BNP Paribas Wealth Management (WM) has launched four digital platforms 'bringing unique financial, business and lifestyle content to private clients and prospects'.

The new platforms are part of the firm's brand new 'client experience' co-created with clients and Fintechs and are aimed at offering 'greater added-value and enhance the relationship' between the bank and its clients.

"As a wealth manager, we develop very close relationships with our clients, and this proximity enables us to bring a comprehensive approach to their life that goes beyond just finance," said Thierry Derungs (pictured), chief digital officer at BNP Paribas WM. "We want to offer our clients best-in-class investment solutions, but we also take our relationship one step further, bringing them interesting and impactful information on their interests, whether they're about structured products, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, or even art."

The new platforms comprises 'Youmanist', a dedicated to upscale lifestyle content; 'Wealth' e-mag, which answers clients' investing and finance questions; 'Voice of Wealth' which helps users decode their financial world with experts sharing insights; and 'Expert Voices', a blogging platform on market and asset classes.

This kind of initiative brings together different functions at the BNP Paribas group and helps to strengthen in-house relationships to grow the different business and product lines, according to Derungs.

"We are very lucky to be able to capitalise on the expertise of the different divisions as well as our manufacturing capabilities," said Derungs, adding that this is not about "pushing or recommending our products but about connecting users with the latest analysis from our wealth management team to update private investors on the market".

Voice of Wealth" app is dedicated to highlight and explain BNP Paribas' investment views broadly speaking, according to Derungs.

"The aim is to provide investors with market views and trends so they can make an informed decision about the products they want to use to achieve their investment goals," said Derungs. "The app also provides the monthly strategy review produced by our strategists which can include, for instance, a view on the foreseen effect on the market as a result of the French election, etc. The monthly report is supported with daily news relating to those wider trends and how the market can react and how your investments can be affected."

The Expert voices blogging section from the sites is also relevant for investors in structured products as it provides "a more general financial education to the end investor around the market and the different asset classes".

"Our experts provide regular updates on different aspects of the market and how the different asset classes are performing so that investors can make informed decisions when choosing their investments," said Derungs. "We think this app is very important to increase the financial awareness of the end investor."

BNP Paribas WM believes information and education can help to address some of the problems around the misconception of products, according to Derungs. "Putting these tools in the hands of investors can only be beneficial as people will not depend on the advice of third parties and will be able to understand what their own risk profile is and what products would enable them to implement their market views via structured products, funds, certificates or any other product."

According to Derungs, it is in the bank's DNA to provide investors with investment solutions "but also education and information for them to understand the products that can help them to reach their objectives".

"We take suitability very seriously and we think this kind of initiative can also help overcome investors' knowledge around products," said Derungs.

Since December 2016, BNP Paribas Wealth Management has been building a brand new client experience, with new services and functionalities, co-created with clients. These initiatives are aimed to be fully embedded in the client's life and are empowering clients to manage the banking relationship the way they prefer, according to Derungs.

On the back of this initiative, the French bank has developed '11 new Minimum Viable Products (MVP)' for and with its wealth management clients. This "very strategic programme" called 'client experience' is aimed at accelerating the digitalisation of the group, said Derung.

"We have created three factories (Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore) where we have highly specialised small teams that work on what we call 'one initiative' to develop methodologies to support MVPs which can be used by a small set of clients to get their feedback before we launch them into the wider market," said Derungs. "This is done via secure chat, and secure video conferencing to establish a meaningful feedback loop with relationship managers and other investors before products are manufactured for the mass market."

According to Derungs, although this kind of initiative is not about pushing products into the market "it will help to grow our product sales in a more sustainable way because we will be responding to specific needs of clients as opposed to selling products that might or might not fit with what clients are looking for."

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