The taboo scale

On a scale from religion to sex, how hard is it exactly to talk about wealth?

 

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For the 600 European HNWs we polled, sex came in first as the most difficult topic to speak about. Respondents then voted the grim theme of death and personal relationships as next in line, with wealth falling in the middle of the spectrum above politics, health and religion.

For advisers, this means more attention needs to be paid to personal and psychological perspectives when advising and managing relationships with high-net-worth individuals. Integrating this additional layer of support to the financial aspect can not only improve client-advisor mutual understanding but also help establish the best long term plan.

 

Delve into the rest of our ‘Essential Wealth’ report by clicking below.

 

The vices and virtues of HNWs

Abraham Lincoln once stated that in his experience, “folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”

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When asked what European wealth creators perceive as their worst qualities, laziness, greed and jealousy come up top.

However, they also acknowledge their foremost positive characteristics are their honesty, kindness, generosity, and their willingness to engage positively with the world around them. After a clear rise in HNWIs’ involvement in philanthropic activities post-economic crisis in 2008, providers need to start taking this aspect into consideration more seriously.

Why? Because the wealthy are increasingly willing to be the changing force in society. HNWs are interested in witnessing the ripple effect of their actions in tangible environmental, social and ethical ways. And perhaps, because they are thinking more about their futures, our research shows that millennials feel this responsibility much more strongly than the baby boomer generation.

PwC and UBS’s studies support this suggestion, additionally recommending that wealth advisors keep an open mind about investment decisions when servicing millennials. The advisors of the future will need to be able to further understand younger HNWs’ aspirations and anxieties related to giving, as well as develop an appreciation for the feelings of social responsibility this generation has placed upon itself.

 

Download our most recent thought leadership report ‘Essential Wealth: The Interplay between Self and Society’ to find out more!

 

Why is wealth a taboo subject?

Even at a young age, we are consistently told how inappropriate it is to ask adults how much money they make. And as we grow older, the social rules and norms quickly settle in and it becomes commonplace to shy away from any conversation regarding income, expenditures and wealth.

We became curious – why is it that there is so much taboo around the topic of wealth? What are the roots of these feelings of discomfort?

As a result, we decided to poll 600 HNWIs to find the answer.

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Our findings indicated that very often, the avoidance of this topic stems from wealth creators’ perceptions of a change in attitude from those around them once wealth levels have been revealed.

Ultimately this leads to HNWs feeling vulnerable about people taking advantage of their socially-minded nature.

22% of our respondents stated that this was the most frequent reaction in discussing wealth with others. Interested in learning more about why wealth is a taboo subject?

 

Keep your eyes peeled for the release of our latest thought leadership report!

 

What it means to be wealthy

At what point in the wealth race do European wealth-creators start feeling like they have officially made it?

What wealth level is actually considered ‘wealthy’ for this group of individuals? Our upcoming paper ‘Essential Wealth: The interplay between self and society’ asked 600 European HNWIs from six different countries what it means to be wealthy. The majority (60%) agreed that it means not having to worry about money every day as well as being able to achieve financial security for their family.09.06.2016-OneLife_Essential Wealth-1-EN

 

What has become clear to us is that wealth has the contradictory ability to heighten an individual’s sense of freedom, whilst simultaneously increasing their sense of responsibility.

 

Watch this space for our upcoming report release!

 

“Offer our customers and partners a unique experience”

Last June, 8th, NPG Wealth Management and PEL, its life insurance company, announced the merger of their activities under the name OneLife. Thanks to this restructuring, the corporation wish to reinforce the rapport of trust between them and their customers by offering them always more innovative solutions. As part of this, OneLife just accomplished a major feat in the Luxembourgish field of legacy management, by proceeding to the combined extension of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ClickDimensions, a Digital Marketing solution that is entirely integrated in the software for the customer relationship management of Redmond’s editor.

 

“With OneLife, we would like to offer our customers and partners a unique experience, as well as to intensify our presence and commitment on the European market”, Marc Stevens, the corporation’s CEO, declared upon the announcement of the rebranding. Driven by the desire of “adapting itself to the new generational requirements and mobility” and by the ambition of shaking up preconceived ideas regarding life insurance”, OneLife chose to set up the Dynamics solution for Microsoft and ClickDimensions, an add-in designed by the namesake company, with the help of NEREA, an operator dedicated to the strategic consulting for Customer Relationship Management. NEREA is characteristic for holding a double Gold Partnership for Customer Relationship Management, both with ClickDimensions and Microsoft.

