Investec yields high productivity returns with Microsoft Copilot for Sales

When a growing global business is grounded as solidly in personal relationships as Investec’s is, meeting the demand for bespoke customer experiences can seem like an insurmountable feat. But with persistent ambition and a focus on technology and innovations like Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Investec is delivering a smoother, richer client relationship experience in making its clients’ goals a reality.

Blazing a technological trail

Investec has a long history with Microsoft. The firm’s client-facing teams already used Dynamics 365 Sales, Sales Insights, Customer Service, and Customer Insights to manage every step of the customer relationship journey. So as a technology-oriented company, Investec immediately recognized the promise of AI and was the very first customer to go live in production with Microsoft Copilot for Sales.

Copilot for Sales seamlessly shares information between Microsoft 365 apps and a company’s existing customer relationship management (CRM) platform—like Dynamics 365 or Salesforce—to bring next-generation AI and sales insights into the flow of work, maximizing sales productivity and personalizing customer interactions. Investec’s bankers deal in high volumes. Every one of them negotiates the competing interests of time and exceptional customer relations, every day. Investec seized the opportunity to use the generative AI features of Copilot for Sales to save bankers time and allow them to more easily deliver the thorough, accurate, and timely information they’re known for.

Delivering white glove service at scale

Investec launched Microsoft Copilot for Sales in Outlook and Teams for 900 bankers in the UK. Among that group of initial users, private bankers deal with the highest-net-worth individuals. These relationships require bankers to know not only highly sensitive account specifics, but also personal details like the birthdays of a client’s children. These bankers understand everything about their clients, and they make each one feel that they’re the banker’s only account. But of course, private bankers at Investec serve multiple clients, and they had to spend a significant amount of their valuable time in preparing for each interaction to deliver that level of service.

Amber Jenkins, Private Banker, describes the challenge as one of memory and time. “I find it difficult to remember conversations that I've had with clients years or even months ago,” she says, “and I don’t expect my clients to remember that information either. Before Microsoft Copilot for Sales, we tracked meetings, saved each email, and spent a lot of time digging through them. But now, with Copilot we can save whole chains of emails and Copilot will generate an easily digestible summary. Without taking any time at all I can tailor my conversations, my interactions, and the products that Investec can offer to each client.”

The client history summary feature is especially important at Investec, where an uninterrupted client experience is expected as part of its “One Investec” initiative. “Copilot has helped this initiative by putting richer data in front of our bankers,” explains Daniel Speirits, Sales and Marketing Product Manager.  Josh Boddington, Money Market Dealer, explains, “one of the challenges we’ve faced in the past is not being able to access some of the communications that a colleague may have had with their client. Microsoft Copilot for Sales has enabled us to streamline and pick up right where a colleague left off.” Copilot for Sales presents relevant client information to bankers when and where they need it, without their having to search for it—particularly useful when they’re pulled into an account by another department or covering for a colleague on holiday.

For her part, Jenkins is grateful that clients don’t need to repeat themselves or recap their history with the bank. “Many of my clients are shared with other desks, so I have access to those conversations and can assist my clients in a holistic way.”

With Copilot’s CRM insights woven into the flow of work, managing multiple clients without diluting the experience for any of them is no longer a challenge for Investec’s private bankers. Clients enjoy a type of white glove service in which the entire institution looks after them.

Saving time on admin means more time for connecting with clients

Bankers at Investec’s relatively small treasury desk work in an extremely high-volume environment, assessing, understanding, and contacting roughly 400 leads a week.  Boddington says Copilot saves him precious time. Before Microsoft Copilot for Sales, bankers had to manually transfer information between Outlook and Dynamics 365. Now the whole process happens in Outlook. Says Boddington, “Copilot uses AI to generate meeting recaps with a clear, thorough three-bullet summary that we can save in the client record, without having to manually enter updates from our notebooks or juggle multiple applications as we had to in the past.” As a result, Boddington and his colleagues connect with more existing and potential clients.

A typical Investec banker’s day is a non-stop series of phone calls and emails. Before Copilot for Sales, bankers rarely had time to enter important administrative information, such as the date of a follow-up call, because it required opening multiple applications and manually searching for the correct opportunity. Now, bankers are seamlessly making CRM updates right in Outlook, shaving as much as 10 seconds off each post-call activity. Given the volume at Investec, that’s a significant time savings. In fact, according to the metrics that Copilot tracks, which has allowed the company to compare the work of bankers who still use the legacy system with that of bankers who are using Copilot for Sales, Speirits contends “we’re estimating that we’re making approximately 200 hours of savings a year across the bank. That's a huge amount of time that we can transfer from doing mundane tasks to energy directed straight back to clients.”

AI-powered email drafts are another enormous time saver at Investec. Rather than spending 10 to 15 minutes gathering relevant background information and then drafting a response to an email, bankers like Jenkins can respond with just a few clicks. “I love that I can use the suggested draft as is, edit it, or even just use it as a template to build on,” says Jenkins. “This is a massive, massive time saver for me—valuable time that I can now spend with clients.”

Clients get speedy and personalized responses to which they are accustomed, while bankers are even more efficient. Copilot for Sales gives bankers back time that they can devote to customers and prospective clients. In a competitive field, faster service gives Investec’s bankers the edge.

Keeping “protected, secure, and accountable” at the forefront

Investec maintains the highest standards of integrity, trust, and security in everything it does, and Microsoft is the perfect partner to ensure that the firm’s technology meets its standards. Investec was eager to incorporate generative AI into the flow of business, but never at the cost of security and privacy. With Copilot for Sales, Investec is assured of best-in-class security as it delivers fast-paced premium service under strict scrutiny.

As a bank, Investec is highly regulated, right down to what advice can be given to which clients and when. Copilot not only saves time spent on client outreach, it also fortifies the firm’s compliance. In the event of a handover, whether internal or external, any banker can easily adhere to strict corporate governance and government regulations with seamless access to a client’s previous conversations.

For even more continuity in a client’s journey, Copilot catches names and email addresses in Outlook that it can’t match in Dynamics 365 and offers to create a new client record. Says Boddington, “I can reach out and make an introduction to someone newly involved in an account, which I might not have caught had I not been prompted [by Copilot].”

Boddington appreciates that with Copilot “nothing gets missed. Everything we do for and say to a client is recorded. I’ve got the confidence to jump on the phone and know exactly what clients need to know without having to spend a long time collecting that information.”

Bullish on the future

After its great success in the UK, the firm is rolling out Copilot for Sales to 700 bankers in South Africa. And Speirits sees Copilot for Sales as just the beginning of Investec’s investment in Microsoft AI.

Speirits regularly gets enthusiastic feedback. “The excitement we’ve got within the desks for upcoming features is huge, and the potential they see with these tools is growing,” he says. Among the eagerly anticipated features is easy task creation from Teams meeting summaries, where Copilot prompts users to click on suggested action items to create tasks in Dynamics 365, helping ensure timely follow-ups.

“At Investec, we really want to leverage AI across all our workstreams. We're excited to see how other Copilots in the stack can offer a better client experience, better operational processes, and better capabilities within our working environment,” Speirits explained.

Investec is excited to bring the power of generative AI to its bankers, freeing them to devote more time to providing exceptional experience for their clients.