Husain Rangwalla Discusses Modernising Offshore Financial Advice With Salesforce EMEA

Cross-border wealth management is a high-stakes business, one that comes with a variety of tax codes, protocols, and regulations. Husain Rangwalla, Group Operations Director of Skybound Wealth Management, an award-winning and established industry leader recently appeared on the ‘Tech Force Middle East’ podcast.

As well as a brief overview of the importance of financial planning in the UAE, Husain discusses how Skybound Wealth are utilising technology to help clients to reach their financial planning goals.

On some of the major trends that we are seeing in the wealth management space, Husain said:

“Wealth management is very traditional with many organizations set up in a very traditional shape and form. But that's changing now. There was a survey from Deloitte which asked customers would you change your wealth management provider if they do not provide you what you want in the form of digital engagement and 74% said they would switch, and would even consider a provider in a different country."

There are a lot of wealth management companies here in the in the UAE, what makes Skybound different?

“Just the other day I was speaking to a financial adviser who was looking for a new home and they told me Skybound Wealth feels like a 21st century company. So, I think one of the key things that differentiates us is we are always looking into the future.”

Discussing how Skybound Wealth harness technology, Husain said:

“We've had a very interesting journey with technology which started three years ago, not because it was a need at the time, we started because we did foresee this disruption coming.

There are two kinds of change you can have you can have; either something which is adaptive which happens over a period of time, or you can have something which is disruptive which needs to happen immediately.

Fortunately, because things are moving very fast today and you need time to digest changes, we got to be adaptive. We've actually worked with our clients, we worked with our partners, we've worked with our advisers and our administrators and created something special.”

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The change at Skybound Wealth has been on two fronts:

"Working with Salesforce is that investment into the future. A combined process and system change has made us a much more resilient organization.

The second change is around our custom built solution - Plume.  The majority of the time a financial adviser spends working is on non-advisory activities. Plume has taken those elements of the role and digitalised them allowing a financial adviser to do what they do best which is actually bring these recommendations together, engage with the client, understand the client and give them what they need and help them achieve their goals."

For many businesses, there is often an emergency that leads them to addressing their technology requirements

"The key reason businesses fail is they've not thought the process through. don't replace technology with technology, change your process and more importantly change the skill sets of the individuals who work in the organization

The advantage of starting the process maybe two years before schedule means we were able to change the mindsets of people and empower them to enjoy the use of Plume."

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What's your advice to organizations who are looking to have a bit more foresight in their use of technology, I asked this question last year and everyone was talking about the metaverse. This year everyone's talking about Ai and no one's talking about the metaverse. In 12 months time no one's going to be talking about AI we're going to be talking about something else so things are changing all the time.

Right so probably in the next 12 months AI is going to be talking about itself at least from the way I see ChatGPT moving. But the basic thing is don't do it for vanity, a lot of people bring in tech to put it on their website. Don't bring in tech for that, don't call yourself a wealth tech organization and don't rebrand yourself that way. Genuinely bring tech in and let your client tell you about, it that they really enjoy this experience and you've changed something. You work with multiple apps on your phone every day and there are a couple of them you really enjoy, they're the ones which continuously develop, they're the ones that keep you engaged and they're the ones that bring you value and that's essentially what I would do as an organization today that whatever you're dealing with tech don't do it for the purposes of putting it on your website, do it for the purposes of making your day-to-day a lot better and you'll enjoy it.

On how Husain sees the wealth management industry moving forward, he said:

"That's a good question! There are two opposing trends in the UAE. Financial adviser numbers are declining as people retire, and less people want to join this industry moving forward. On the other hand, in Dubai the number of high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals are growing very quickly. So, who's really going to manage this money? And this is where the tech comes in. Wealth management is going to become very interesting because each person's role is going to be more geared towards the client there are going to be fewer people doing that role so it's actually maximizing each everyone's potential in the process."

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Award Winning Skybound Wealth

Skybound Wealth were recently awarded the prestigious title of Leading Wealth Tech Adopter of the Middle East 2024 reaffirming our position as both a leader and innovator in the offshore advice space.

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