How To Take Investor Experiences to a New Level

By engaging clients in an intuitive way, you could help investors overcome financial and investment challenges. In this session, we will explore how the following techniques and technologies can engage and empower investors.

• Understanding investor perspective

• Changing investor experience

• Augmented reality and virtual reality tech

• Gamification techniques

Transcription:

Chana Schoenberger: (00:09)

Hello. I'm Chana Schoenberger. I'm the editor in chief of financial planning magazine. And I have with me here today, three distinguished guests from the FinTech world. Ed Anderson, who's the managing director of mobile and advanced tech at Etrade, which is part of Morgan Stanley. I have Ilan Davidovici, a principal of client experience at Edward Jones and Mike Sha, who is the CEO and co-founder of SigFig. So we're gonna be talking about client experiences and how to take them to a new level. So let me just kick it off this way. How do we design financial products for the web when people don't read online, one tech exec, uh, that I spoke to called them drunk toddlers, because users are just, aren't using their brains fully. They're multitasking. Um, the problem of course, is that financial products usually need a lot of text to disclose the terms, but nobody reads the Ts and Cs. We've all downloaded apps and just clicked you scrolled and clicked because we wanna download it as quickly as possible. And that's fine when you're downloading, you know, Grand Theft Auto, but a much bigger problem when you're talking about a robo advisor. So who wants to take this one first? What can we do about this?

Ilan Davidovici: (01:16)

I think Mike's up first. He mentioned robo advisor.

Chana Schoenberger: (01:19)

all right. It's you Mike?

Mike Sha: (01:21)

Yeah, no, I think, um, you know, one of the themes that, you know, we think a lot about is for sure how to make the experience simpler. I think part of this is that, you know, you've got a device, a few inches from your face, not a lot of screen size. And I actually think that's been a wonderful thing for financial services because financial products tend to get too complicated too quickly. So I think the forced kind of limited attention span is actually a great thing and connected to that, I think we've got a huge thesis that being able to work with a client remotely is gonna be a really important part of the future state experience. And so you can think of a human entering the experience remotely with the client as a way to broach more complicated topics, deal with more complicated things, but, you know, try to have the self service experience, you know, remain as simple and clean as possible.

Chana Schoenberger: (02:15)

Yeah, that makes sense. Ilan, is that you?

Ilan Davidovici: (02:18)

It's a great point. Uh, Mike makes we, we tend to call it human centered, complete wealth management, human centered from the perspective of the client complete from the perspective of the client in wealth management, meaning the products and services that they're looking for, whether, um, you know, we used to worry about things like disintermediation and the robots and digital platforms are going to take over wealth. The, this pandemic has really taught us one thing very clearly that human connection is always front and center, whether that's through virtual means or face to face. And part of the job of a, of a modern and growing wealth management firm is to create, uh, the platform, the tools and the engagement that our clients want and then to deliver to them, uh, you know, the, the products and services that meet their needs. We're in the business of financial advice, which starts with getting to know people: who they are, where they are, what their goals are in life, and then working to stitch together more product services, experiences, and advice that help them get closer to where they want to go in a way that that meets their needs, whether that means reading all the T's and C's on, you know, the back of your app or, um, calling and, and getting ahold of a person.

Ilan Davidovici: (03:31)

Um, we like most, uh, wealth management firms are thinking about how our clients want to engage when they want to engage and what products and services they want.

Chana Schoenberger: (03:41)

And how do you guys handle this?

Ed Andersen: (03:44)

I think, I think Ilan hit on a lot of points I would agree with. I mean, ultimately if we just really simplify, we're meeting our clients where they want to be, um, in our business increasingly that's been mobile. So, so looking at how we've historically done things, and it was web at least at Etrade and translating that to mobile and making sure that our clients' needs are met is really, um, the key and, and the fun part of the job, frankly.

Chana Schoenberger: (04:11)

That sounds good. Okay. So this brings up something that Mike, you, you mentioned when we discussed this the other day, which you called the grand inversion. Do you wanna talk about that?

