BNY Pershing is starting to lean more into the bank and financial services firm’s full investment, lending and alternative asset offerings to stand out in the competitive custodial field, lead executives stressed during its annual INSITE advisor conference.
The push to integrate other financial services more deliberately to Pershing for RIAs and broker/dealers was evident as the four-day National Harbor, Md. conference kicked off. Sessions included leaders from BNY’s investments division, global markets trading, alternative investing and digital assets, to name a few.
“I think that breadth of services is one of those things that truly differentiates us in the marketplace,” Jim Crowley, senior executive vice president and global head of BNY Pershing, said on the sidelines of the conference. “It is a very competitive business that we all operate in, whether you’re a custodian or whether you’re a financial advisor, and how you differentiate yourself is becoming more and more challenging—to grow you have to stand out in a few areas.”
Crowley said Pershing will continue to emphasize its service products, but RIAs will increasingly see a new effort to deliver more capabilities from the broader BNY bank.
“There are no custodians that have got their own $2 trillion investment management business attached to their custody platform, or their bank attached to it, or their bank custodian attached to it, or real-time payment systems attached to it, or a $53 trillion custodian attached it,” he said. “There are so many things that we as BNY can do to lean in and support our clients in a unique way that is exciting, and that is what this event is all about this year—starting this transition.”
Crowley recalled that when INSITE started over 20 years ago, it was a “few dozen people discussing stocks and bonds.” Today, he gave the keynote address in a massive ballroom at an event with over 2,100 advisors registered to attend.
In a sign of the shifting focus from being a pure custodian, this year’s exhibition space showcased numerous asset management firms and demos of the various capabilities of Pershing’s Wove, the multi-custodial wealth platform it launched at the event in 2023.
Next year, Crowley expects even more diversity in trending financial service areas.
“I think that we will naturally curate content and speakers that will be very unique for an audience that is more diverse and significant in terms of their role in the financial services industry broadly,” he said. “I would imagine that, for instance, asset managers, investment managers, will play a bigger role in Insight going forward. I would imagine that topics like banking-as-a-service will play a bigger role going forward, and what’s happening in tokenized assets will play a bigger role.”
During a separate presentation that morning, Ainslie Simmonds, Pershing’s head of wealth services, presented yet another trending area that the firm is considering: a consumer-facing platform that can be overseen and engaged with by an advisor.
“Today’s platforms need to do so much more to compete for the next generation of wealth,” Simmonds said.
Some of that effort is being done through BNY Pershing’s ongoing work to integrate its Next360 web-based custodial platform into Wove so advisors can move between the two. However, it also involves experimenting with a closer connection between the end client and the advisor through technology, Simmonds told the audience.
During her presentation, she gave the example of a young consumer using the Wove wealth platform to make plans and set goals. Meanwhile, an assigned RIA was keeping track. At a critical life moment for the individual, the advisor could reach out via chat to offer services, a setup Simmonds joked would be ideal for next generation investors who “don’t want a phone call.”
Crowley said the example showed one case of how technology can move forward an advisor-assisted method of wealth services.
“There are simple use cases where you can clearly see the opportunity for a plan to be created, or co-created by the client and the advisor,” he said.
The Pershing head pointed to the burgeoning RIA space’s need for more services to assist clients. However, among the more limited pool of about 1,200 clients in the billion-plus asset range that Pershing is focused on, he said adding more services to its relationships will help keep and win business.
“The depth of knowledge and the experience that you bring to any relationship matters,” he said. “That brings us back to where we started the conversation, which is why we have brought many of my executive committee colleagues here to talk about the things that are important to the wealth industry, and how we try to demonstrate that.”
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