Bringing Asset Managers Closer to Global Audiences

Every industry has its own content challenges. Take the asset management industry. Asset managers need to create accurate, and culturally-sensitive content for potential international investors and clients across multiple languages. And, more importantly, it all needs to comply with regulations requirements in every market they target. Although the industry, by its own admission, has long had a reputation for being slow to adapt to change, there has never been greater pressure not just to adapt, but to force change and innovation. Particularly with the industry’s next generation of customers on the horizon.

Preparing for a digital future
Set to inherit an estimated $24 trillion from their ‘baby boomer’ relatives over the coming decades, the under-40 ‘millennials’ generation of highly sophisticated consumers and digital experts have high expectations. They want offerings tailored to them, alongside a first-class digital service, innovative products, and excellent customer care. They also highly value authenticity and transparency from their service providers, plus instant access to product information and updates, according to millennial marketing expert, Jeff Fromm.

The reality for companies is that the valuable information and documents needed to meet these future expectations are locked away in departments and systems scattered across the business. Any disconnect internally leads to fragmented customer experiences. So how can companies overcome these challenges, and use their content better to engage with global audiences?

There are five areas that companies should explore if they want to prepare for a digital future, and become autonomous in the way content is created, managed and delivered to international clients.

1. Combine humans and machines
Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and machine translation (MT) mean asset managers will be able to automatically create multi-lingual content from information their business already holds. In a few clicks a document or email can be sent for translation by either a machine, or human translator. AI and ML will also help organize content in a way that helps fund managers gain insight instantly into any trends or opportunities.

2. Connect your workflows
All fund-related content must be securely created, stored and managed throughout its lifecycle. By connecting workflows, managers can update and reuse content within the same platform for other parts of the business. For instance, one small change to a document or contract can be instantly replicated across all versions and languages globally. This saves enormous manual effort checking all versions are correctly amended.

3. Focus on high volume publishing
One document alone can involve up to 150 individuals in the translation supply chain. Multiply this by thousands of documents and it becomes an incredibly complex task to orchestrate. It’s just not possible to achieve this manually when dealing with multiple languages. Explore a combination of machine translation to process high volumes of multilingual structured content, and human translators for the more nuanced, culturally sensitive pieces of content.

4. Stay compliant
Since the financial crisis in 2008, regulation has been stepped up across the world to ensure that financial systems are more resilient to stress and complex financial products are more transparent–particularly to retail consumers. Many new regulations have been introduced in the financial services industry, and marketing departments have had to work tirelessly to keep material compliant and relevant in the face of rapid and ever-evolving changes. Content technology can help all teams across the content supply chain by simplifying the way they create compliant content.

5. Connect your business
The right content should be driving every company’s customer journey and connecting each and every customer touchpoint. But managing huge volumes of content on a global scale, across multiple channels, and in many different languages requires a new and integrated approach. Technology and robust processes need to work together hand in hand. A comprehensive, strategic approach involves unifying platforms and processes via API, so that content can be created, translated, and delivered seamlessly to global audiences.

The challenges facing the asset management industry are greater than ever. Most companies have, or aim to have, a global presence and these considerations should help prepare businesses for an exciting digital future. Working with 9 of the top 10 global asset management groups has helped us to fully understand the challenges they face in creating global content. A clear trend in our conversations, is the consensus that culturally sensitive content is an opportunity for global customer engagement and therefore for growth. Yet, the challenge is to balance global brand requirements, with regionally adapted content. We believe it is essential to manage this dynamic well, in order to access the global growth opportunities available.

At last week’s Summit for Asset Management, we explored how companies can tackle their content challenges, and showcased the latest enhancements to SDL Global Fund Content for Asset Managers. Based on 25 years’ experience, the technology helps managers produce any type of fund related content in any language, laying the foundations for current and future digital aspirations. Click here if you’d like to learn more about SDL Global Fund Content for Asset Managers.