Welcome to our weekly digital spotlight!
This week’s edition of Kurtosys Spotlight features the importance of RegTech, our very first podcast episode, webinars to watch, social media expertise , an ESG case study and the return of TSAM.
Digital Leader Spotlight: Silvia Sechi, Digital Marketing Lead at M&G Investments
Working in both B2C and B2B environments is a great advantage for marketers, and M&G Investments’ Digital Marketing Lead Silvia Sechi has 20 years of experience in digital marketing, now acting as the driving force for M&G’s digital campaigns.
Early in her career, Silvia has worked for a leading packaging equipment company, as well as setting up her e-commerce jewellery website, but the majority of her marketing for asset management space comes from working for one of the UK’s largest banking institutions: Barclays. She has led as both an e-channels manager and a marketing manager, meaning that her digital skills in such fields as marketing automation, organic and paid search, social media management and brand advertising are to the highest standard. Throughout her years here, and now almost 10 years into her tenure at M&G Investments, Silvia is an expert on digital project management, SEO, mobile application, client-servicing tools, as well as popular marketing channels and products including Google Analytics, Instagram, Youtube, WordPress and Sitecore.
Given the experience Silvia has in leading marketing teams with a digital-first strategy, M&G Investments stands as a successful innovator in financial services.
Silvia is part of our Most Influential Digital Leaders in Asset Management gallery – check out our top 30 here!
Featured White Paper: RegTech for Information Governance
A slight backtrack to the end of last year, but importantly looking again to the role of regulation technology in the years to come, is an extensive collaborative report from Devie Mohan’s fintech research company burnmark and AI regtech company CUBE.
A point that gets made over and over again is the importance of data to financial services companies nowadays: data protection laws have placed greater importance on information assets through a customer lifecycle, most particularly PSD2 and GDPR regulations which came into effect last year, most stringently monitoring the use of customer data by financial services companies. That is why this report stresses that information governance is of upmost importance, made more easily achieved through regtech, whether that be data collection, processing data or sharing information.
This report looks at various other challenges for financial companies in the face of regulatory compliance, from 2008 to the present day, and segments the divergence of regulatory requirements and cybersecurity legislation by geographic location in some handy graphs: globally, the Americas, Europe and Asia. It also goes further to explain which ways financial firms can enable cross-border data transfer, pointing out the other data localisation restrictions that are in place.
One of the main features of this informative white paper are interviews with two key digital heads at financial institutions: Lynn Molfetta, Global Head of Records Management at Deutsche Bank and Tom Mavroudis, Chief Data Officer at Scotiabank. They look into how global banks are adapting to maintain data privacy, and the role of data officers in organisations, respectively. Also interviewed are Matthew Bernstein, an Information Management Strategist for data company MC Bernstein Data, and CUBE’s Founder and CRO Ben Richmond.
This 40-page document is well worth a read to keep abreast of technological advances, and the pros of regtech in complying with regulations that blight financial companies. You can access the entire PDF at this link.
Kurtosys in Focus
Podcast: Connecting the Dots – Dan Sondhelm
We’ve recently released our very first edition of the Kurtosys Podcast, where we talk to Dan Sondhelm (CEO of Sondhelm Partners) about how to best leverage new technologies, and how to stay ahead of the content marketing game in the face of regulation and disruptors.
You can find out the most pertinent results of our 2018 Asset Management Digital Marketing Survey, as well as Dan expanding on the points he made in his blog entitled Asset Managers’ Advance in Digital Coming Up Short; pointing at the fact that firms aren’t connecting technologies within their team leading to disjointed marketing, sales and client servicing strategies, as well as the importance of marketing automation and how development and investment in digital strategies is set to rise.
Head over to our SoundCloud page for all of our podcasts featuring digital professionals in asset management, with future editions to come!
Webinar: How to build a world-class Fund Center
Coming up in the very near future is a brand new webinar from Kurtosys, entitled How to build a world-class Fund Center.
From our own research, around 70% of web traffic on an asset management website goes towards product fund pages; they are most certainly one of the most pertinent components of the website to develop. Yet how can they go from being merely functional to world class? Our product manager Grant Swart will answer this in a thirty minute presentation.