Mike Sha: (04:22)

Sure. Yeah. It's a fancy start for a simple concept, which is basically that almost the entire financial services industry has been built around a physical first experience. The way you open accounts, the way you interact with advisors, bankers, the way you meet with them to get the work done, the way you sign paperwork. And, um, digital has emerged in the last 20 years as a secondary channel. You know, a place where you can check your accounts, maybe pay some bills, make some transfers, but all, you know, largely kind of transactional items, self-service items. And it's thought of as like a supplemental part of the core experience, which is that in-person experience. And I, I know as we, we've all experienced over the last few decades, you know, that's started to change. And what the grand inversion of is this is all about, is assuming that sometime in the not too distant future, the digital experience will become the core experience that will be supplemented by some sort of physical or in person experience sometimes.

Mike Sha: (05:27)

And, you know, eventually, maybe never. And you need to think about digital, not as just a channel, but a way of serving and interacting with your customers. So imagine a world where digital first experiences are the way the world is. Does that change the way you open accounts? Does that change the compliance and monitoring systems you need? Does that change the technology that your advisors have access to, to serve and interact with your clients? Does that change and the answer to almost all those questions is yes. Um, and so how do you kind of rethink the entire experience, assuming that almost all the time you're gonna be interacting with your clients through a piece of technology.

Chana Schoenberger: (06:13)

Anyone wanna talk about how you guys are doing this?

Ed Andersen: (06:18)

Yeah, I mean, so

Ilan Davidovici: (06:20)

Go ahead,

Ed Andersen: (06:20)

I'll chime in really quickly. I mean, I think it's interesting. I come at this more from a digital first background. And so for, for me, in some cases I look at at an app or a website and, and for many clients, that's their sole point of engagement. So it's gotta be that all encompassing aspect of relationship, but over time, uh, and particularly for those clients who are in an advised relationship, we see, you know, web and, and certainly especially mobile as a way to, uh, amplify that relationship to improve that relationship. So I, I do think that that combined, uh, person and digital is, you know, obviously the move forward, but, but, you know, we're all coming at it from slightly different directions.

Ilan Davidovici: (07:03)

Yeah, that's right. I think every wealth management firm that might be listening to us today is somewhere different along the continuum from digital first to branch first. Um, and, and Edward Jones is probably far along that continuum, uh, being branch first being, being advisor first, uh, in that we have 19,500, uh, branches across 70%, uh, of zip codes across north America. Um, nobody who would start a wealth management firm today would start with that business model, but it has served us well over the, the hundred years that we've been in business. Um, but I would agree, um, you know, human centered does not mean not digital. Human centered means we know who you are and we know where you are and we know what you want and what journey you're on. For us that begins with one of the foundational capabilities, which is data, you know, at the end of the day, we're all in the data business.

Ilan Davidovici: (07:58)

We, we collect it, we organize it, analyze it distribute it. And most importantly, we have to be able to take action on it, whether that person, whether that, uh, client or prospective client is on an app or calling into our call center, walking into the branch, we need to know who Mike Sha is, who Ed Anderson is, um, what their, um, needs may have been or needs, may be in the future and make sure that we're there to be able, um, to be a vessel, to be an opportunity for them to help achieve their goals.

Mike Sha: (08:29)

Yeah, one of the most important things I think that we need to change as an industry about the grand inversion is to not think of digital as a self-service channel. You know, I think a lot of times the nomenclature inside these firms is that digital self-service stuff you do on your, and you know, the physical experiences where the rich consultative interactions happen. And that's gonna be a huge problem for our industry. If we continue to think about it that way, we should think of digital as a place where we need to get better at advice and rich interactions and interacting with advisors. And if we do that, we're gonna win. You know, like that's, that's the change that that needs to come about in our industry is how do you make the intimacy of a human, of an advisor feel just as rich, remotely, uh, because, you know, we all know we're in an industry where clients need help. They need that advice. We need to understand what their needs are and who they are, and that can be absolutely done, you know, really well over technology.

