A Silver Lining of COVID-19

by Jurgen Vandenbroucke

A silver lining of COVID-19 is that COVID-19 gave society in general a digital boost. Yet, investments continue to be the least digitised financial product. Conversion rates of a digitised investment process fall way below the conversion rates at a branch. How can we improve digital conversion then? How can we lever the expanded reach of digitalisation to approach for example the many banking clients that do not yet hold any investment? Let us look at two aspects of this challenge: end-to-end digitalisation and addressing first-time investors.
The digitisation of investments in many cases restricts to automating the processes we know. But it takes more to engage investors digitally. The challenge is to preserve the human touch and take care of the emotional component of investing. Conversion rates substantially improve when building your process on behavioural finance findings.

Addressing wealthy savers, hence clients that do not hold any investment, requires a particular mindset and vocabulary. Those clients are not interested in hearing a story on diversification, preservation of purchasing power or bonds versus equity. Presenting the same situation from a different perspective, which is crucially their perspective, makes a big difference on the decision-making.

Use case. The API toolkit of everyoneINVESTED (*) includes a solution that turns your mobile banking app into a digital conversion engine. The API literally converts savers into first-time investors. Our solution seamlessly integrates into your process. The API takes as input pseudomised client specific financial data. The API gives as output an investor profile and the amount for the user’s first investment, ready for execution.

(*) everyoneINVESTED is the wealth tech spin-off of KBC, assisting you in bridging the digital distance between your clients and your investment solutions.

Jurgen Vandenbroucke, PhD, Expert General Manager, Head of Innovation at KBC Asset Management has over 20 years of experience at several senior positions within KBC Group. He currently serves as expert general manger and head of innovation at KBC Asset Management.

Jurgen values highly the sound academic underpining of innovations in the savings and investments area, witness his affiliations with University of Antwerp and the Ehsal Management School as lecturer and with the Edhec-Risk Institute as research associate.  He regularly contributes to the peer-reviewed academic literature on applied behavioral finance.

Jurgen is married and has three daughters.