Goldman Sachs is Going Global with Digital Payments and Investments
To compete in the digital world, financial brands need to think globally and try and discover ways to make their services available to people wherever they are and whatever they are doing.
It's not enough these days to offer a service, no matter how innovative that service may be, and wait for customers to come to you. The brands which are succeeding in the modern arena are the ones which are meeting customers where they are and putting those services in the palm of their hand.
As one of the world's most well-known financial brands, New York City based multinational investment bank and financial services provider, Goldman Sachs understands the needs of the contemporary customer all too well and has recently been making serious developments in its digital offering to meet those desires head on.
Goldman Sachs
The changing nature of payments have been hitting headlines for a while now and this evolution has certainly been accelerated by the global COVID-19 crisis.
For too long payments have been manual bureaucracy laden affairs with red tape and bottlenecks galore slowing down processes and putting unnecessary barriers between businesses wanting to make a simple transaction. However, Goldman Sachs is now looking to address these issues via an innovative new partnership with payments super brand Visa.
Goldman Sachs is looking to leverage both Visa B2B Connect and Visa Direct Payouts to simplify processes, drive efficiencies, and reduce overall operating costs.
Visa B2B Connect allows for predictable, secure, and cost-effective cross-border payments via a proprietary and innovative multilateral payment network. Visa B2B Connect presently operates in over 60 countries meaning Goldman Sachs can now offer smoother and more competitive payments in more parts of the world than ever.
Visa Direct Payouts is another proprietary network which allows members to transfer funds safely and quickly between cards and accounts all over the world - including both peer to peer payments and business payouts.
"We believe paying someone halfway around the world should be just as easy as paying someone around the corner," said Global Head of Transaction Banking Product and Sales at Goldman Sachs, Eduardo Vergara. "We are proud to partner with Visa to introduce fast and easy ways our clients can make payments across the globe.
Marcus Invest
Not content with making global payments more efficient than ever, Goldman Sachs is also targeting its investment customers with a new digital platform designed to streamline the experience of portfolio management.
The Marcus platform was launched back in 2016 to provide Goldman Sachs' retail customers with savings account and personal loan offers while simultaneously giving it a way to diversify its revenue and funding sources. Now Goldman Sachs is expanding Marcus into a digital wealth-management platform which can allocate and rebalance customer wealth across portfolios of stocks and bonds.
Marcus Invest offers both individual and joint investment accounts, as well as three types of individual retirement accounts. Customers can open an account with a minimum of $1,000 and Marcus Invest charges an annual advisory fee of 0.35%. The platform will use AI to allocate wealth based on models constructed by Goldman Sachs' own investment strategy group. A customer's risk tolerance is evaluated, an investment timeline is developed, and a conservative, moderate, or growth portfolio is recommended.
"We are pivoting more into an investment and wealth provider rather than a full-service digital bank," said Head of Marcus UK for Goldman Sachs, Des McDaid. "We have been delighted with how fast and how quickly we have grown. The challenge now is how do we repeat the formula we used for savings to offer our customers an accessible platform for investing products."
Moreover, Goldman Sachs has announced its plans to make Marcus Invest available to its customers across the Atlantic in the UK in the first quarter of 2022. Goldman Sachs has been making serious strides since opening in the UK in 2018 and has attracted over $30 billion in deposits from the country.
Digital investment platforms have become increasingly popular in recent years, with many disruptors springing up in the space. While those platforms typically focus on allowing investment laypeople to invest lesser amounts of money in low-risk stocks, there has been relatively little movement in serious investment brands such as Goldman Sachs when it comes to properly digitizing their investment offerings. However, the expansion of Marcus into such a platform seems to signify a change of direction in this regard which can only be good for the industry.
Final Thoughts
Digital payments and investment platforms are making these elements of finance more efficient than ever and it's encouraging to see a juggernaut of the industry such as Goldman Sachs leading the way in this space.
You can hear Goldman Sachs' Head of Strategic Partnerships and Client Experience, Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management, Jason Gordo speak at Future Digital Finance 2022, being held in March, at the Hyatt Regency Miami, FL.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.