Ilan Davidovici: (09:30)

That's really well said, Mike, if you think about Sarhan, I'll, I'll just quickly mention we have the precedent over the last 20 years. Many of the tools that have been built for our industry have been about creating intimacy between the advisor and the branch and the home office that, that supports them, whether that's, uh, you know, having data about their clients or the advice that they're about to give, or the plan that they're creating or the investment it's, how do we make our, our branches as productive and as efficient and as client centered as possible. But as you mentioned, the great inversion, we, that hasn't really truly been extended to the client to make it as intimate as possible with the client in any part of the firm.

Chana Schoenberger: (10:10)

So what would this look like if it's not just self service and it, and I assume you're, you're talking about moving beyond things like zoom and DocuSign, which was widely adopted last year, what is a, what is a digital first but intimate experience that I can have with the institution managing my money?

Mike Sha: (10:30)

We think there's three core pillars. Um, and, um, maybe I can describe each of them kind of quickly. Um, the first is, uh, we call it interactive financial content. And so what's that mean? It basically means that if you think about the conversations that an advisor has with a client, a lot of those topics are actually complicated, you know, and, and having a picture be a thousand words is actually really valuable. Now the in-person interaction normally is a conversation, right? That's usually the way advice is delivered through spoken word, but through a remote interaction, almost like we're doing here, you know, in the conference, it's so natural to have a screen in between the advisor and the client. And it turns out that screen is a really powerful tool for explaining things. So, so if I'm sitting with a client it's a little bit awkward for me to whip out an iPad or like, you know, project some content onto the screen, but if I'm meeting with a client remotely, it's so natural to be using that screen, to do things interactively with the client.

Mike Sha: (11:37)

So we could do a financial plan together. We could, you know, talk about complicated concepts together. We could look at project together, we could do different scenario modeling, all of that would feel really natural. And so part one pillar of, you know, rich remote interactions is building, bespoke interactive design to facilitate those conversations. A second pillar is probably the most obvious pillar, which is what we've been doing all pandemic: running virtual meetings, right? So we call that synchronous. So client and advisor are there at the same time, doing something together, they're meeting, they're looking at each other's videos, they're maybe using that screen. And the big pain point that we think exists in synchronous is today people think of it as video conferencing. You know, it's, it's a way to kind of have a video feed between you and the client. And again, you think about the richness of that interaction.

Mike Sha: (12:32)

It could be, it could be screen share. It could be interactive modules. It could be signing paperwork. It could be reading a disclosure or a, you know, a compliance disclaimer. There are a lot of different things that you can do with a client that goes beyond just video. Um, and so that's where we think the richness lies. And then the last piece is what we call asynchronous. And what asynchronous is all about is actually being able to collaborate with your client without forcing you to both be there at the same time. You know, if you think about what you do on your phone all day, every day, almost everything you do on your phone today is asynchronous. You know, the, the messages you're sending the, the social networking that you're doing, all of that doesn't require the other party to be there at the same time.

Mike Sha: (13:23)

And it turns out that that is, is way more convenient for everyone involved, right? And it allows you to do your work on your time. And the workflows that we've built in financial services today are almost always assumed that the work is being done synchronously, and that's really inconvenient. You know, like we force our clients to come into the branch to do things, um, that they could probably do on their own from home. And so how do you unlock the convenience of asynchronous workflows in financial services? Because that is yet another way to kind of get closer to your customers. And again, you know, we carry our phones all day in our pockets. Like that phone is an incredible tool for productivity. If, if you have the right workflows and technology supporting it. So, you know, content synchronous, asynchronous, those three pillars coming together, we think form the foundation of like the really rich remote interactions that are, are coming in the future.

