In this series on investment communication in Swiss banks, we look at why strong investment expertise so often falls short of its potential when it reaches clients, and what needs to change for research to make an impact at the right moment. The opening article examines the spray and pray approach and shows why good content alone does not create relevance. In the second article, we develop the idea further, towards the client moment as the starting point for personalised communication.
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Swiss banks produce high-quality investment content every day: research reports, CIO commentaries, investment ideas and market assessments. Behind each one lie hours of analysis, investment expertise, editorial work and regulatory review.
Yet only a friction of this content has any real impact on the client relationship: the small share that fits the client's situation and opens up room for conversations, advice and potential transactions. Against that sits a far larger share that lands unfiltered in the RM's already overcrowded inbox, or goes straight to the client with no clear link to their individual context.
This limited impact is not a quality problem. The content is good, but what is usually missing is its relevance to the client's particular situation. To understand why relevance is so often missing, it is worth looking at how investment communication is set up today.
Investment communication today usually starts with the content. An analyst prepares a market assessment, the Investment Office adds a product offering, the editorial team formats the piece, and Compliance reviews and approves it.
After the production, in some banks, reports are routed first to the relationship manager, who decides manually which clients they might be relevant for. Others take this a step further and automate distribution altogether, driven by campaign logic, subscriptions or client segments.
This campaign-based distribution reliably delivers content. But whether it leads to conversations, influences investment decisions or strengthens the client relationship often remains unclear, becauserule-based selection only takes limited account of what is currently happening in the client’s portfolio, which topic is on their mind, or what investment need may arise from a change in their personal circumstances.
As a result, banks not only miss the opportunity to act as a relevant sparring partner, build trust and deepen the client relationship, they also have no clear picture of what an individual research report actually contributes. The combination of missed relevance and missing accountability is what creates the impact gap in today's investment communication.
The obvious costs of investemnt content (research, editorial work and campaign management) are budgeted and visible. The hidden costs, however, are greater.
The first layer is operational: Relationship managers spend valuable time on manual content selection and preparation instead of speaking with clients. As a result, relevant opportunities for value creation go unnoticed. They include investment opportunities that are not identified, conversations that never take place, and clients who fail to notice relevant content. The deeper cost is structural. Clients who repeatedly receive content that does not match their situation gradually stop engaging. What builds up is communication fatigue and once it sets in, it is difficult to reverse. When a genuinely relevant report is published, the bank may no longer reach the client at all.
Investment communication based on spray and pray means sending the same content, at the same time, to as many people as possible, in the hope that some of it reaches the right client.
For a long time, this logic was understandable. It is plannable, efficient and organisationally established. But it reaches its limits when investment communication is expected not only to be distributed, but to create impact. The key question is therefore no longer simply: “Who should receive this content?”. Increasingly, it is: “What does this client need right now?”.
At Oepfelbaum, we do not see the next stage of investment communication as a new newsletter tool, an additional channel or an isolated AI application. For us, it begins with the question of how investment expertise within a bank becomes effective in the first place. That is why we look at investment communication from a holistic perspective. It connects research, content production, client data, advisory processes, regulatory requirements and modern technology into a controllable communication logic.
AI can strengthen this logic by structuring content, assessing relevance and enabling scale. The decisive factor, however, is the interplay between expertise, data, governance and integration into the existing banking platform.
In our whitepaper, we lay out what this target model looks like and what it takes for banks to build it.
In the next article, we show how Swiss banks can shift the starting point of their investment communication from the publication calendar to the client moment.
Sara Uhlig
Value Stream Lead Content Intelligence
Katharina Madreiter
Junior Consultant Content Intelligence
