Clear Path Analysis just released their “2016 North America Fund Technology & Data Report”, and Seismic, along with major industry firms like Peak Capital, Northern Trust, and AB, contributed a variety of content on the state of technology, regulation, and innovation within the areas of asset and wealth management. Seismic’s VP of Financial Services Craig Dunham sat down with Clear Path Analysis to discuss that very topic, and below is an excerpt from their conversation.
We are in an era where it is highly competitive and the firms who are the most transparent and are on the cutting edge of technology are going to provide a better client experience, which puts them at an advantage over others who may be lagging.
If you look at other industries, financial services, wealth in particular, has been a little behind the curve in terms of adopting new technology. This is the motivation that they need to get going. We find that software helps to provide a much more holistic picture of the client’s financial situation. It allows you to leverage what you know about a client and their financial situation. For example, take something like knowing a client’s risk tolerance, financial interests or other metrics; marketing teams can leverage that information to help arm of advisors with the right content and material to help support their recommendations.
Software also helps in providing an audit trail which shows which materials were sent, to whom, when, and how much time was spent reading them. This helps to provide evidence of the recommendations that you have made, which could be important if one of those clients were to come back and pursue some kind of legal action. Software can also provide analytics on what was sent and the details on how that content was consumed. It can also allow for collaboration and interaction between clients and advisors. Essentially, it helps to capture analytics on the conversation, what was shown, what recommendations were suggested and what was agreed to.
Asset and wealth leaders are being asked to deliver more with the same number of resources that they currently have. How else do you accomplish this without technology to either drive down those operational costs, or to arm your sales teams, advisors or wholesalers with the tools to conduct more meetings, manage sales cycles better, guide them to the right recommendations and not encumber them with administrative tasks? As much of the process that can be automated, the better.
Regulation is here, the trend is here and firms have to use technology to stay competitive. Firms are looking to automate content creation and compliance approval every quarter and want to have an effective way to distribute collateral to their wholesalers across multiple applications and devices. They are looking to allow compliance pre-approved customization of these materials and want collaboration between the relationship manager, advisors and clients. They also want analytics for insights, which provides transparency around the entire process.
Read the rest of Craig’s thoughts on how technology adoption can help firms alleviate the pains of increased regulation and the report itself by clicking below.
