46 connected strategy for asian wealth management ^Top business-to-business providers such as Quantifeed, Bambu, and Prive who provide wealth managers platforms to implement such solutions. The level of personaliza- tion offered by roboadvisors remains limited. • Connected retailer strategies are also being implemented for the distribution of structured investment products, a popular product category with Asian affluent and HNW investors. Technology companies, such as Leonteq or FinIQ, provide wealth managers with the technology to create curated offerings of structured investments from leading investment banks. • Among Asian incumbents, DBS Bank remains a pioneer in its digital transformation vision and execution and continues to evolve from a traditional wealth retailer to becoming a full service, connected wealth retailer. It built on its prior strengths of a large customer base (DBS banks 3.5 million customers in Singapore) and its brand (DBS is Singapore’s most valuable brand and the ASEAN region’s most valuable bank brand46) to build a robust range of connected capabilities (DBS was awarded the ‘Best Digital Bank in the World’ in 202047) in wealth management. Potential evolution of archetype The main innovation in the connected retailer architecture thus far has been the roboad- visor model, which has shown limited take-up in its current form. We believe there are three reasons why this is so: • There is a mismatch between the core offering — an efficient, low-cost ETF portfolio — and its target consumer: Consumers who are self-directed and have sufficient investing knowledge can access similar solutions at a far lower price from brokers or asset managers directly. While for those who lack the requisite knowledge and confidence to invest themselves, a human advisor is needed but this becomes less viable at the 25-30 bps price point of a direct-to-consumer roboadvisor, particularly in context of the cost of client acquisition and marketing. Contrast this with self-directed trad- ing platforms such as eToro or Robinhood that are designed for DIY, active traders and the offering facilitates and encourages greater investing activity — i.e., there is greater congruence between the offering and the target consumer for the DIY trading platforms unlike that for a roboadvisor. • There are few entry barriers making replication by incumbents and fintechs easy. The standard roboadvisor offering is a passive approach to investing, implying a lesser 46 DBS was named Singapore’s Most Valuable Brand for the eighth year in a row in 2020 with a brand value of c.$8.5 billion 47 Global Finance, 2020