[Intelligence is defined by the Oxford dictionary as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. In the context of helping an advisory practice grow their business, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are now being deployed as key tools to gain greater intelligence on advisor prospects and clients. With this expanded toolkit, advisors can acquire more knowledge about the individuals they are working with and strategically apply that information to design more engaging and personalized experiences to grow and retain their client base.
Despite the acknowledgement and need for this intelligence — Accenture reports that 99% of advisors believe AI plays a role in the future of financial advice such as using tech to power and enhance the client-advisor relationship — just 51% of advisors surveyed by Financial Planning say they are actively implementing AI and machine learning tools beyond the planning and investigation phase.
To that end, fintech platform TIFIN Wealth just launched TIFIN Intelligence, adding a layer of AI and machine learning-powered enrichment and prioritization to prospecting, nurturing, and client engagement. We reached out to Institute founding member, Niharika Shah, EVP and chief growth officer and Michael Lewis, director of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, to dig into why simple analytics are no longer enough and how new technologies can be alchemically combined to help advisors to deeply know their customers, prioritize prospects to increase conversion, nurture more effectively, and strategically build growth campaigns.]
Bill Hortz: What was TIFIN’s motivation in launching TIFIN Intelligence? What industry challenges does it address?
Niharika Shah: TIFIN Intelligence started with the premise that the standard client acquisition and growth process is inefficient and results in waste. A Kitces Research report states that the average cost of client acquisition is $3,119 per client. Of that, $2,600 is the cost of the advisor’s time and rest is discretionary marketing spend. We think that is outrageous. Advisors should not be wasting time or money on prospects that are not their ideal prospects.
Michael Lewis: At TIFIN, we have demonstrated success in matching people with investment products. We extended the same approach to match advisors with their “next best prospects.” As we began to build out that use case, it struck us that there was an opportunity to make growth more efficient and effective by also matching advisors with opportunities across their prospects and clients.
Hortz: What are the key components TIFIN built into this platform to address these challenges?
Shah: Essentially, the intelligence packages we created help identify opportunities across an advisor’s best prospects and book of business. For example, rather than wasting time when the likelihood of each prospect being ideal is low, the Intelligence module identifies prospects that look like an advisor’s ideal customer of today – and/or tomorrow. The use of AI in honing in on people’s wants and needs already has precedent in other industries, with Amazon’s recommendation platform, for example, being responsible for approximately 35% of sales.
Another area of growth the platform offers is ensuring that advisors are mindful of their clients’ financial life journeys. As they progress through different stages and goals, our Intelligence module can identify which clients are prime to have a conversation so that advisors can personalize their interactions accordingly and be there when people are ready for help or to explore other capabilities a firm may offer.
Lewis: We do this by combining machine learning methods with rich data from first-, second-, and third-party sources. The data provides a 360-degree view of a prospect and our algorithms optimize toward business outcomes. For example, an advisor could be looking at their book of business and ask and get answers to questions like, “Who are my best 20 clients where I should offer alternative investments or charitable giving solutions?” It becomes a superpower for growth — identifying and converting prospects at speed through intelligence and revealing new opportunities for additional services as clients go through different life stages
Hortz: How is this process different from what is already out there?
Shah: The basic premise is that we use Artificial Intelligence and Data Science and couple them with very deep Financial Intelligence to create our algorithms. While there are other firms that deal with or have the capability to help you identify prospects or next best actions, we believe our offering is truly differentiated in how we integrate these processes.
Lewis: The true value of the TIFIN ecosystem is how we designed our technology and systems to do both, identify and activate engagement strategies. We can identify, activate, and train our algorithms across our entire platform that work together to provide precise and outcome-oriented activation of growth opportunities. It is a one-of-a-kind closed loop ecosystem.