I recently had the privilege to participate in a webinar held in conjunction with Financial Advisor magazine's Invest in Women Virtual event. The discussion gave me the opportunity to talk about one of my passions—using technology for scale and growth—with two advisors I deeply admire: Amanda Piper, partner at Wagener-Lee Wealth Advisors, and Jill Hollander, managing partner of Financial Connections Group Incorporated.
During our session together, which was moderated by Suzanne Siracuse, we dove into the myriad ways technology has enabled all three of us to elevate our practices, attract new business and improve the way we serve our clients.
Solutions Enabling Revenue Growth
Of course, revenue growth is at the top of the list of tech-driven benefits for advisors.
According to Amanda, workflow tools within Wagener-Lee’s CRM have uncovered powerful efficiencies and reduced the potential for human error, leaving her team more time to spend focusing on prospecting and client service.
Jill introduced the logistical benefits of integrating Calendly with her firm’s website, which reduces prospecting friction and enables interested investors to simply set up a meeting themselves at the date and time that works best for them. She also explained that her firm uses PreciseFP to map into eMoney, so clients and prospects can fill out electronic questionnaires that automatically populate the financial planning software.
For myself and the Altfest team, technology has revolutionized the way we advise on held-away assets, which has allowed us to reprice our services. Historically, we had difficulty gathering information, tracking and trading on accounts, so we didn’t charge at all for held-away assets because the service we provided wasn’t robust enough.
Since adding FeeX to our tech stack, we’ve been able to effectively monitor options and trade on outside accounts, folding them into other assets we manage at a cost, which has allowed us to grow revenue.
Empowering Mass Customization
We’ve also leveraged technology to continually upgrade the level of service we provide for our clients, without massively increasing the workload of our advisors.
Our focus has been on products and solutions that allow us to provide customization at scale, or mass customization. We take a personalized approach to our work and think through every individual client situation, but we also have to be able to scale our efforts, which can be challenging when each client has distinct, sometimes minute, needs and preferences.
That’s where advanced technology comes in. We’ve been able to address individual preferences at scale using Orion’s Eclipse to manage customized portfolios efficiently.
Uncovering New Financial Planning Opportunities
Tech stacks in the financial world come in many forms, but are all aimed toward similar goals, such as helping financial advisors save time in the planning process, showcasing their value beyond investments, and creating customized deliverables.