Interview with Hans Joachim Reinke, CEO of the Union Investment Group

REINKE One of them is to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. We need to focus our resources on those things that will generate long-term benefits for our clients, our partners and, consequently, for Union Investment too. Our second strategic priority arises out of the broader context of technological change. The associated increase in digitalization doesn’t only offer us the opportunity for new growth initiatives through blockchain and artificial intelligence, for example. It’s also of vital interest to us to standardize and automate our process landscape wherever possible. After all, we see the digital transformation of our company – and this brings me to the priority – as an important element in preparing Union Investment for societal and demographic change.

REINKE I would like to highlight two trends that we can draw out of the developments I mentioned at the beginning: On the one hand, there’s the issue of sustainability, which will in the future have to be anchored in the core business, but also in our operations. On the other hand, technological development and societal change in particular will lead to a new quality in customer relationship management. The “next generation” investors expect customer-centric cross-media interaction options across all channels and, consequently, more strongly personalized holistic advice.

REINKE AI applications have now reached a level of maturity where we see very great potential in the medium to long term when it comes to successfully positioning Union Investment for the future in terms of automation and efficiency. AI will have a decisive impact on the digital transformation of our company, permanently changing various aspects of our business model – from efficiency enhancement, data analysis and improved customer experience through to product development.