Increasingly firms are looking for ways to work smarter, work differently, and enable their staff. Many technologies support this initiative, but desktop virtualization in particular offers this convenience to both insurers and wealth managers.
The impacts of the financial crisis are still being felt through the industry, and firms are working to respond. Digital technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for efficiencies, both within organizations and among partners.
In 2013 Celent reached out to insurers and wealth managers to share their stories around the opportunities and the impact of this key technology.
“A decade ago, the average employee was a person that came into an office to work, sat at their desk, and worked with their assigned equipment,” says Craig Beattie, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Insurance group and coauthor of the report, “Now ‘hot desk’ schemes, where employees and partners are not assigned desks and can make the choice to work from home or a local office, are common.”
“Wealth management firms require access to customer information and third party data to function properly,” says Bill Fearnley Jr., Senior Analyst in Securities & Investments and coauthor of the report, “Virtual desktop infrastructure, or VDI, enables firms to give employees access to PCs, applications and data when and where they need them in a compliant and controlled manner.”
“Virtualization of servers and desktops has been around for years; why are we revisiting VDI now?” asks Isabella Fonseca, Research Director and coauthor of the report, “In short, we are in an ‘always on’ world, and this has dramatically changed the way we work and how customers (and prospects) behave.”
A new report, Desktop Virtualisation for Wealth Management and Insurance, addresses how desktop virtualization can bring benefits to the new financial services workplace, where there are many users and touch points. The study analyzes the role of IT in VDI, and how VDI plays a role in the wealth management and insurance industry. The report concludes with Celent’s view on next steps in the VDI environment.
