What is your role at WEALINS?
My role as Head of Business Solutions is to oversee the team who are often the first internal point of contact within WEALINS for new partners and ensure that we continue to deliver excellent service as the business grows. This builds upon my 25+ years, working with international high net worth clients and dealing with wealth managers, banks, insurance brokers, in Luxembourg, Europe as well as Switzerland.
How does the business solution team assist with partners in the daily business?
We are a team of 8 experts that handle a wide and varied range of partner queries. After the Sales team we are the first people new partners interact with. Our continual interaction with partners, starts with the onboarding process as cooperation agreements are put in place.
It is critical that we are efficient when on-boarding as this forms a solid basis for our cooperation going forwards, extending throughout the life of the relationship as partners start to use our digital subscription system and queries arise during day-to-day use, with us walking-through any teething problems together.
Our interaction continues to evolve as due diligence requests are received and ad-hoc questions arise during the lifetime of the policy, to name just a few areas we get involved with.
What are the key interactions between Business Solution and the other WEALINS teams?
We interact with all head office teams within WEALINS to develop and maintain the best service for the partner.
We cooperate with the Sales team on a daily basis. First during onboarding, then with e-Wealins (our digital subscription and policy maintenance platform), then on subsequent queries that we receive as new business is signed, and then again further during the lifecycle of the policy.
We also collaborate very closely with the Client & Partner Services (CPS) team, working together to solve day-to-day issues that arise as new business is submitted by brokers and as asset managers and custodians are appointed for the new clients and their policies. Another key interaction is with the Compliance team. This starts during the new partner onboarding process, however, also extends to guiding partners on new applications, to ensure that the information they provide is both clear and comprehensive.
How do you keep operational excellence in the daily business?
There’s always room for improvement and collectively we are always seeking ways to make enhancements that can have a positive impact on the partner and their clients. We draw on the broad knowledge and experience within the team to address queries and find pragmatic solutions to challenges faced.
Everybody provides input and we track elements for process improvement on a daily basis – one of the key benefits of the system is the weekly release meaning that improvements are continually fed into e-wealins and everyone benefits (both internally and externally).
If a question or query comes up regularly, we seize it is an opportunity for us to enhance the system and therefore the service available to our partners.
Lee Sleight
This knowledge sharing and dynamic approach is extremely valuable and encouraged, meaning that we work across departments, have the benefit of constant improvement and aren’t limited by a static system that may only be updated infrequently.
What is the best way to keep adding value while assisting the partners in using a state of the art platforms like e-wealins?
Whilst we are looking to improve processes and to make them more efficient, we’re also dealing with increasing demands and workloads. This is where the human factor remains essential.
The trick is to achieve the right balance between using efficient technology and at the same time ensuring that partners can have direct contact should they require it.
We cover both angles of the relationship: our platform provides digital efficiency whilst our colleagues remain available to talk to and guide partners step-by-step through any queries they may have.
Regardless of the power of the technical platforms, the human factor remains critical.
Lee Sleight
What are the latest and future trends you can identify in your field of activity?
In our field, trends tend to mean regulation and compliance requirements. As these continue to increase, the challenge is to incorporate these requirements in our day-to-day work without becoming overwhelmed. Technology offers certain efficiency and advantages in this regard.
For example, we are enhancing our onboarding due diligence process to make this fully digital so partners can be actively involved in their own onboarding, track progress and proactively respond to subsequent questions. Consolidating everything centrally via eWealins ensures clarity on the due diligence requirements, documents that must be uploaded together with showing a list of outstanding points – this creates visibility on progress, provides immediate feedback and increases efficiency for all involved by reducing the back-and-forth of follow-up emails etc. Our goal is to keep increasing impactful and positive digitalization, always taking our processes to the next level to assist our partners and support their business ambitions.
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