When we asked participants in our inaugural Advisor Wealthtech survey how much of their tech stack they were utilizing, on average, they reported only using 70%.¹
Even though advisors acknowledged that making the most of their tech could help them drive better results for their firm and clients, constraints on time, budgets, tech infrastructure, and talent keep them from investing in a fully-utilized, tightly integrated tech stack.
Indeed, tech integration doesn’t happen on its own (though selecting tech with certain attributes, like open architecture, can make it easier), but it’s well worth the effort.
If you — or stakeholders on your team — need further convincing about the benefits, read on to explore the importance of a tightly integrated tech stack.
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Deliver a More Personalized Client Experience
Today’s consumers expect businesses to offer a personalized touch. Whether it’s Amazon suggesting products based on past purchases or Spotify sharing new music in a favorite genre, people want to be greeted with tailored information and advice.
And these expectations aren’t limited to consumer brands; people expect the same level of personalization from service providers. In a recent survey, 61% of banking executives said their customers’ expectations were continuing to rise.² That same survey found that personalization is even more crucial in the financial services sector during economic uncertainty.
Without an integrated tech solution, your team faces major hurdles in providing that highly personalized experience. If a client’s risk score is housed in one solution while their portfolio is elsewhere and their financial planning documents are in a third location, your team may miss critical information when communicating with a client.
In volatile economic environments, even one misstep on the part of your team can begin to erode client trust. Investors are already on edge about the state of the market. In this heightened place of anxiety, they are not likely to react well to an advisor that seems distracted, misinformed, or scattered.
An integrated tech stack can help reduce room for error and create a more seamless client experience. Your advisors can pull up all relevant client information before they start a meeting and easily call up important information as the conversation progresses.
The best tech solutions include an integrated client portal, which gives your client a direct connection to their investments, financial plan, and advisor. Providing your clients immediate access to this information helps them feel like they’re in control even in volatile markets.
Accelerate the Client Acquisition Process
The right sales and marketing technology, including a client relationship management (CRM) tool and marketing automation software, can help you quickly turn prospects into clients. And an accelerated sales cycle translates into more growth for your firm.
A survey from Broadridge Financial Solutions found that 75% of advisors who had a marketing plan were confident they’d meet their practice growth goals over the next year, compared with only 41% of advisors who lacked a plan.³
That same survey found that the marketing technology selection process overwhelmed most advisors — 86% of respondents reported finding it challenging to choose the right solution.
Of course, the best marketing tech solutions are the ones that integrate with your existing tech stack. When you can seamlessly connect your CRM to your marketing automation platform, proposal generation tool, and client onboarding and management tools, you streamline your initial interactions with prospects.
Marketing automation helps you book meetings more efficiently and manage the follow-up process, so no one falls through the cracks. Your CRM enables you to circle back with prospects who might need additional time to think. An integrated proposal generation tool allows you to merge prospect information with your financial advice and strategy all in one cohesive, professional presentation. This integrated tech works together to help you win more business, accelerate the sales cycle, and drive growth.
Reduce Compliance Risks
According to insights from compliance experts published in the Harvard Business Review, the reason many firms’ compliance programs fail is not for lack of effort.⁴ Instead, it can be attributed to a lack of adequate measurement of the proper compliance metrics.
Building an effective compliance program is challenging if you can’t collect data on your current approach. For example, how can you know if your whistleblower program works if you don’t know how many employees used it in the past year and what the outcomes of those reports were?
Without an integrated tech stack, relevant compliance data is scattered everywhere. HR might collect employee disclosures about outside business activities and employee brokerage statements, while client trading data may amass in your trading platform.
A siloed tech stack means vital data can get stuck somewhere and inadvertently be omitted from internal compliance oversight. Your compliance team will have an easier time running internal audits, gathering data, assessing metrics, and sharing necessary information during regulatory requests when your tech stack is fully integrated.
Improve Operational Efficiency
In our Advisor Wealthtech survey, 89% of respondents¹ acknowledged that a more integrated tech stack could improve their firms’ operational efficiency. We just explored how siloed tech can slow down your compliance team, but all other members of your team are similarly impacted by disjointed tech solutions.
Within an integrated tech stack, it’s suddenly easier to undertake regular tasks like client billing, automated portfolio rebalancing, and firm-wide and client-specific risk analyses as markets shift.
To see how much time you lose to operational inefficiencies, undertake a time audit one day this week. Make note of the time you spend toggling between tech solutions, copying and pasting necessary data between platforms, or searching several tools for the information you need before finally finding it.
Even if this only adds up to 20 minutes on one day, multiply that out over an entire year, and it amounts to more than two weeks of lost time.
Imagine what you could do with those hours back in your schedule. From increasing the number of client touchpoints to investing in your prospecting and sales process, there are real business advantages to eliminating inefficiencies created by siloed tech.
Fuel the Fiduciary Flywheel
We often talk about the importance of building a Fiduciary Flywheel. When you create an effective, integrated tech stack, the flywheel makes it easier to attract new clients, close more deals, and grow your firm.
As the name implies, the Fiduciary Flywheel relies on momentum to succeed. But it’s hard to get your flywheel spinning at the speed of light when your tech stack is clunky.
A siloed tech stack blocks momentum at every turn. Your team members lack flow in their day-to-day work. Your prospects experience sluggishness in early response times. The client onboarding process is disjointed, and established clients lack a seamless tech experience with features like an all-in-one client portal.
In contrast, an integrated tech stack removes these barriers to get your flywheel humming. Your team glides through their daily workflow and finds all necessary information in one place. Your prospects are greeted with fast responses and unified, professional, fully-branded communications. Your onboarding and client experience is smooth — clients can access their investment information from anywhere and reach your team with the click of a button.
Fintech solutions can be an advisor’s best friend, but technology is most effective when fully integrated. Removing siloes empowers your team to get the most out of all the tech you pay for, work smarter and faster, and deliver better results for clients and stronger growth for your firm.
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¹Source: Orion Advisor WealthTech Survey, 2023.
²Source: New Banking Study Reveals Growth Benefits of Personalization, Innovation and Trust in Customer Experience, PR Newswire, 2023.
³Source: Only 23% of Financial Advisors Have a Defined Marketing Strategy, According to Broadridge Study, Broadridge, 2023.
⁴Source: Why Compliance Programs Fail—and How to Fix Them, Harvard Business Review, 2023.
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