OCBC Brings Wealth Advisory Online

The bank launched its virtual wealth advisory service in April, at the height of Singapore’s partial lockdown, and saw a 45-percent increase in the sale of wealth products in the first 10 days, compared with the 10 days.

OCBC Bank has seen a positive response from its customers to non-face-to-face wealth conversations, as sales of wealth products, including unit trusts to bancassurance products, and from structured investments and bonds to foreign exchange products, grew when it moved the wealth advisory process online as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.

This has allowed customers to review their investment portfolios during a time of market volatility and seize investment opportunities, OCBC said in a press release on Tuesday.

The highly regulated wealth advisory process was previously a complex face-to-face process involving over 50 pages of documents and a comprehensive Financial Needs Analysis. But since April 18, the bank’s financial and wealth advisors have been conducting meetings and sales advisory via video and screen-sharing facilities in place of physical face-to-face interactions, using e-signatures and pdf documents sent via encrypted email instead of paper.

The bank highlighted growing digital adoption for both banking and wealth solutions in the first quarter of the year, including investments made on its RoboInvest platform, as well as online time deposit placements and unit trust purchases.

While many customers are still accustomed to face-to-face interactions with our bankers, even after the Covid-19 outbreak, this virtual process will become a new normal, Sunny Quek, OCBC Bank’s head of consumer financial services, Singapore, said.

OCBC previously said it is rethinking its branch network strategy Covid-19 circuit breaker has diverted traffic from physical branches and prompted a surge in the adoption of digital baking services.