In this rapidly changing world, for any business to thrive, a forward-looking and dynamic strategy is essential. Asset managers are not immune from this reality. Indeed, the pressures on the financial industry are moving at such a pace that a reluctance to strategise and evolve could mean losing ground to more nimble competitors.
In his seminal work, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There How Successful People Become Even More Successful, the US-based coach Marshall Goldsmith examines the notion that over the course of a career, or a business, reinvention is paramount, because what’s asked of you changes. This applies equally to asset managers: business models which may have reaped profits over the past 30 years might not be quite such a winning strategy now.
Many traditional business models were built for comfort, not speed. While profits remained high, why worry about what was around the corner? But the fates of Kodak and Blockbuster are a salutary reminder of what can happen when we fail to respond to the shifting technological trends and customer preferences. As a result, those business behemoths disappeared from consumer consciousness in a bafflingly short amount of time. Clearly their strategy was lacking.
Appetite for apps
At Goldcrest Partners, we believe that there are three main issues for asset managers. In a commercial sense, there’s a permanent change to how much you can charge for your services and what costs you bear which results in shrinking margins. From the customer perspective, a new generation of client is increasingly more intentional, holistic and altruistic about what they want to invest in, with environmental, sustainable and ethical concerns foremost. And there’s the digital revolution, which has transformed how people want to buy and engage, using high-quality technical solutions which give them play-by-play information at their fingertips via sophisticated apps and data platforms.
Put like that, the situation seems daunting, but with guidance this can be an exhilarating time for an executive team to embrace a period of transformation. This is where effective strategic advisory can help facilitate change from within.
End-to-end solution
From initial enquiry to implementation, Goldcrest Partners works with you to help you identify your strategy, and then execute it. For a strategy to succeed – and let’s be transparent, many don’t – it needs to be focused on the right goal, easy to articulate and simple to understand. The inevitable obstacles need to be predicted and the motivation to overcome them mustered.
Through a tailored programme, we work side-by-side with your key decision makers, offering honest and incisive counsel as your team considers the way forward. Thanks to our many years of experience in financial services, we understand your context and the issues your business faces which we combine with coaching and facilitation expertise to enable you to arrive at good outcomes.
Something has to give
There’s a reason we find strategy difficult – it is! But with candour and clarity comes the recognition that something has to give. Our goal is to enable you to design and deliver a strategy which can be distilled and communicated to the organisation in a way that encourages them to unite behind it.
Propelled by a renewed sense of purpose and clear vision, the strategy can then translate into results, an ability to adapt to changing market conditions, and the business can take that crucial step into a bright future.
