Consumers are not hiring an advisor to just apply some technology to them and then tell them what the technology says. They're actually asking for things that technology hasn't mastered yet, which includes empathy, experience and comprehension of diverse ideas in finance, like legal and tax implications, like insurance and investment intersections. As a result, where AI or artificial intelligence has been dominating FinTech headlines, we're of the belief that what we need to do in “FinTech” is to find a way to apply a different kind of AI—advisor intelligence.
When you see a statement like, "Apply more you, less tech" we're trying to say, "How do I get my advisor to be more relevant and engaging in providing their guidance and not just focus on the technology?" If I can facilitate a way for the advisor to deliver their intelligence, experience, understanding, knowledge and guidance in real-time using technology—then that is our goal. We think Asset-Map exists to help the advisor be more capable of providing their insight, as opposed to a technology alone. That's the dichotomy and the balance that we are seeking in the human and technology merger of financial advice.
Hortz: From your perspective, what best advice can you offer financial advisors on preparing for the accelerating rate of change bombarding the financial services industry over the next few years?
Holt: Well, the first thing that advisors should do is they must intentionally decide what they want their customers’ ideal experience to be. Let me suggest that it should be easy, simple, actionable, not intimidating, accessible, transparent, and it has to have a clear value proposition. So, an advisor needs to contemplate which specific technologies are going to help deliver that experience, and which technologies are expendable because they won’t support that experience.
The other key point to that is that there's going to be no way to compete in tomorrow's world of advice if you don't have a technology-enabled experience, which is just the way it is. Ironically, if you're going to make a single investment in your practice, it should be in technologies that help you in building relationships or facilitate more meaningful interaction. That is not going away.
I think where a lot of advisors are attempting to automate the entire client experience—they are going to automate their practice into oblivion. I say this because the next version of automated experience that is cheaper, prettier and slightly more appealing will wind up as a direct competitor, and that area of FinTech is growing faster than you can imagine. Focus on technology that makes your practice more efficient but puts the client and advisor working on the same goals together.
The Institute for Innovation Development is an educational and business development catalyst for growth-oriented financial advisors and financial services firms determined to lead their businesses in an operating environment of accelerating business and cultural change. We position our members with the necessary ongoing innovation resources and best practices to drive and facilitate their next-generation growth, differentiation and unique community engagement strategies. The institute was launched with the support and foresight of our founding sponsors—Pershing, Voya Financial, Ultimus Fund Solutions, Fidelity, and Charter Financial Publishing (publisher of Financial Advisor and Private Wealth magazines). For more information click here.