Now is the time for wealth managers to listen hard to what their clients are asking for, says L.E.K.’s Ashish Khanna. Access to private equity and hedge fund investments are top of the agenda for clients looking beyond conventional asset classes. And with sustainability a key priority and a major societal trend, the asset management industry has a key role to play in the rise of ESG investing.

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    I'm Ashish Khanna. I'm a partner at LEK based in London. I lead our financial services practice in Europe. We see two real changes in the investment classes that our clients need to start thinking about very carefully in the not too distant future. First is access to different investment classes outside of the traditional publicly listed vehicles that have been the hallmark of the wealth management industry, specifically access to private equity and hedge fund classes of investment is an emerging area where traditional wealth managers would be well served to think about creating access to vehicles, the amount of money and ownership that sits in private capital, privately owned companies, far surpasses today, what sits in publicly linked markets.

    And that's a really important trends that end clients are starting to ask for. Second and perhaps very much more topical with related to sustainability, the wealth management industry and the asset management sector that underpins it have a tremendously important role to play in terms of channeling funds towards sustainability linked objectives, specifically through prioritizing or deprioritizing, certain end sectors that they invest monies into and clients are starting to ask for it. So our advice to wealth managers is think about not just the business model propositions, but also think about specific investment class propositions that end clients will be for and which might drive disproportionate returns for them in five to 10 years out.

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