Donald Reid

So if you look at a wealth firm, the expertise, the bespoke expertise is with a financial planner or the investment manager.

At the end of the scale, once you are post-trade and you're dealing with custody settlements and all the intricacies of dealing with dividend processing, corporate actions, client reporting, that again is an area where technology is becoming increasingly important.

That is why...

the costs of providing platform and outsource services to wealth managers have gradually come down over the last 10, 15 years, and in our view, will continue to reduce.

So again, as part of the end-to-end process, that is going to be absolutely key.

I would add to that.

I agree with everything Dave said, but I would add to that.

What questions are being asked at the boards?

And, you know, the agenda needs to be set at the top.

And I think there are relatively few wealth firms where the exec committees and the boards are seeing the right, robust agenda.

operational KPIs and management information.

And this was actually one of the conclusions in our productivity white paper that we did a year ago.

The boards are very focused on P&L, cash flow, but they're not necessarily looking at operational KPIs.

And if they're not asking the right questions, that's why some firms are in a bit of a mess in terms of having a multitude of systems and different definitions in terms of how they measure things like net new money and so on.

And net new money is a great example.

When firms are consolidating, they have real challenges in terms of how we can standardize the reporting of net new money and gross inflows, gross outflows, and the reasons why at board level.

And it's a massive challenge across the industry.

But ultimately, there needs to be more focus from the top.

I think the key thing, be clear on your client segmentation, your proposition, your pricing, your operating model.

If you can get that right and you can communicate that effectively...