Ilan Davidovici: (14:24)

Yeah, that, that makes just a ton of sense. Um, I, I fully agree with, with the way that Mike describes it, we tend to think of our, of our client relationships across the spectrum, across the journey. And, and we're all really at many different points along that journey throughout our relationship with whether it's with a hether wealth manager or bank or many other different types of institutions. Uh, and we break them out into what we call, explore, evaluate, connect, partner, and extend. Um, and then we look in each of those client journey stages and ask ourselves, what are the jobs to be done? What are the, the discreet steps that, uh, an individual is looking to do, and they evaluate or explore stage. They may not know that they want a wealth advisor, that they needed wealth advisor. They may have just come into money or, uh, uh, aging parent has passed away.

Ilan Davidovici: (15:11)

Um, and they're looking for help. Well, how do we show up at the times, and in the places, perhaps in an asynchronous way, when somebody is searching or talking to a friend or getting on social media, how do we show up in a way, and then meaningfully engage, whether that's through, um, some things that we've created, one by the name of starting point or something called my, my priorities. One of the things we learned is that these transition moments, when you're going from exploring or evaluating into connecting, they may know that they have some money and they'd like to put it into a financial plan, but have they ever engaged in the, the deep conversation with themselves or their spouses of what are my priorities, uh, what are my values? How do I prioritize my values, whether that be traveling more or giving more to charity or spending more time with my family as we've all done.

Ilan Davidovici: (15:59)

And we're chatting about before this, this call started over the last two years, how do we go through the process of prioritizing our values and then turning those into a financial plan that turns into investments that turns into the attainment, um, of different goals. We're now spending a lot of time in this transition as we call it the transition to retirement. You know, when you think about, um, high schoolers, some of us on this call have high schoolers transitioning into college. There's a multi-billion dollar business that helps people think about what college they should go to and prepping for the SAT and, and writing essays. But that transition from work to retirement, there's no multi-billion dollar business, and yet it could be 20 or 30 or 40 years of your life. So how do you think about the plan for the next stage of your life and how your money's going to support, um, who you are, where you are, what you wanna do? Um, so we, we break down those jobs to be done. We, we innovated what, what we call at the client journey level, as well as the core foundation level, hopefully in the end, making it easier for our clients to connect with us.

Ed Andersen: (17:03)

So much to build on, on all those comments. But, um, going back to it, I think you asked originally what's digital first look like, I think as I heard that question, what I automatically thought of was, um, it used to be web first. Now it's mobile first and back to that obligation of making sure we're meeting clients where they are, they're now on mobile. I think with that opens up a lot of doors. Yes, we want these richer experiences. Obviously digital is a facilitator of that. I think your face to face conversations can be that much more impactful, meaningful. If a lot of the, the paperwork that you don't wanna do, the, the nuisance aspects of the job don't exist because digital can take those away. Um, can you upload a document rather than fax it or mail it? I think back to 1999 and how much of that volume was, even though we were on the web, we were digital, right. We were starting to plug into the internet. It was so much paperwork. It was so inefficient and that overall just degraded the experience across the board, not just digitally. So I think as digital can start to pull in these experiences, um, you're kind of enriching the entire experience. So yes, it's digital first. It's more on digital, but it's really everything, uh, improves with that, uh, evolution.

Chana Schoenberger: (18:21)

Definitely. Um, one aspect of this, this move to digital first is a lot of training is required, not just of the advisors who, you know, as you know, the average age of the advisor force is 55. So these are folks who didn't grow up with digital first, uh, but also investors who may not really understand how to do one thing or another. How do you train them to think of this as something that they can do?

Ilan Davidovici: (18:47)

It's such a great point. Um, you gotta make it fun, you gotta make it easy. You gotta show up where, and when the client wants you to, and the same goes for advisors. I don't know what your lives are like. We probably end our day, you know, looking on our phones and we probably start our day going what's happening in the world. Um, so much work and effort has gone into making, uh, learning at Edward Jones and in much of the industry bite size, digestible, uh, in time, you know, just in time as it's called. We don't wanna, it used to be, we would learn once a year, hopefully that would serve us over the, the coming random 12 months of experiences that we're going to have. Um, today it's much easier to, to find the right information and engagement in 10, 15 in 20 minutes, um, increments.

