Promoted by Cashwerkz. As we approach the final stages of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industries, institutions should be reviewing their processes and procedures to prioritise their best interest duty. Seeking answers and solutions to the findings of the Royal Commission should become a broad goal in the market. The implications of doing nothing may bring both reputational risk to institutions managing money and the risk of seeing their existing clients potentially attracted to firms who are acting to meet this duty. Now is the time to start formulating and implementing strategies for 2019 and beyond. 

Anyone tasked with building and protecting wealth for their investors need the tools to ensure they are acting in their clients’ best interest. Greater scrutiny will be placed on transparency of where and how money is invested. Custodians, fund managers, superannuation trustees and others taking responsibility for managing and holding client’s assets will be under the spotlight to demonstrate how investment decisions are being made and implemented. 

Technology-driven innovation in finance (fintech) has emerged to help investors and money managers make informed decisions when choosing investments. Fintech is a progressive resource intensely focused on accelerating innovation and transformation through the application of technology.

By exploring collaborations between companies, financial institutions and fintechs, industry players are starting to address key findings of the Royal Commission as well as benefit their bottom line and modernise their technology and work practices. Working with fintechs has given many more established institutions a competitive advantage in traditional market segments.

As a result of these sorts of partnerships and the introduction of technology solutions, clients are seeing improvements in productivity, terms of services, transparency and returns. In these scenarios, everybody wins; corporations are addressing wider community concerns, clients are getting better services and the overall perception of the industry is beginning the long road to recovery – all against a backdrop of workflow efficiencies.

Many facets of the financial sector have already benefited from the introduction of fintech-driven innovation, however there are some areas still lagging behind. There is a strong connection between problems highlighted by the Royal Commission and the lack of innovative technology solutions that, in many cases, place visibility and control back in the hands of the investors.

Cashwerkz has developed a platform concentrating on one of these forgotten segments. The Cashwerkz platform focuses on investment choice, user experience (UX) and security illustrating how investment managers and their custodians can use a non-bank platform to service term deposit investments and compare options when investing. 

Teaming up with a fintech like Cashwerkz, allows investors to demonstrate easily that their clients’ cash holdings are being invested in their best interest, and in a transparent and efficient way. 

Having access to information about what investments are out there provides investors with a holistic view of the market, enabling them to make more informed decisions with their cash. 

Now is the time for financial institutions to ask themselves: Are we really doing enough in the name of innovation and transparency? This is only the beginning of how fintech will come to revolutionise finance in Australia.

This is a very exciting time in the financial services industry and an opportunity for companies to transform their business models by leveraging technology.

 

To find out more about Cashwerkz, click here.