The topics up for discussion are as follows:
- How to tailor Fund Centers to different types of investor and intermediaries, while remaining compliant with market regulations
- How to create clear user journeys so that your clients can find data quickly and easily
- The key UX principles that ensure your Fund Center is intuitive and delightful for your investors
It will take place on 28 February 2019 at 3pm GMT (10am EST), and you can register for a place at this page, with places going quickly!
Video in Focus: Hermes Investment Management
As with the market commentaries and investment outlooks being presented on social media, which Hermes is a dab hand at, instead this week saw the firm’s presentation-expert CEO Saker Nusseibeh and his senior team appearing on ITV, reported by Julie Macdonald.
Focusing specifically on ESG investment this time around, Nusseibeh discusses how investing for a better society can be achieved; holistic returns, and the assistance of firms in helping those retire, is what is integral to invest in a better future for the next generations.
Elsewhere, Eoin Murray (Head of Investment) discusses the ‘stewardship of capital’ with companies that the firm invests in; Hermes’ EOS is one of the world’s biggest stewardship teams for pension funds.
You can find out more from the Hermes team about the firm’s strategy towards achieving positive returns for investors and society, and a specific project that Hermes has been investing in in London to regenerate a community development, over on their website
Featured Event: The Summit for Asset Management (London)
One of the largest events in the asset management calendar is due very, very soon. In fact, it’s returning on the 28th February 2019; it’s The Summit for Asset Management, usually abbreviated to TSAM.
With over 60 speakers lined up for the event featuring delegates from leading asset managers including Nordea, BNP Paribas and Fidelity International, there are also talkers from the Financial Conduct Authority as well as independent consultants. It’s a perfect opportunity to network with the London-based asset management and wider buy-side industry.
Topics that will feature heavily in the day include the remaining challenges of regulations such as MiFID II and GDPR, Brexit’s continued uncertainty, and the transformation of business operations, customer experience and technology through AI and machine learning.
Besides the panel discussions and presentations, the after-conference networking drinks will be accompanied by a speech from guest speaker Michael Vaughan, former England cricket captain.
The conference will be held at InterContinental London, the O2. To find out more about the full agenda for the event and to register, please see the TSAM official website.
Social Spotlight: Double Header
Two perfect ways to advertise using social media now, for two different formats we’ve exemplified above: podcasts, and events.
❤️The greatest pensions bromance the @Citywire studio has ever seen returns tomorrow, as we ring in Valentine’s Day with a SPECIAL PODCAST on retirement, featuring @uktisa‘s Tony Stenning and @93_smithereens.❤️
You’d be mad(ly out of love) to miss it! #staytuned pic.twitter.com/YPLmerOYP6
— New Model Adviser (@NewModelAdviser) February 13, 2019
The first example comes courtesy of New Model Adviser, advertising their latest podcast episode about retirement on Twitter using yesterday’s love-festival as a marketing technique. Like Cupid’s arrow, it sticks right in the (hearts and) minds of financial Twitter users, complete with heart emojis, hashtags and editing pictures to lay the love on thick. Certainly one way to use the holidays of the time to accentuate the hype for your content marketing.
Secondly is the announcement of Wealth/Stack: an advisor event held in September of this year, hosted by Inside ETFs and the Ritholtz Wealth Management gang, identified by Josh Brown as the Ritholtz Mafia. Brown is known for his Twitter antics, and used the opportunity to cleverly announce his team’s new event to the world after revealing the news at Inside ETFs on February 13th. Getting the official news post out first, he follows up with some relevant Fyre Festival memes and jokes, typical of his style. Exciting advisory events are one thing, humorous marketing another.
Announcing Wealth/Stack – the must-attend advisor event of 2019https://t.co/XCjz1hi1ei pic.twitter.com/XOYaZgy8Qt
— Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) February 13, 2019
That’s all for this week! Be sure to check back next time for more news and marketing features from the world of asset management marketing highlights here at Kurtosys.
If you’d like to have news, people, a new website or articles featured here, please get in touch via Twitter or email us at [email protected]
