AI is here to help advisors create better online content: Wealthtech Weekly

Image by Shahid Abdullah from Pixabay

Hearsay Systems wants AI to help financial advisors create compliant content that clients actually want to click on. 

The San Francisco-based wealthtech firm that crafts client engagement software this week announced the launch of Content+, a tool that lets advisors to design, manage and curate compliant third-party content collections within Hearsay Social and Sites. 

The tool relies on artificial intelligence to enable program administrators and marketers to tailor content to the specific needs of an organization. Administrators determine their content approach and define topics and parameters important to their business, including hierarchies, geographies, customizable compliance rules and more. All content collections are exclusive, and users are free to create as many collections as they choose.

Along with launching Content+, Hearsay has improved its content recommendation offerings for advisors. Users can now use AI-powered, personalized "Netflix-style" recommendations that learn from inputs such as audience engagement, peer success and user interests to curate the most impactful content for each user's specific social audience. 

Hearsay says firms benefit from embedded supervision capabilities that align content with an organization's risk tolerance.,All content is screened according to a firm's lexicon before automatically entering compliance workflows.

"Tailored, relevant and timely content is the lifeblood of a social marketing program, but it's not always easy to do well at scale or in full compliance," Mike Boese, the CEO of Hearsay Systems said in a statement. "We're excited to make AI technologies accessible at both the advisor and firm level by leveraging the best machine learning models and most comprehensive training datasets."

According to the company, Hearsay Systems serves more than 200,000 advisors and works with firms like BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley and New York Life.

Hearsay also has AI aspirations beyond rolling out Content+. The firm recently partnered with  Jasper to facilitate AI-generated content in a compliant manner for financial services organizations. If the name Jasper rings a bell, that's because the Austin, Texas-based AI content platform made a big, pre-ChatGPT splash last fall when it wrapped a $125 million in Series A funding and secured a $1.5 billion valuation.

Jasper's AI Engine automatically selects the best underlying model for the query from a range of Large Language Models, including OpenAI's GPT-4, and then enhances it to include optimizations that fit the user's brand voice.

Jasper CEO Dave Rogenmoser said his team is eager to see what kind of impact generative AI capabilities have within regulated financial services markets.

"Like Hearsay, Jasper understands that different industries have unique needs when it comes to their use of AI," he said. "Jasper helps users access and enhance the best models for each use case to help teams easily create exceptional content that's consistent with their brand. We're thrilled to collaborate with Hearsay to deliver this value to the financial services industry."

Scroll down to get caught up on other recent fintech news you might have missed in our Wealthtech Weekly recap. And check out the previous edition here.

SmartAsset Acquires DeftSales

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SmartAsset CEO Michael Carvin
SmartAsset
SmartAsset, a New York-based firm that manages an online marketplace connecting consumers to financial advisors, has acquired prospect engagement company DeftSales, adding a suite of tools for advisor outreach and analytics that work with a range of existing CRM platforms.

With a questionnaire and a proprietary algorithm, SmartAsset connects prospective clients to registered investment advisors based on characteristics such as location, asset levels or openness to virtual service. New incoming assets under management to the participating advisory firms reached $5 billion in 2019, $10 billion in 2020 and $20 billion in 2021.

"We are enormously excited to announce the acquisition of DeftSales and we look forward to integrating their solutions with our own SmartAdvisor platform." Michael Carvin, SmartAsset's CEO and founder, said in a statement. "The feedback from advisors using DeftSales has been incredibly clear. By automating many tasks, it dramatically decreases the work required to be successful in converting SmartAdvisor prospects into clients."

The newly named "DeftSales by SmartAsset" will combine to offer a user interface that is fully compliant, including automated campaigns and analytics, which allow advisors to spend more time honing their communications and improving their skills.

Highlights include "FastCall" technology that eliminates lag time for follow-ups, lead outreach supported by customized and automated client communication and an analytics dashboard to monitor email, campaign and user-level reporting.