 

A deep transformation

Introduced a little bit more than a year ago, the full restructuring of OneLife’s IT infrastructure – servers, storage, network, security – led to its replacement for a Web-scale solution based on a hyper-convergent appliance Dell XC coupled with an abstraction software layer Nutanix. Since then, teams have worked on setting up new systems for the font management, for the work-flow as well as for the documentary management and storage.

“OneLife is experiencing a deep transformation process of its structure, of its products, and even of its markets. This transformation is based on new opportunities offered by the digital and the choice of making it a true business enabler”, Eric Lippert, IT Department Head of the corporation, testified. “On the technological part, this was based on the merger of our infrastructure and the setting up of new tools for software architecture. These are new bases that allow us today to build innovative digital solutions as much for our customers and our partners’ network as for our users.”

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“When it comes to digital transformation”, Christophe Regnault, Digital Marketing Manager of OneLife, intervenes, “the economy of a strong base is impossible when elaborating digital tools that we wish to give to the organisation, as well as the support and the involvement of the company’s entire workforce. It is on that new infrastructural layer that we have added the e-campaigning solution and the data creation ClickDimensions, adapted to our specific needs by NEREA. Besides, all the company’s players have been invited to get involved, on a voluntary basis, in the process through series of workshops for beginners to digital dynamic and social media.”

 

A 360° approach to customers interactions

ClickDimensions is a solution of marketing automation that totally integrates in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which guarantees the same experience in only one interface. The tools set up by NEREA allows the creation of campaigns of marketing emails integrated in a loom flow, the measure of website activity and the injection of the results in Dynamics CRM, the scoring of leads on the basis of the visitors’ behaviour on a website or of the mail opening, the integration of forms and the collection of information directly in the CRM, the creation of surveys and, especially, the integration in the CRM of LinkedIn profiles of customers and prospects.  “The combination of Microsoft Dynamics and ClickDimensions offers a real 360° approach regarding customers’ information and interactions”, Valérie Daems, Sales Manager for NEREA Luxembourg, summarises. “The choice made by OneLife to roll out this duo testifies of the group’s desire to place the customer in the centre of its concerns.”

“ClickDimensions allows us not only to catch information on our website’s visitors but also to come back to them according to the pages they visited or to their downloads. Therefore we can convey the right message, to the right person, at the right moment and this, in the most personalised way possible”, Christophe Regnault adds.

 

Visionary spirit

One of the most remarkable features of ClickDimensions is undoubtedly the integration of LinkedIn in the CRM of Microsoft. “It all started with a huge awareness campaign at LinkedIn, for social dynamic and for what each partner can gain from it. Six months have passed and now we can claim to have been the first on the Luxembourgish market to integrate, in a CRM, a lead generation system from LinkedIn, for commercial teams”, OneLife’s Digital Marketing Manager underlines.

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The legacy management group and its partner have shown a visionary spirit by setting up, in the first place, what the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, revealed right after the acquisition by the Redmond firm of the biggest professional network: “to create a dynamic professional network by combining information from LinkedIn to the one contained in Office 365 and Dynamics”.

LinkedIn, with 433 billions of users worldwide, has become one of the first apps that we install on a new smart-phone. Social media has experienced around 20% growth in a year, becoming de facto, for many professionals, a tool for recruitment, research for customers, exchange of information on vacant positions, but also to discuss projects through messaging, without speaking about group discussions and interactions caused by a user’s like on a message or when he posts a comment.

 

Quick practices and humane dynamic

The integration and adaptation tasks of Dynamics and ClickDimensions have been led through the Agile methods, usually undertaken for software developments but for which the field of application has now been widened. “The Argile methodology that we apply allows us to proceed practically, by steps, which means to start the project without waiting and by defining reasonable aims for each step on a short term. Once these aims are completed, others are then defined and so on until the complete achievement of the project. This methodology, focused on the customer and his needs, allows a real flexibility in the achievement of the project and enables us to move forward according to the customer’s pace, by respecting at the same time the budgetary imperatives”, Valérie Daems explains.

