Fears that pressure to automate wealth management services via technology will kill the "bespoke" features clients want are unfounded, a report says.

A force restraining wealth managers back from embracing automation  more fully is that they worry this will force them to use model portfolios more, which could look like a step back from the bespoke approach clients think they receive, a report says. But this fear is unfounded, it argues.

Addressing one of the dilemmas faced by an industry in the digital age, Dion Global Solutions says in a white paper that technological advances should make it easier to craft portfolios with clients without losing some of that personal touch.

The paper, Managing Wealth With Maximum Efficiency: Next-Generation Automation In The New Era Of Transparency, examines how, at a time of relentless increases in regulatory costs and associated expenses, firms can tap technology to deliver client service without sacrificing the individual “touch”.

“The traditional business model which places great premium on personal relationships, bespoke advice and customer service has, understandably, been seen as fundamentally contradictory to a more automated delivery mechanism,” the report said.

“This is why,” the report continues, “execution-only brokers have embraced automation with far greater enthusiasm than wealth managers. And although the industry is by no means wedded to manual processing throughout the workflow, and there have been notable shifts towards straight through processing (STP) in recent years, this underlying psychological barrier remains.”

The report goes on to argue that automation can actually aid bespoke approaches in wealth management. It also argues that the wider use of mobile delivery channels means clients can interact more, rather than less, with their managers.

Separately, the report quotes data from IT giant Cisco showing that mobile users will grow from 4.3 billion in 2012 to 5.2 billion in 2017. Over that time, the firm predicts that the number of connected devices will rise from 7 billion to more than 10 billion. It also referred to a report, in 2010, by Gartner, the IT research firm, saying that the number of smart devices will rise from 60 billion to over 200 billion by 2020.

Other themes in the Dion report include portfolio access and the impact of automation and the “always-on” nature of modern tech; reporting requirements; firm-wide information sharing and smart straight-through processing.