Ilan Davidovici: (19:34)

But, um, I I'll make one last connection before, before I pass it back in order to know what somebody needs to learn about you have to know who they are and where they are. And I keep going back to that core financial capability, which is having a first party data set, uh, about your clients, about your perspective clients. Um, we live in a world where I think Chana, you were telling us about an app in New York city that allows you to be known on, on floor three versus floor two, or in your, you know, this room versus that room. We live in a world where people are more willing to digitally share as much information as possible about themselves, but there's one key, uh, uh, there's one key piece of information, which is they have to be, they have to know that they're getting value back and they're willing to share information if it makes their life easier, if it enriches their life, if it creates a connection, whether that be synchronous or asynchronous, or whether that be digital or not digital, a connection that helps them in their life, they are willing. Oftentimes they are willing to share more information about themselves.

Mike Sha: (20:38)

I love

Mike Sha: (20:40)

Sorry, topic of, uh, of training. Um, mm-hmm, , I think there's two concepts that drive, you know, our thinking and our strategy. Um, one is digital is such a powerful tool for the home office because it provides them a canvas, which they can use to shape the client experience. You know, like before you did in, in classroom training of your advisors, you, you kind of try to inculcate their head with the way you want them to be giving advice, but then out in the real world, you know, they do whatever they want, right? When you're using technology between the client and the advisor, it turns out that experience that you're designing, using the software actually starts to become the foundation of the client experience. So if you want advice to be given a certain way, if you want needs discovery to happen a certain way, if you want to ensure that a certain compliance disclosure is read a certain way, you know, you can use that technology to actually shape the experience, which actually reduces the need for training, right?

Mike Sha: (21:41)

Because the, the, the product, the, the experience is partly controlled by the, the software that sits, between the client and the advisor, and then the other thing that, you know, it's, it's so funny. We, we have, um, someone on our team has spent, you know, 35 years in financial services has done probably years and years and years of training of bankers and advisors. And we were launching a product that they helped design together, and they made this comment that was just wonderful. Um, someone had asked, you know, how will training work for this new product that we had built? And, um, you know, this guy he's, he's, you know, almost 70 years old, his answer was there is not gonna be any training. And so I think the banker was like, that's strange, like everything we launch has training. And he basically said, do you get trained on how do you use your iPhone?

Mike Sha: (22:32)

You know, like that's not, that's not something you get trained on. You rely on really high quality design, right? If the product needs training, there's something wrong with how it's built, because people don't kind of tolerate being trained in the world anymore. They train themselves based on being able to figure out how to use something. So that's probably an extreme, you know, like we still ran a training session where we explained to people like how here's, how you do it, but you don't, you no longer need, should be relying on the training itself to make sure that customers know or advisors know how to use your products. You know, you, you need to build them in a way that, you know, people don't need to be trained in order to use it properly.

Chana Schoenberger: (23:14)

That's a really interesting point because yes, of course, consumer products now don't, don't have any sort of training, you pick them up. And I always find it fascinating that if you talk to a, a small child and you ask them to make a phone call the, that the older people will do this, but a little kid will do this, or, or this as they're making a phone out of their hand, that's what a phone looks like to them. Um, this brings up a point that, that I wanted to, uh, discuss, which is gamification. So this is the idea that everything is a game making it fun. As someone mentioned a minute ago, let's make it fun for them. Um, but this can sometimes be in conflict with the regulatory problems that, you know, companies have run into when things are too fun. And, um, you know, we're not, we, we have to think about finance in a, in a sober serious way and understand what the risks are. And it it's a requirement, both from a fiduciary standard and also from a compliance standard. So what can we do about this? How can you make finance fun, especially for mobile, without making people feel like they're, you know, playing Pacman.

