SAN FRANCISCO — Advisor-facing technology is making strides toward providing a seamless mobile experience and overall customer satisfaction, but it still lags far behind the expectations of consumers. This is a growing problem for some of the largest financial institutions.
“There are very few examples of that hybrid experience that meet the same level of the user-experience expectation that we would have in other areas of our life,” says Mary-Catherine Lader, COO of BlackRock’s digital wealth group. “It sounds simple, but it’s very powerful.”
In fact, customer experience metrics at wealth management firms have remained flat for the third year in a row,
To that end, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, took a
For example, Envestnet’s account onboarding tool and back office operations are cases of functionality that simply didn’t exist at BlackRock before. “Consumers may recognize that they want a partner to make decisions with them,” Lader says, “but if you’re going to pull up any technology or digital experience, our patience for the time to deliver is decreasing.”
Advisors are looking for a deeper onboarding tool that weights the most tax-efficient avenues for prospects to transfer their portfolios onto the platform, she says. Another potential feature would try to capture investor objectives and correlate them to the clients’ portfolios.
Even reducing the time during which the end client is waiting for the advisor to rekey in a piece of data at a client meeting becomes paramount, Lader says. “Some of the mobile-first, consumer-facing fintech apps have done a really good job of that, but as many of you know that live it, it’s harder to do that in the advisor experience just because of legacy technology,” she says.
While firms look to better technology to keep pace with heightening client expectations, other hybrid robos are looking to bolster the customer experience by bringing on more human advisors.
Personal Capital announced
“Being in market is not about having a branch, or having a destination where we would be with our clients,” says Personal Capital CEO Jay Shah at the conference. “Frankly, they don’t want it.”
Instead the firm is pushing to find top talent advisors in different geographic locations to help provide a better experience to clients. After establishing its first hub in tech-savvy Denver in 2013, Personal Capital branched out into other hotspots, including Dallas.
While pure-play robos have gained popularity in recent years, the push toward better customer experience will include a human touch, Shah says.
“The consumer is not that robo. The consumer is highly emotional about their money and they’re looking for a behavioral coach,” he says. “They’re looking for a response from someone when they say they don’t know. Will software eat the world? We don’t think so.”
