Hortz: How did you design your platform and technology to be able to generate comprehensive, actionable insights on prospects and clients?
Shah: One company we experienced, for example, had a platform where they deployed one-time prioritization based on what they felt they had learned about clients through 20-30 years of big data. While that was a great start, we observed that nothing was closing the loop back in their algorithms and showing what did or did not work. Plus, nothing was happening from an optimization standpoint. When it comes to our Intelligence product, we capture data on prospects or clients that interact with the entire TIFIN ecosystem. That goes back to our Customer Data Platform (CDP) and optimizes algorithms.
Lewis: Our platform will continue to learn from intelligence gained from an advisor’s best clients. So, for example, if a client uses, say, our Clout digital marketing product, over time the Clout algorithms will optimize and the feedback intelligence models will also benefit from Clout’s data. Solutions like Clout can also help clients nurture prospects within the same TIFIN platform, helping advisors act on what they learn through the Intelligence module as they seek to convert prospects.
Hortz: Can you further discuss your prioritization models? What are the different modules you created and how does an advisor work with them?
Shah: One module is simply using the TIFIN data ecosystem to enrich aggregate data. Our BHAG – or “Big Hairy Audacious Goal" – is to be the largest first-party data resource in this industry. This is a straightforward enriching of data that would otherwise be disparate, fragmented, and not actionable. Email, for example, is not actionable, but email coupled with household income is. We then turn data into signals that are meaningful for a firm. Queue in prospect prioritization, client cross-sell and lifecycle opportunities, and now you are seeing growth. And then the advisor may use the prioritization modules for prospects and client lifecycle opportunities we discussed previously.
Another use case we often talk about is advisor recruiting. Which firms are your next best acquisition targets? We can model your advisor recruitment program based on data from past successful acquisitions.
Lewis: For multidisciplinary firms, cross selling through a firewall has always been a challenge. How do you evaluate mortgage clients, for example, to see if they make sense as clients for your emerging wealth business? Or for retirement advisors, how can they identify 401(k) or 403(b) client opportunities through their wealth advisory business? By telling an advisor how a pool of prospects would make ideal clients, that advisor can save a world of time and effort by focusing attention on a narrower group.
Hortz: Can you share any general advice or recommendations on the mindset and technology needed for advisors to build more comprehensive insights on their prospects and clients?
Shah: To succeed in the future, all practices will need a data science solution, but firms do not need to build it themselves. It is also important to consider how high-impact activation of data science often requires teams working across organizational and functional boundaries. Oftentimes technology, data, marketing, and advisor engagement teams are organizational constructs within firms that may create siloes. Firms that can overcome organizational boundaries will reduce the friction and multiply impact across the organization. We believe the orientation towards growth can be the catalyst to align organizational resources towards a joint mission.
Lewis: Our advice would be that advisors should apply the best technology they can so that they can focus on what they are good at and trust an outsourced expert to do the rest. The way we cannot expect even the smartest rocket scientists to be proficient in building investment portfolios, wealth management firms that are really good at managing money are not built to have expertise in big data or data science initiatives. Our thought is if we can become their data science analytics partner, with measurable growth results, not only can we create better outcomes for the advisors, but for the end-clients. This supports TIFIN’s ultimate mission: improving financial wellbeing for more people.
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 operate as a business innovation platform and educational resource with FinTech and financial services firm members to openly share their unique perspectives and activities. The goal is to build awareness and stimulate open thought leadership discussions on new or evolving industry approaches and thinking to facilitate next-generation growth, differentiation and unique community engagement strategies. The institute was launched with the support and foresight of our founding sponsors — Ultimus Fund Solutions, NASDAQ, FLX Networks, Advisorpedia, Pershing, Fidelity, Voya Financial and Charter Financial Publishing (publisher of Financial Advisor and Private Wealth magazines).