Financial institutions of various sorts have begun operating within virtual worlds, expanding their clientele and tapping into new customers.
Metaverse may no longer be at the top of everyone’s lips in tech circles, but financial institutions have begun paying more attention to its growing presence. With an audience made up of young, tech-savvy users early on in their financial lives and who are often digital natives themselves, banking applications in this space provide banks with unique opportunities to build relationships with a digitally native consumer base that has long embraced fintech products – plus tap into this talent pool when hiring in future!

The metaverse can be defined as an all-encompassing virtual world powered by blockchain that offers new human and sociocultural experiences. It represents decentralized yet immersive social interactions such as virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR), providing new ways for social engagement. No single company or application controls the metaverse; users have a portable identity across metaverse apps.

Leading institutions from various parts of the world have begun setting up shop in TradFi’s metaverse. JPMorgan entered Decentraland under its brand Onyx – described by them as an “integrated blockchain-based platform for wholesale payment transactions”- while in March 2017 HSBC purchased land on The Sandbox so as to engage clients through emerging platforms and provide novel experiences.

Advesitrize Your Meant
Advertising Kookmin and DBS, two banking giants from Asia, have entered the metaverse and started providing various services. South Korean’s Kookmin Bank offers native-based financial services within The Sandbox while one-on-one customer service can also be found there; additional employee training programs as well as financial education for young consumers will also be included as plans move forward. While Singapore’s biggest bank DBS purchased an area on The Sandbox to develop interactive experiences aimed at creating a more sustainable world via Web3 opportunities while spreading awareness on ESG issues related to important ESG issues in real time.

Canadian financial institutions TD and RBC are undertaking metaverse pilot programs to assess and leverage metaverse technologies effectively for customer experience purposes. For TD’s part, their program ran from January to April and included pilot tests with customers during customer experience sessions.

Preparing advisors for Web3 financial services.

The dynamics in the banking sector extend far beyond virtual awnings and buying pixels of land.

Banks are taking steps to equip their financial advisors and wealth managers for Web3-based financial products, including metaverse ETF and index products, driven by increasing market capitalization of metaverse tokens as well as client demand to invest in digital assets like cryptocurrency.

Advise Men of This Program Now.
Underlying this dynamic, Capgemini’s report entitled “Wealth Management Top Trends 2023” revealed that 70% of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) globally have invested in digital assets; over nine out of ten HNWIs younger than 40 opting to put their savings into cryptocurrency assets as an asset class of choice.

The metaverse’s impact on financial services industry represents its next evolutionary stage of banking and capital markets. Advisors have responded by taking measures to educate themselves about various cryptocurrencies beyond bitcoin and ether, providing greater access to this new asset class through education curricula for digital assets. The industry is adapting accordingly with digital asset curricula developed specifically to serve this need.

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Advisors Should Adopt Crypto Now
With more and more advisors becoming knowledgeable of digital assets, the question becomes one of what exactly resides within our wallets or virtual ones — but also how much of it exists out in the “metaverse.”

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