4 connected strategy for asian wealth management ^Top advice and service desired by a client, the higher the cost to the firm. The model is reliant on people for most aspects of the customer journey and firms have little institutional, data-driven insight into their clients. Driving profitable growth now requires newer, scal- able business models both for incumbents to defend their market share and for newer players to disrupt the norm. Connected Strategies have the potential to help wealth managers build competitive advantage and gain market share. A firm’s connected strategy is its strategic, operational and technological choices that fundamentally change how it connects with customers and what connections it creates with and among ecosystem players i.e., the two key elements are: • Connected customer experiences: How frequently and with what level of digitization does a firm connect with its customers in the customer journey to deliver what target experience? • Connection architectures: What connections does a firm choose to create with or between various ecosystem participants and why? Connected strategies have allowed firms in a range of industries to break the traditional trade-off between superior customer experiences and lower costs. In the past, firms could provide an outstanding customer experience but they could only do so at a higher fulfillment cost. However, in multiple industries from ride hailing, media, to meal prepa- ration, firms with connected strategies now deliver superior experiences at lower fulfillment costs. This makes connected strategies one potential way to disrupt the current wealth management paradigm, especially given the macro forces at work such as the rise of the ‘digital native’ consumer, a multi-trillion generational wealth transfer, and the readiness of the requisite technologies. Our objectives in this whitepaper are to describe connected strategies in the context of wealth management, analyze their applications in the industry and synthesize the implications for wealth managers. In terms of geographic scope, the paper focuses on Asia2 or, more specifically, Asia ex-Ja- pan. This said, we see Connected Strategies as the path forward for wealth managers beyond Asia as well. Our knowledge of and experiences in other geographies as well as data on common threads of customer needs and pain points across markets lead us to believe that the perspective and analyses presented here and many of the applications 2 For the sake of brevity, all references to Asia in this paper refer to Asia ex-Japan