aperture, the Swiss strategy consultancy, today launches its “Market Map for Wealth Management Software” as part of an in-depth report, “Digital Age Wealth Management” looking at the customer, technology and business model trends transforming the industry.
The Market Map has been introduced to address the shortcomings of conventional vendor evaluations. Until now, most vendor evaluations have focused on product breadth and vendor maturity. However, not only do these criteria favor large vendors over small vendors, but they are increasingly irrelevant in an age where functionality can be sourced easily via API integrations to third-party applications and where vendor maturity often correlates with antiquated technology.
The Market Map is a new software evaluation methodology designed to assess the key criteria for systems in the digital age. It takes as its focus the capacity for innovation. More specifically, it looks at two axes: the ability of software solutions to help firms capitalize on new technologies to improve customer propositions, and the ability of solutions to help firms to adapt - or launch new - business models for the digital age. As regards the latter, the broader report sets out in detail the ways in which business models are changing from being supply-driven and vertically integrated to being demand-led and networked.
Given the radically different criteria used by The Market Map, it throws up very different results to conventional analyses. To underline this point, the report contrasts the results of its evaluation against conventional criteria to demonstrate that not a single vendor has the same position and many “niche players” become leaders (or “transformers” in its terminology).
According to The Market Map, the best solutions for digital wealth management are Nucoro (based in London), Hydrogen (New York), Elinvar (Berlin), additiv (Switzerland), and Temenos (Switzerland).
Ben Robinson, co-founder of aperture, commented, “Digitization is turning competitive advantage on its head. Mass production for the mass market is no longer a winning strategy. Instead, firms must leverage the power of computing and networks to deliver better customer outcomes at greater scale. However, the way we evaluate the solutions that are critical to doing this has been unchanged for decades. With The Market Map, we have sought to upgrade vendor assessment criteria to help those charged with selecting and investing in software solutions to make better informed decisions about what characteristics matter in the digital age.”
This Thursday, 18 February, two of the leaders from the report, Elinvar and additiv, will appear alongside Impaakt, identified as a “company to watch” in the report, and Tinkoff, the banking super app, on a 4 x 4 Virtual Salon discussing “New Business Models in Wealth Management”.