Mike Alexander is the president of Wealth at Broadridge, where he is responsible for bringing together Broadridge’s Wealth solutions into an integrated, market-leading Wealth Management business. Prior to joining Broadridge, Alexander was senior vice president of operations at Charles Schwab.
Russ Alan Prince: Please describe Broadridge
Mike Alexander: Broadridge, a global fintech leader with $5 billion in revenue, provides communications, technology, data, and intelligence. We help drive business transformation for clients, including wealth managers, with solutions for optimizing advisor productivity, enhancing the client experience, and digitizing enterprise operations.
We seamlessly connect all parts of the business from trading, portfolio management, and financial planning to marketing and multi-channel communications to support client acquisition, satisfaction, and retention. As a partner to 25,000 advisors servicing 50 million client accounts, we are uniquely positioned to help wealth management firms unleash innovation and capitalize on tomorrow‘s tools today.
Prince: How does Broadridge help advisors become more successful?
Alexander: The wealth management industry and advisors in particular balance themselves on a tightrope each day. How do they manage the business, proactively care for dozens or hundreds of clients and meet increasing regulatory demands?
Each of these areas of demand continues to increase—most notably, clients and consumers of all ages and demographics expect more personalized attention-they expect their advisors to “get them.” Broadridge provides advisors with elegant technology solutions that empower them to proactively identify and meet these competing demands at scale…to give them the leverage they need to personally satisfy their clients and help prospects to grow their business and broaden relationships.
Prince: What technologies are changing the wealth management industry the most?
Alexander: Forced to move to a virtual and now hybrid world, advisors stepped up and found new ways to form deeper connections with their clients. Through a combination of accelerated digitization, increased personalization, and the rise of next-generation investors, the wealth advisory landscape has changed for the better while client-advisor relationships continue to flourish.
There are emerging technologies that are rapidly driving transformation in our industry and enabling advisors to digitize and personalize every interaction along the investor life cycle. Three of the primary technologies are artificial intelligence, behavioral science, and consolidated data in the cloud. These technologies, when coupled together, quickly analyze and predict client behavior and preferences often in a real-time manner. This provides advisors with the insights, recommendations, and tools to demonstrate to clients they are understood and deliver what is most relevant at the right time and via the right collaboration channel such as social media, email, video, etc.
There is an expectation of a personalized and digital experience in every interaction an advisor has with the investor. Technologies that are able to seamlessly provide an advisor with real-time data, insights, and context ahead of every client interaction are revolutionizing the industry.
Advisors want all their client data in one place, but that’s increasingly not enough. Insights and contextual information that are powered by sophisticated machine learning algorithms, surfacing as insights into each client’s needs, wants, and dreams, and using those to identify opportunities for increased asset gathering, client education, and planning.
Prince: How does Broadridge's strategy of partnering with and acquiring emerging technology firms allow them to provide next-gen tech to advisors?
Alexander: We have made significant investments in building solutions, acquiring new technologies, and entering into strategic partnerships. We have rapidly expanded our capabilities by mutualizing investments in innovation, integrating the latest technologies, and offering tools that boost engagement with advisors and investors alike.
Our next-gen wealth platform is one of the primary drivers of digital transformation within wealth management. This open-architecture, multi-channel platform leverages our industry-leading technology and enables seamless integration into third-party solutions. This allows our clients to create best-in-class solutions and quickly adapt emerging capabilities in the way that best fits their own business.
We have also been focused on expanding our suite of component offerings that span the client lifecycle, helping wealth management firms optimize advisor productivity, personalize the client experience, and digitize operations. Examples of this include our recent acquisition of AdvisorStream and our partnerships with TIFIN, Fligoo, and Salesforce.
Prince: How do Broadridge's capabilities enhance personalization for clients?
Alexander: As consumers, most of our daily behaviors and activities are now measurable and digitally trackable. In wealth management, we can track money movement, portfolio allocations, risk tolerance, ESG values, content consumption, and more.
Wealth management clients benefit when their advisors can access a rich, holistic picture of their behaviors in much the same way a patient benefits when their doctor can access a picture of their vital signs and health habits. Broadridge does the hard work to put together the fabric of these client vital signs and behaviors for Advisors. This gives advisors the scale to take personally appropriate actions with each client. Increasingly we not only serve up to them the recommended best course of outreach or action for each client, but we also enable them to simply push the button to send the right piece of information or to take the right action for each client at the right time.
Russ Alan Prince is the executive director of Private Wealth magazine and chief content officer for High-Net-Worth Genius. He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs and select professionals.