Background & Challenge
Our client is one of China’s top three independent wealth management companies, managing hundreds of billions of RMB in assets and serving hundreds of thousands of clients.
After years of rapid growth, however, the high-end wealth management industry had become increasingly crowded.
New players were constantly entering the market, differentiating themselves through positioning, target customer segments, service models, and other dimensions — competing not only for clients’ attention, but also for their share of wallet.
The challenge facing our client was clear:
How could the company regain market attention, improve client acquisition efficiency, optimize the service experience, and attract more new clients?
Process
China Bridge used service design methodology to re-examine the client’s end-to-end customer experience.
This was not a straightforward research challenge.
High-net-worth clients often hold tens of millions — or even hundreds of millions — of RMB in investable assets, placing them among roughly the wealthiest 0.1% of the population.
This is a relatively private and difficult-to-access customer group.
Understanding their perspectives, building empathy, and conducting meaningful interviews therefore required both strong research capability and carefully designed participatory experiences.
We began by conducting cross-functional interviews within the organization, covering six major departments:
- Customer Service Center
- Product Service Center
- Fund Operations Management Center
- Product Marketing
- Digital Wealth Center
- Brand & Marketing Center
We then conducted in-depth interviews with both newly recruited and experienced wealth advisors in order to validate customer segmentation dimensions and further refine the core challenge.
The research subsequently expanded across five cities, where we conducted in-depth interviews and field research with existing and prospective clients.
Through a combination of:
interviews;
observation;
analysis of customer-generated materials;
customer activity mapping;
pain-point and benefit analysis;
identification of core needs;
and Jobs-to-be-Done analysis,
we gradually decoded the behavior of different customer groups at every stage of the journey.
By combining interview findings, observational research, and customer-provided materials, we were able to identify the critical moments where different types of clients dropped out of the journey — and then design targeted interventions around those moments.
Based on the research findings, China Bridge facilitated a series of alignment and co-creation workshops to:
analyze customers, generate ideas, evaluate concepts, prioritize opportunities, and iterate solutions.
Findings & Insights
Even within the high-net-worth segment, clients behave very differently.
Their behavior is shaped by factors such as:
how much control they want to retain over their money;
how much they trust professional advisors;
their individual personality;
and their attitudes toward investment and risk.
This means that wealth management companies should not communicate with every high-net-worth client in the same way.
Different client types require different communication strategies, advisory styles, and relationship managers in order to improve acquisition and conversion.
From the research, China Bridge distilled three representative personas for high-end wealth management clients:
- “Zhou Yu” — The Master Strategist
Confident, highly involved, and accustomed to maintaining control over major financial decisions.
- “Guo Jing” — The Diligent Achiever
Hard-working, earnest, and willing to learn, but looking for trusted professional guidance.
- “Lin Daiyu” — The Effortless Investor
More inclined to delegate investment decisions and looking for a trusted expert who can make wealth management feel effortless.
These personas gave the organization a much clearer and more actionable way to understand the diversity hidden within the broad label of “high-net-worth client.”
Results
China Bridge ultimately developed 34 initial strategic concepts.
These were prioritized according to urgency and implementation difficulty, and divided into short-, medium-, and long-term initiatives.
Different workstreams were then assigned to the client’s:
Brand team;
Operations team;
and Customer Management team,
for further implementation.
For customer operations, we went one step further.
Building on the three core personas, we developed a more granular segmentation framework using more than 30 keywords across dimensions such as:
risk appetite;
personality traits;
decision-making style;
and investment behavior.
These characteristics were then mapped across five major stages of the customer journey:
Need Emergence → Information Search → Comparison & Evaluation → Purchase Decision → Transaction & Contracting
At each stage, we further defined customer characteristics and corresponding journey patterns, identifying their:
pain points, latent frustrations, and delight points.
This enabled the client to move from a broad understanding of “high-net-worth customers” toward a much more precise model of who different clients are, what they care about, and how they should be engaged at each stage of the journey.
Value
客户声音：
The client reflected on the project:
“This project enabled us, at the group level, to hear more directly from our customers, understand them more deeply, and clarify the priorities for our next stage of work.”
Another participant commented:
“I used to think that many of the company’s problems were things only I had noticed. Through this co-creation process, I realized that different departments were actually thinking about many of the same issues. By putting those issues on the table and working through them with professional facilitation and a structured process, cross-functional collaboration became much more effective.”
A third participant shared:
“The company has been developing for more than ten years, and many things have simply continued through organizational inertia. This project forced us to re-examine those issues from the customer’s perspective. It gave us a much more concrete starting point for innovation. For me, both the working method and the perspective itself were extremely impactful.”
The project therefore created value on two levels.
At the customer level, it gave the company a much more nuanced understanding of high-net-worth clients and the acquisition journey.
At the organizational level, it introduced a new way of thinking — one that used the customer perspective as a shared language for cross-functional decision-making and innovation.
Conclusion
In 2018, the client achieved simultaneous growth in both its high-net-worth client base and cumulative asset allocation volume.
Net revenue and net profit also increased.
Despite a volatile economic environment in the first half of 2019, the company continued to deliver strong results.
Both net revenue and net profit maintained their growth trajectory, while the company’s net profit margin also improved.
The project demonstrated that in high-end wealth management, client acquisition is not simply a matter of stronger sales or broader marketing.
The deeper opportunity lies in understanding that high-net-worth clients are not a single homogeneous group.
Only by understanding their motivations, personalities, decision-making styles, and expectations at each stage of the journey can a wealth management company design the right communication, service, and advisory experience — and turn customer insight into sustainable growth.
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