In a belated push to catch up to other wealth managers with sophisticated digital tools for investors, Wells Fargo is taking a page out of Facebook's playbook to help advisors gather more assets.
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Clients can use the feature to view net worth after linking their external financial accounts, as well as portfolio performance, market indices, FICO scores and credit card reward balances. They can also set financial goals and tag or upload photos of friends and family members who are relevant to those goals, while their advisor monitors the activity to give tailored feedback.
LifeSync is set to launch on March 28, initially to 2.6 million eligible clients across the bank's wealth channels: Wealth Brokerage Service, its bank branch-based advisors; the employee channel in Private Client Group; and the independent advisors at FiNet. Over the next 12 months, Wells will roll out the new feature to the rest of the more than 28 million customers on the bank's app, Michelle Moore, the head of digital for Consumer and Wealth and Investment Management at Wells Fargo, said in an interview.
"The mobile app is the most frequent way that our customers interact with Wells Fargo by a factor of 10," Moore said. She added that the firm's goal was to help them create a "one-stop shop super app" for their entire financial life in the app, which would also help advisors develop "broader, deeper relationships with their clients."
Wells is late to the digital game: Rival Bank of America, the parent of Merrill Lynch, launched a similar goal-based planning tool on its app and website, called Life Plan,
"Advisors for the first time are able to see, oh, you have a million dollars in a Schwab self-directed account. Or you have these alts that are managed by Goldman. We didn't even know you have these," industry recruiter Louis Diamond said.
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"It's pretty clear from other competitors that have consolidated reporting, that includes reporting on outside assets, that it is a very effective tool to engage advisors," Diamond said. "We hear it all the time."
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"It's almost like, if you don't have this capability, you're far behind the eight ball."
'One-stop shop super app'
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To that end, LifeSync is part of what Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf called "our multiyear digital transformation" on an earnings call last month, where he noted that active mobile app customers had grown by 4% in 2022, following upgrades that made the user experience more intuitive. "We are investing heavily in modernizing the IT infrastructure and the way we develop code," Scharf said.
LifeSync also offers a news feed with articles on market events and evergreen personal finance content written by Wells Fargo staff. The bank will later add news curated from the external media landscape and republished to the Wells app by publications such as the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and the AP, a company spokesperson said.
Key among LifeSync features is a goal-setting interface that advisors can monitor and run planning scenarios from, including Monte Carlo simulations and analyses of Social Security and retirement plans, through a partnership with wealthtech advisor solutions platform
"All the goals, dollar amounts, time horizons, that clients input into LifeSync feed into the advisor workstation, into an application called Advice Connect," said Michael Liersch, the head of Wealth and Investment Management Advice and Planning at Wells Fargo, in an interview.
Once the advisor has come up with their projections or scenarios, they can "share it back with the client in the mobile app," Liersch said.
All in the family
Clients will be able to name family members or friends and goals relevant to each of them — for example, they could list a child and indicate that they want to save for that child's college tuition. By uploading photos of loved ones, they can develop a stronger emotional attachment around those goals.
The entire process can become a social activity, as clients introduce their friends and family to LifeSync, potentially bringing in more assets through referrals.
"Perhaps our clients or customers want to invite someone to [the] LifeSync experience and share that information with them," Liersch said. "Think of a child that they're educating, or a grandchild. And just expose that information and say, here's why I'm doing this, and let's talk about it. What are my expectations? How are you feeling about me helping you out with this particular goal?"
Clients can use these moments to expose future heirs of their wealth to the Wells Fargo brand, imprinting it on them at a young age before other banks get in front of them.
'Like Facebook or Instagram'
Wells doesn't have goals yet for the amount of new client assets it hopes to bring in through this new tool, Liersch and Moore said. Liersch said their goal at this point was "creating a delightful, excellent experience for our clients" and helping them "make the most of their money."
"It looks like Facebook or Instagram, creates a very visual experience — uploading pictures of goals, connecting who matters most to you, uploading their pictures," Liersch said of LifeSync. "Whether you think of it as [asset] flows, or you think of clients wanting to do more with us because of those experiences, though, that's an outcome of creating something that clients and customers are asking for."
Just like with Facebook and Instagram, the longer a customer stays on LifeSync, the better.
To that end, the feature's primary metric for success will be engagement. "How often they're engaged and how long they're engaged in these experiences are going to give us a lot of information," Moore said.
LifeSync will not have any built-in referral mechanisms or buttons to prompt clients to bring outside assets in-house, though, a company spokesperson said in an email.
