Investment Technology Blog

How to demonstrate advisor value and build trust through better communication. For many advisors, developing reports means running numbers. They spend their time pulling data from disparate databases, adding a little bit from the accounting system here or an update from performance returns there. Then they have to format the document just to make it presentable. When advisors are stuck in this manual mindset, reporting is a major drain on time and the end result is not meaningful.

When advisory firms look to improve their technology, there's almost always pressure to make those moves fast. Firms know that time to market can make or break the impact of a new feature or tool, and that upgraded technology will be far less impressive if takes too long to get it in front of advisors and clients. But rushing important upgrades can create a patchwork of solutions that becomes expensive to maintain and ultimately thwarts advisors' abilities to deliver any real value to clients.

Over the next 40 years, more than $30 trillion will pass from baby boomers to Generation X and millennials. It is generally considered to be the most significant transfer of wealth in American history. For financial firms and their advisors, this transition represents opportunity -- if they’re prepared to win over this new generation of investors, that is.

You've just gotten a call from one of your most important clients. She's in town unexpectedly and wants to meet with you this afternoon to review her investments. What do you do? If you're like many investment advisors, you scramble. You cancel other client appointments and calls. You put off  other work. You call in support staff, and together you go on a treasure hunt, looking for information in a half-dozen Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, pulling data from the firm's automated systems, then writing commentary and cobbling it all together into a report that looks...well, cobbled together.