Maintain compliance, acquire new business, stay secure
Financial services firms have a lot to take into account when implementing CRM. The standard benefits of CRM (client acquisition, client management and client retention) clearly apply, but there are other factors that need to be addressed as well; from legislative requirements (Know Your Customer, Anti-Money Laundering etc.), through compliance (enforcing Chinese Walls), to being able to access your data from a mobile/tablet/laptop from any location and at any time. Any Client Relationship Management system must gel with the unique ways in which the industry and your firm operates.
Traditional CRM was very much a “one size fits all” affair, where a list of features were expected to be bent into the right shape to meet the users’ needs. But since the market turmoil began, financial service firms have had to adopt new ways of doing things and require faster, cheaper, and just plain better CRM systems. The more agile approach that is offered by modern financial services CRM systems does exactly this.
This faster, cheaper, better approach to CRM resonates particularly for smaller firms such as hedge funds and private equity firms, where costs need to be kept low, without sacrificing functionality. A smaller team may come to depend even more on the performance of its CRM system.
Before we go much further into the specifics of financial services CRM, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what CRM means. The team at Collier Pickard produce a number of free, educational resources designed to act as a solid introduction to the core concepts surrounding CRM. We recommend that you start by downloading your free copy of The CRM eBook (a guide to what works and what doesn’t in CRM). The eBook should give you a good grounding in the pros and cons of implementing CRM. Then, let’s look at some specifics for financial services firms.