“We have also helped the spirit of quick practices to come through concerning the humane dynamic”, Christophe Regnault adds. “It has not only allowed us to move forward quickly but also to create inclusive spaces which integrate the teams more widely”.

 

A new legacy management

On the basis of the acquired experience in the Wealth Management industry, NEREA developed a vertical solution intended for wealth managers, experts in life insurance or for private banks.

“Wealth+ is a solution of customizable and expandable front-office interface based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM”, Valérie Daems explains. “Wealth+ has been designed to be integrated to internal systems owned by companies from this sector and, particularly, to respond to the specific demands regarding security and confidentiality to the Luxembourgish market”, she specifies.

Therefore, the NEREA solution allows to gather all the information regarding customers relationships, details on their legacy and their assets under management, their risk profile, the on-boarding processes, the leads management and opportunities as well as expenses and commission at the same place, either if they are internal or designed to partners.

 

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Interviewed by Michaël Renotte

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The digital transformation of OneLife.

OneLife, a Wealth Management’s major actor in Luxembourg started a few months ago its company organizational transformation aiming to strengthen its teams by implementing a Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM).

Find out the company’s key decision criteria to elect the most adequate solution and implementation partner, explained by Eric Lippert, IT Group Department Head at OneLife.

 

 

Inheritance support across generations

Overall, European HNWIs favoured adding more support to the inheritance process structure.

In spite of this, very few investors would change the individual or institution they were working with to support this process. Just a quarter of millennials would change the institution that they work with, with this proportion increasing to just over one in three investors aged between 35 and 49.

But there is no need to rest on our laurels! While HNWIs may be happy to stay with existing advisors, they are calling for much more support for inheritors. In particular, millennials are calling for a much more engaged experience – with 77% of them demanding more guidance as part of the process.

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Interested in learning more?

 

Click through to our SlideShare, below, for more information on the ways in which life assurance can be used as a wealth transfer mechanism.

 

Investing in succession knowledge:

Feeling unadvised? When receiving an inheritance, just 22% of investors felt like they were guided through the process. Clearly, there is a need for advisors to offer more support as part of the wealth transfer process. This means getting involved in the conversations earlier, so that the emotional and mechanical components of succession can be fully explained before inheritance happens.

This is critical, given that just 36% of inheritors felt like the process was designed with their interests in mind, and just a third believed they had the right level of financial education to deal with the inheritance.

Without effective support, HNWIs are being left to navigate the difficult and often emotional process of succession independently.

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Interested in learning more?

 

Click through to our SlideShare, below, for more information on the ways in which life assurance can be used as a wealth transfer mechanism.

 

Keep Calm and Plan Ahead:

While a wealth transfer strategy describes the mechanisms for passing on assets, a succession plan denotes the emotional dynamics of inheritance planning too. In short, wealth transfer is about the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of passing on assets and succession planning adds in the ‘who’ and ‘why’.

In this day and age, where variability in life’s occurrences is unprecedented, all generations of wealthy individuals find it equally necessary to be prepared. Around half of investors in each age bracket have a succession plan.

But worryingly, this means that roughly 50% of Europe’s HNWIs have not prepared the next generation about receiving wealth.

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Interested in learning more?

 

Click through to our SlideShare for more information on the ways in which life assurance can be used as a wealth transfer mechanism.

 

 

Building blocks for the future:

Take note, advisers! It would be easy to assume the older generations of ultra-wealthy are thinking more about wealth transfer but our research has found the opposite.

Millennial HNWs are more likely to have a strategy in place for wealth transfer than their older counterparts, 42% already have a comprehensive plan on paper, while only 27% of over 50s can claim the same.

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This is surprising given the older generation recognise the importance of having a wealth transfer plan in place. Perhaps they simply haven’t got round to it, or… just maybe, they haven’t had the guidance they need to put an effective plan in place. 

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The industry is going to have a shake up with a younger cohort of investors who are engaged with the idea of long-term planning. So hold on to your hats, folks… well-prepared millennials are about to start the wealth transfer conversation.

 

Interested in learning more?

 

Click through to our SlideShare for more information on the ways in which life assurance can be used as a wealth transfer mechanism.