risk assessment.
The asset managers who fail to avoid these risks may lose clients to more efficient competitors who can afford to take lower prices. Ultimately, this will lead to job losses. As a result, the Lean principle of continuous improvement (Kaizen) becomes essential – not only for operational efficiency or client experience but for career survival.
Asset management client service operations: a data-driven approach
Imagine, instead, if you could:
- Know the working value of your RFP process and how the success of this vital function compares against your peers.
- Measure, on a median basis, how much money your onboarding process makes or loses relative to competitors.
- Identify the reports clients don’t open – eliminating unnecessary reporting and repurposing lost productivity to deliver reports in a competitive timeframe.
Now imagine if you could identify and maximize value from your client’s perspective while also eliminating waste and inefficiency on an ongoing basis.
Lastly, imagine setting informed productivity targets for your client-facing cost centres, safe in the knowledge that you are keeping your costs competitively low – not through knee-jerk cost-cutting but by finding the right place to make improvements.
Client journey optimization in 4 moves
There are two obstacles to achieving this vision:
- Knowledge – not knowing where your client service operations are more expensive than your competitors.
- Capability – not being able to identify and eliminate inefficiencies.
You can overcome them in 4 moves:
Move 1: Identify the inefficient processes
Run your data through the Client Behavior Benchmark to discover where your client service operations are more or less productive than your peers. Then, prioritize them to ensure you focus on the areas of highest potential return. This will be where the gap between your performance and competitors is greatest.
Move 2: Find the root causes
Break down the process and categorize the steps as to whether they 1) add value, 2) do not add value, or 3) cause delay. According to Lean, if something doesn’t add value or causes unnecessary delay, it is waste that you should eliminate.
Case Study: benchmarking that pays for itself
Problem: A global asset manager using Accomplish’s Benchmark discovered its median onboarding took 25 days longer than the industry average. By mapping delays, they identified redundant approval loops and manual KYC/AML verification as key bottlenecks.
Solution: The firm implemented concurrent workflows, integrated automated KYC verification, and eliminated unnecessary approval steps.
Result: onboarding durations dropped to faster than the benchmark average, improving client satisfaction, making everyone’s working lives easier, and unlocking an estimated $1.4m in additional annual revenue.
Move 3: Set targets and eliminate waste
Many inefficiencies in asset management client service operations stem from unnecessary manual processes. The latest automation and AI solutions offer powerful ways to streamline workflows so you can reallocate resources to other priorities.
- Improving your RFP success rate might include tightening your selection process by using machine learning to filter and prioritize RFPs with the highest probability of success. Other automations might standardize templates, improve content freshness, or facilitate data retrieval.
- For onboarding, intelligent workflows can automate KYC and AML verification, reducing dependency on sequential processes and cutting onboarding times significantly.
- Meanwhile, AI-driven reporting tools can generate personalized, engagement-based reporting, ensuring that clients receive only relevant insights while eliminating unused reports.
Move 4: Monitor continuous improvement
Lastly, efficiency is about continuous improvement, not a one-time fix. This raises risks relating to organizational adoption.
Common risk factors include teams working in silos and not sharing efficiency goals, employees resisting automation believing it threatens their roles, and what I once heard called “the organizational undoing machine” that could let inefficiency creep back in.
Therefore, a successful transformation also requires leadership, clear communication, and retraining. Wherever possible, you should also position an efficiency initiative as an enabler of strategic growth, not a cost-cutting exercise.
As a result, to perform Move 4 you will need to monitor your performance regularly, checking in with the Benchmark to:
- Validate the success of your efficiency initiative against the latest industry data.
The end-to-end nature of the Client Behavior Benchmark will also help you confirm you haven’t created any unintended consequences elsewhere. - Ensure inefficiency doesn’t creep back into your operation.
- Check that your peers are not stretching ahead of you
Ready to optimize your client service operations?
Every day of inefficiency costs you, but achieving these 4 moves brings key benefits:
- Unlock previously hidden efficiency savings in your asset management client service operations.
- Avoid making arbitrary and ill-informed cuts based on instinct rather than data.
- Measure the ROI of your improvements, ensuring strategic investments yield tangible returns.
The first step is determining how you compare against other asset managers via Accomplish’s unique dataset and, at Accomplish, we have the knowledge and capabilities to help you.
Contact us if you’d like any help.