Ilan Davidovici: (24:22)

It it's a tough conversation. I think you're referring to some of the regulatory conversations that have happened recently about what, you know, what is the effect of a nudge of a digital nudge at the right time and the right place to a client. And, and, uh, in particular to some of the, uh, you know, the game stop and, and, and fad stocks that so many people have jumped into, um, the, the larger conversation is what, what information do we have of, or what do we know that, um, we can use to help encourage and nudge people along their client journey? There's the flip side to every potential technology, uh, in, in having information that perhaps isn't always used for the best means. Um, we haven't gone far down the path of gamification, but we have found, um, as mundane as this might sound, that people tend to find that it's quite a bit of fun when they're doing well, and they have knowledge they're, they're informed, they're confident they're in control, they're secure, uh, along this path towards, wow.

Ilan Davidovici: (25:23)

I never thought that I would have half a million dollars or a million dollars, or I never thought I'd be able to retire and, and do the things that I'm able to do. So we tend to think about how can we actually make that picture of their future life as vivid as possible, which may not be gamification in the truest sense of playing a game or, or having questionnaires or, um, you know, there are different pieces of technology that we've seen, but we tend to pivot towards, um, making that future as real, as realistic as referable as possible, and, and building that deeply into the client relationship and into the continual planning that goes on between the advisor and the client.

Chana Schoenberger: (26:07)

Well, so what happens if people like to win, what happens when they start losing, because the market eventually is gonna have to go down.

Ilan Davidovici: (26:14)

That's a great question. There are those who say it's coming soon. I suppose we will see, um, within Edward Jones, uh, I'm interested to hear for Mike, Mike and Ed within Edward Jones, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, um, we had client conversations with every one of our clients, almost every single one of our clients, uh, within the first few days, which for us, for us was a, a great confirmation of, um, being, being deeply embedded with our clients. Um, but if you've done the right training up front and if you've helped your clients prep for the ups and the downs, well with the long term, serious investing, uh, you know, with the long term strategy in mind, we don't tend to find that, um, most clients want to exit the market in the down times, but you're right. That, that is, um, that is real at times.

Chana Schoenberger: (27:07)

'Cause nobody wants to lose right? You want the, the confetti bursting on your screen and presumably that doesn't happen if the value of your portfolio goes down or maybe it does, maybe it's just around trading.

Ilan Davidovici: (27:20)

Maybe it's a great opportunity to buy.

Mike Sha: (27:24)

I think you're so your original question was around gamification. Um, it's actually not a term and a topic we spend a lot of time thinking about, but there's two related topics that, you know, we do spend a lot of time thinking about. One is it's I think for us, it's less about making it fun and more about making it meaningful. And I think, you know, the, the industry has really missed out on an opportunity to make the experience a lot more personalized because we think making it personalized is the best way to make it meaningful. So, you know, if you, if you're talking about your plan and your retirement goals and your, whatever it is, um, that's a lot more interesting than the theoretical Monte Carlo chart of, you know, some generic plan. So how do you make the overall experience feel a lot more personal and a lot more relevant to the actual customer? That will engage them

Mike Sha: (28:17)

I think more than, you know, trying to kind of gamify it or make it fun. Um, so, you know, always thinking about how to make it personal. And then the thing that, you know, might be a technique from gamification is more, you know, the industry has built the experience model around infrequent heavy interactions, you know, the annual client review, the, you know, once a quarter meeting with the client customer, um, you know, these infrequent heavy interactions don't conform to the way we interact with most other things. You know, most other things we have more frequent, lightweight, you know, interactions. And, you know, part of what we like to think about is how can technology move us from a world of very infrequent, you know, heavy interactions to more frequent, lightweight interactions because that that's a better way to build a relationship with the customer. Um, and you know, we really think that both technology and remote interactions unlock a ton of potential to, to change the way the client experience actually feels to the customer.

