How Nuvama Group is upping its game in the wealth management sector

Nuvama Group (formerly Edelweiss Wealth Management) is a fully integrated platform that offers support to entrepreneurs, promoters, high and ultra-high net-worth individuals, affluent individuals, corporate and institutional investors.

The wealth management firm recently came up with a creative campaign, ‘Let’s Do It Right’, to create wealth differently.  The campaign aimed to deliver the message ‘We only do what’s right for you and your money’, calling out ways of working which are contrary to doing it the right way but in an extremely engaging and creative way.

In conversation with Adgully, Sujay Rachh, Chief Marketing Officer, Nuvama Group, shares the core insight behind the ‘Let’s Do It Right’ campaign, Nuvama’s client-first approach, future goals, and more.

What was the rationale behind launching an educational wealth management campaign?

We constantly try to learn about our consumers through primary qualitative research groups and interviews. The other rich source of data comes in from our RMs who are speaking day in day out with their clients. We take pointers from both these sources to map improvement areas and future strategies. The current ‘Let’s Do It Right’ campaign has also emerged from this process. The perception that financial partners advice on a transactional basis and don’t have the client’s best interest was an outcome of our study and interactions with our clients. To drive home transparency in our conduct and foster trust, we took this opportunity to communicate our purpose of keeping our client’s interest over our own.

The transactional nature of relationships ultimately eroded trust in the wealth management profession. Hence, the campaign was initiated with the objective of enlightening audiences about the essential expectations they should have from their wealth managers. The campaign strives to empower customers to make informed choices. Ultimately, the overarching goal was to let our addressable audience know that we are now Nuvama and what we believe in.

How is the campaign in sync with the rebranding?

While we were on path to re-branding, our studies pointed us at one significant insight – a growing perception of a transactional nature in client relationships within the wealth management industry. Clients expressed concerns that their interests were not prioritised, and there was a sense that the focus was solely on the benefit of the wealth management firm. Recognising this sentiment, Nuvama’s management team decided it was the perfect moment to land the rebranded entity on the back of a client-centric brand purpose.

We embarked on a rebranding journey by focusing on the client’s interests above all else. Our commitment to always put the client first and align our strategies with their best interests helped us differentiate ourselves. The ‘Let’s Do It Right’ campaign emphasises the importance of our purpose. Even the execution was designed to build a strong connection with our clients. We have used metaphors such as a chameleon, a tortoise, and a parrot to convey the prevailing industry sentiment and clearly differentiate Nuvama within the industry.

How does the campaign connect with its audience and what was the response received?

The ‘Let’s Do it Right’ campaign effectively connected with its audience through a two-pronged approach. Firstly, within the organization, the campaign aimed to create brand ambassadors among employees. Recognising that organisational changes can create uncertainty, we implemented a comprehensive communication program that successfully instilled excitement, confidence, and pride throughout the workforce.

Secondly, the campaign focused on building mass-level awareness for the Nuvama brand among existing and potential customers. It reassured existing clients that our commitment to prioritising their needs remained steadfast despite the changes. For potential customers, we positioned Nuvama as a refreshing and intelligent wealth management partner, distinct from conventional and uninspiring brands. Our actions infused wit, transparency, and the willingness to say no when it benefited our clients’ interests.

The response to the campaign has been remarkable. On our social media channels, including YouTube and LinkedIn, we have achieved over 2 million views and counting, surpassing industry benchmarks with an impressive average view-through rate (VTR) of 45% compared to the standard 20%. Additionally, our PR activities extended our reach to over 60 crore readers, and combined with our multimedia campaign, we reached approximately 100 crore readers and viewers.

Overall, the campaign successfully generated internal enthusiasm, reassured existing clients, and attracted potential customers with its unique approach and values.

How has Nuvama’s client-first approach enabled it to become the leading wealth management brand in the BFSI industry?

Allow me to share a perspective here – we aim to be the leading wealth management brand in the industry, parameters for the same are dependent on client’s assets and size, scale, etc., common parlance leveraged by industry peers to measure success. However, we have a different view to this, although we are not changing the terms, we are not closely following these metrics. Let me explain why. The metrics mentioned above are a derivative of the client’s success. And client success stems from experience and performance. Hence, it is important to win the trust of the clientele and these business metrics will follow suit. From the outset, Nuvama has prioritised its clients, making them the central focus of its operations.

In one such initiative, we have re-oriented the way our mass affluent clients experience us. Based on our research, the wealth management industry at large was seeing a significant disconnect between client needs and relationship managers’ deliverables. Customer confidence has been eroded because of this transactional nature in the wealth management industry by and large.

To ensure that we don’t run this risk, we have remodeled our advisory approach for the mass affluent clients to deliver a far immersive experience speaking at a portfolio level and not at a product level. We are also continuously training our RMs to advise clients in their best interest and are not overtly tracking monthly numbers. Our Brand Talk of ‘Let’s Do it Right’ is also manifested in our Brand Do and this has helped us get to the industry best NPS score of 82.

By consistently prioritising clients and aligning strategies with their best interests, Nuvama has definitely differentiated itself in the industry.

How Nuvama is enabling customers to build a relationship of trust with their wealth managers to achieve their financial goals?

Nuvama is dedicated to understanding our customers on a deep level. This understanding allows us to establish and nurture a relationship of trust with our clients, enabling us to help them achieve their financial goals. We will continue to invest in rigorous and continuous conversations with our clients, ensuring that we stay connected to our customers’ evolving needs and expectations. As a process we actively seek feedback and insights from our clients, conducting regular studies on a smaller scale. These invaluable insights serve as a guiding force for our decision-making and strategy development. Our bonus structures are more connected to NPS scores for the wealth manager rather than the money being managed. Our sales team is not put under pressure for product sales and we look actively for building and advising on portfolios rather than products thus they perform better.

All these initiatives on a policy level have helped us win the trust of clients and thus, leading to mammoth $27 billion client assets in 13 years since our launch in 2010.

What are Nuvama’s marketing goals for the rest of the year?

Nuvama has set three overarching buckets as its marketing goals for the remainder of the year. Firstly, we aim to establish ourselves as the wealth manager of choice. This involves shifting our focus from product selling to portfolio selling, ensuring a comprehensive and tailored approach to meet our clients’ financial needs.

Second, we strive to become the employer of choice by fostering a culture of Doing-It-Right within our organization. This initiative entails building a work environment that promotes integrity, collaboration, and employee satisfaction, making Nuvama an attractive place to work.

Last, we are committed to being a responsible and socially conscious corporate citizen. As a first step, we will concentrate our efforts on promoting financial inclusion, taking significant strides towards supporting marginalised communities’ access to financial services.

All our initiatives throughout the year will align with these three core areas, each contributing to our overall vision and mission. By pursuing these goals, Nuvama aims to enhance its reputation, strengthen client relationships, attract top talent, and positively impact the society.