By FINTECH Books Contributor, David Newman Follow: @DelioWealth Clients have changed. Today’s wealth creators are increasingly entrepreneurs, younger, more hands-on in their investments and distrusting of Wall Street. They struggle to engage with traditional wealth management propositions. This client base turns increasingly to private assets (private equity, private debt, real estate and other alternatives) for vast portions of their investments. If this trend continues, at best, our industry becomes a laughing stock when we claim to talk about being holistic yet offering no solutions for, in some estimates, half of our clients assets or, at worst, an existential problem whereby the pool of investable assets is shrinking. To stay relevant to the clients of today and tomorrow we need to bring private assets to the forefront of a wealth management solution. Done correctly, private assets moves beyond relevancy and extends to differentiation. This is an area with less commoditisation which allows reduced fee pressure but also an opportunity to curate an offering which allows organisations to stand out from the crowd to attract and engage clients in the current competitive environment. The challenges of building a private asset proposition are well understood; compliance, engagement and scalability being the most prominent in board rooms we sit in. That said, these need to be overcome to stay part of our clients hearts and that is where technology can play a key role. Multiple platforms are emerging which facilitate the connectivity between HNW clients and private investment opportunities. However, for this to be embedded in the wealth management proposition a solution must be tailored to the needs of the firm, their clients, and their business objectives; appropriate deal flow has to be sourced and curated, relationship managers need to be empowered, not replaced and compliance must be front and centre. Technology can be used to overcome these obstacles.