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.

Jill and Amanda both pointed to one piece of software that plays a key part in checking many of those boxes in their respective stacks.

FP Alpha is an AI-driven, holistic wealth management solution that covers more than 16 key areas of financial planning, including tax, estate and insurance planning. Advisors can upload clients’ financial documents to the software, which then processes and analyzes them for existing financial planning opportunities.

I founded FP Alpha in February 2020 to solve for some challenges we were facing as a firm to provide holistic advice at scale.  

According to Amanda, while FP Alpha is effective at providing ideas and recommendations for clients, the real value is its ability to drive collaboration within her team. Junior advisors enter client data into FP Alpha, she explained, and it helps them generate ideas that they bring back to the larger team. It’s made them all more collaborative, improved client service and enhanced her confidence in their recommendations.

For her part, Jill recognized the service, support and expertise of the FP Alpha team. Because her firm is based in California, any estate planning solution has to account for nuances specific to a community property state. The FP Alpha team has worked with Financial Connections Group to address the issues that have arisen because of California’s requirements.

Jill also explained that her firm is using FP Alpha to analyze client tax returns for future opportunities.

I was most excited to discuss a new feature we’ve just added to FP Alpha called Prospect Accelerator. In today’s hybrid, dually remote and in-person world, it’s becoming more difficult for advisors to build genuine trust with prospects and showcase their value prior to beginning to work together.

Prospect Accelerator is a comprehensive financial planning prospecting tool that enables advisors to provide financial health scores to potential clients using a minimal amount of prospect-provided information. The Accelerator generates likely planning opportunities, which allows the advisor to deliver instant planning alpha, demonstrate his or her value proposition and showcase service offerings in the prospecting stage. It can be embedded on an advisor’s website, sent through email or leveraged within social media campaigns.

I would like to thank Invest in Women for the opportunity to be part of such a valuable discussion; Jill and Amanda for their inspiration, insight and conversation; and Suzanne for driving the session with provocative questions that empowered us to think critically about the role of technology at each of our practices. As our industry continues to evolve, I believe inclusive conversations at events such as these will continue to be a driving force behind real, meaningful change.

Andrew Altfest, CFP, is president of Altfest Personal Wealth Management and founder of FP Alpha.