Which recent tech innovations are you the most excited about?
I get most excited about how my business can benefit from technology (whether it’s new or not). It’s my team’s job to understand our business; its processes, strategy and competitor landscape and bring technology to bear to address those challenges.
Smith and Williamson is a very client centric business – there is a great opportunity to leverage even well-established technology like IPT, Workflow and Document management to improve the service we provide to clients. Additionally Cloud based collaboration tools offer new ways to engage with our clients 1-1 and perhaps open up new markets for services.
Like all industries if we can both improve the service to the client through technology and at the same time lower the cost of servicing a client we will be successful.
From a pure technology perspective I’m looking forward to improvements in price and functionality of end user devices – particularly low cost 2in1 windows devices displacing the desktop or traditional clam laptop as the default end user device. I hope the combination of these devices, windows 10, office 365, Wi-Fi and IPT will provide a better mobile platform that’s easier to manage and support and offers a seamless user experience regardless of location and connection type.
Looking ahead I’m also interested in how graphene will impact IT – whether it’s in battery technology or the size and speed of microprocessors, it appears to have the potential to be revolutionary (and it was invented in the UK!!).
How do you see business applications in wealth management adopting As-a-Service operating models?
Firms buy solutions that best meet their needs – how those solutions are delivered is often secondary, however vendors that deliver their solution (only) as a service are I feel better placed to rapidly adapt and evolve their offering as it’s a single code set, single port etc. This should keep their costs down and by passing those savings to customers they will drive adoption and create a virtuous circle. It should also mean they can focus development resource on new features rather than maintaining multiple code sets and branches.
In your opinion, what are the biggest data security risks that financial organisations are currently facing and how can they be overcome?
I think everyone understands the need for perimeter security, good patch management, access controls etc. But I think an area this is sometimes overlooked are “end users” either inadvertently or deliberately exposing data. We need to ensure we classify our data based on risk, educate our employees and have appropriate audit trails and controls based on data classification (all easier said than done). Service like MS Office 365 and OneDrive mean this has to be driven as much by policy and education as by IT.
Why did you choose Broadgate to assist you? What value has working with Broadgate brought to your team?
I’ve known the team for many years and trust them to do a good job for their clients.
Broadgate’s engagement style is collaborative and consultative, unlike other firms where every conversation is viewed as a selling opportunity.
Which technology trends do you predict will be a key theme for 2016?
Every year we think it will be cloud – maybe this year it will happen (though personally I’m not sure it will) Financial service firms are still hesitant to put client data into the public cloud and many firms say the cost of cloud is more than the marginal cost of adding capacity to their own facilitates.
Hosting strategies are difficult to formulate as the options are many and varied with no clear leaders. I think Google will drive into MS market share (a few years ago I can’t recall anyone seriously considering alternatives to MS Office) which should ensure healthy competition and better options for their customers.