Chana Schoenberger: (29:29)

Interesting. Yeah, no, that makes a, a ton of sense. Um, it, it is interesting though, to think about the, the number of times that you're going to meet with a client and, and how that's gonna happen in terms of digital versus in person. One thing that a lot of advisors told us as we reported on the pandemic was that, um, you know, digital meetings are fantastic for things like meeting with a multi-generational family because it's very easy. It's always been easy to get grandma and grandpa in the room, 'cause they're, they're happy to meet in person, but you could rare really get the grandkids to fly in to where grandma lives so they can meet with the advisor. And of course, if the grandkids don't know the advisor, that is a long term recipe for those assets leaving the firm. So now of course it's very easy for everyone in, in the family and, and all of their various professionals to come in and, and do a zoom meeting like we're doing right now. So this, this has been a big change, but of course that is a heavy interaction. The question is how can you do it over time so that you can just check in and, and see your accounts? And I don't know, maybe it's video, maybe it's VR, who knows. What do you guys think?

Ilan Davidovici: (30:37)

Yeah, that's right. I mean, we are a very heavy once in a while type of, of interaction industry and, and Mike is talking about light, uh, regular interactions such as opening your app and, and engaging digitally. And then there's also the middle, which is, you know, once we went to the pandemic, it was hard to have those moments where you were networking with people or bumping into people or going to a conference such as the one that we're at right now. So one of the things that we had to think about, um, right after the pandemic started was not just going digital for a hundred year old firm, which we did very quickly through the help of zoom and other tools. Um, but also things like webinars creating the opportunity. Um, and, and the, the webinar, you know, might be something of the past perhaps that, that, uh, someone thought of as that, um, kind of an old way of engaging.

Ilan Davidovici: (31:26)

But we found that if, if we create the ability for our 19,500 branches to do weekly or monthly or, or, uh, every other month webinars, they're, they're having that digital drop in where it's a, it's a soft touch, come, come talk to us about estate planning about retirement planning, about financial planning, whatever the subject may be. You have people hang out in, in the green room before or in the, or in the after room. And, and it's a way to, to turn these heavier once a year interactions to draw digital drop bys, and then hopefully into, um, regular interactions.

Chana Schoenberger: (32:00)

So almost like digital office hours.

Ilan Davidovici: (32:02)

Yeah. Makes sense.

Chana Schoenberger: (32:07)

And did you have time?

Ed Andersen: (32:07)

Yeah, we were talking about the pandemic earlier. All of us, obviously. And, and I think if there is a silver lining, as it pertains to our businesses, we we've expanded the ways in which you can engage. I think, you know, historically it was a make a phone call or see someone in person. And now I just think we've, we've so many different techniques and, and, you know, state the obvious, we're all different. Some don't wanna zoom, some don't wanna, you know, or newer generations, oftentimes don't wanna pick up a phone call, they'd rather chat or to Mike's point have that more asynchronous, um, interaction. So, you know, that one silver lining in my mind at least is the way that we could serve. Again, back to, I may sound like broken record, but meeting clients where they want to be, there is no one way. It's gonna look different for all of us.

Mike Sha: (32:51)

Yeah. And Chana, I love the example you brought up about kind of multigenerational. Um, the product that we've built that does facilitate remote is called Engage. And one of the most popular modules of Engage those interactive financial modules is the kind of intergenerational wealth transfer module. You know, where you can have a really natural conversation where it would make sense for the, you know, elder generation to invite their kids, to, to join and have a conversation with their family about finances.

Chana Schoenberger: (33:23)

Yeah. This is gonna be a much bigger thing as, uh, as time goes on. And as the boomers begin to retire and, and transfer their money. And it's, it's likely, I mean, at least our reporting indicates that it's likely to mean that a lot of different types of people become wealthy who were not before. So that's gonna be super interesting. Well, we're almost out of time. I just wanted to thank all of our panelists for joining us this morning. This was really very interesting. And I can't wait to see what sort of things you design next.

Mike Sha: (33:54)

Thanks for having us.

Ed Andersen: (33:55)

Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. This pleasure.