DeftSales Co-Founder and COO James Fason will join SmartAsset as Director of Engineering. In his new role, he will lead a team dedicated to advisor business development experience and engineering. 

And during a time when tech companies are downsizing, SmartAsset has 27 new hires to date in 2023 across multiple departments.

"We couldn't be more thrilled about this acquisition. At DeftSales, our passion has always been to make it easier for advisors to connect with potential clients," Fason said in a statement.

Snappy Kraken partners with Morningstar Wealth

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Industry marketing firm Snappy Kraken is joining forces with Morningstar to elevate advisor-client interactions.

This week the organizations launched Snappy Kraken Morningstar Wealth Edition. The platform will provide advisors that use Snappy Kraken's original services access to Morningstar Wealth articles that can be leveraged in client engagement campaigns.

The Snappy Kraken Morningstar Wealth Edition platform is also available to users of Morningstar Office, a web-based portfolio and practice management platform for independent financial advisors. This offering will afford existing Morningstar Office clients access to a custom version of Snappy Kraken's Original Content + Marketing Automation.

"Morningstar Wealth has established a reputation for producing quality editorial content that empowers investor success," Angel Gonzalez, the chief marketing officer at Snappy Kraken, said in a statement. "As Snappy Kraken works to foster meaningful connections between advisors and their clients, we welcome the opportunity to incorporate Morningstar Wealth's trusted, relevant content into our campaigns. We are confident this will provide immediate value-add for advisors."

"We are always looking for opportunities to streamline workflows and elevate the advisor-client relationship," added Vincent Florack, the director of strategic partnerships at Morningstar Wealth. "This collaboration with Snappy Kraken will further this aim, enabling advisors to disseminate timely and engaging content that delivers value to investors."

Current Snappy Kraken clients that do not have Morningstar Office subscriptions and want to add Morningstar Wealth articles to their existing version of Snappy Kraken can upgrade for a fee of $20 per month per user. 

For Morningstar Office users that don't have Snappy Kraken's Original Content + Automation services, there is the option to access Snappy Kraken Morningstar Wealth Edition at a discounted rate of $225 per month per user.

Skience Unveils Blueprint Process to Help Wealth Management Firms Better Manage Digital Transformations

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Skience CEO Sanjeev Kumar
Skience
Herndon, Virginia-based financial services software and consulting provider Skience has a new service to help advisory firms tackle their digital transformation efforts. 

The Skience, Wealth Management Cloud Technology Blueprint is now live, formalizing its strategic planning framework for digital transformations. The methodology, available as part of Skience's consulting services offering, can be employed as a stand-alone process or incorporated as part of a larger implementation project. 

Officials said it is designed to help wealth management firms clearly articulate and unify their optimal data, integration, business process automation and user experience strategy.

"Successful transformations tend to hinge on buy-in at all levels of a wealth management organization," said Skience CEO Sanjeev Kumar. "We've designed Blueprint to manage for this, collaborating closely with a wide array of internal stakeholders throughout the entire process. This can help lay the groundwork for a shift in mindset and pave the way for a smooth transition."

Skience said the Blueprint process seeks to support wealth management in three steps they summarize as "discover, design and define." 

The discover phase involves the Skience team conducting dialogue and workshops with a broad cross-section of internal stakeholders to identify organizational goals and pain points. 

During the design phase, Skience helps each firm design a future state where data, systems, workflows and user experience are reworked. As part of this phase, Skience defines the future state process, along with the technology components needed to make that future a reality.

The final step, define, sees Skience's experts provide a roadmap that serves as the foundation for the wealth management firm's future evolution.

"The Blueprint framework allows us to get to the heart of an organization's needs, moving quickly to define the optimal strategy," Greg Starr, the executive vice president of Salesforce Services at Skience, said in a statement. "The workshops and discovery phase are particularly vital as it allows us to pinpoint potential impediments to user experience, internal and external, and make thoughtful recommendations that are appropriate to the firm's needs."
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