Financial Planning's Innovation Awards

The Innovation in Wealth Management AI Awards will recognize and celebrate outstanding individuals' and firms' achievements in developing technology and implementing solutions that improve the growth and scalability of wealth firms, and enhance client engagement and experience.

Transcription:

Brian Wallheimer (00:10):

Sticking around. We are starting our inaugural innovation awards. Throughout the last two days, you've had a chance to listen and learn from some of the best and the brightest. Those harnessing new technologies to help you scale your businesses, find new clients, build deeper connections with old clients, inform investing decisions, and so much more. We're going to start the program tonight by honoring our rising stars. This is a little bit separate from the Innovation Awards, but honestly, our rising stars are people who are early career planners who are making a difference in the industry and for their clients already. This is more than just doing the job. These are people who are out there volunteering, mentoring, pro bono work creating literacy programs and so much more, and in so many ways they're also innovators. So none of them were able to come tonight. But I do want to talk a little bit about what they were doing and why we honored them this year. First up, Natalie Colley. Natalie started her career as a chemical engineer in pharmaceutical manufacturing, but she grew up in a household that wasn't financially secure and it fueled a passion for helping women like her mother take control of their finances. Today she specializes in helping women who have gone through divorces. She's a partner and Senior Lead Advisor at New York-based Francis Financial. She leads the firm's investment committee and works pro bono with women who have financial needs. We give a hand for Natalie.

(01:35):

Next up is Jack Heintzelman. Jack's parents were entrepreneurs. In his formative years, he was watching them struggle through dark economic times. I think we all remember those. At Boston Wealth, he has an eye toward making the firm of the future. He's helped create the Empower Ed Financial Wellness and Literacy program designed for 401k companies and their employees. He's the leader of the FPA New England Next Gen Committee and a member of Next Gen National. So it's here for Jack. Ben, Henry-Moreland. A lot of people come into planning as the second career, but I don't know that we've had anyone as a rising star who was a former opera singer. I really wish he was here tonight. Now, Ben Henry-Moreland has been a Financial Planner and now he's the Senior Financial Planning Nerd at Kitces.com. He writes about tech taxes and legislation. In his words play a significant role in affecting the understanding of complex issues and shaping conversation for so many people in the financial planning industry. So Ben Henry-Morland.

(02:41):

Next up is Autumn Knutson. She began her career teaching in elementary school and counseling students in high school. And when working with a wealth manager herself, she was inspired by the work and wanted to do something similar. In a few years, she became the lead planner at Facet Wealth in Baltimore, and she's recently started her own firm, styled Wealth in Jinx Oklahoma. Autumn Knutson. Danny Lohrfink started at Goldman Sachs where he was wound up as VP of Private Wealth Management at SoFi. He saw that people weren't occupied building wealth, excuse me. People were so occupied with building wealth that they weren't really thinking about how to pass it along. It led him to co-found wealth.com, which helps advisors build estate plans, which we all know is a rapidly growing part of the industry. Thank you for Danny Lohrfink. Christopher Stroup. He started in the petroleum engineering industry and found that the company he worked for in the Times we were living in were not terribly accepting of his being an L-G-B-T-Q man. So at Abacus Wealth, he focused on L-G-B-T-Q planning needs, spearheaded its pride month pro bono activities, and now he's founded just here in 2024. Silicon Beach Financial in Santa Monica, cheer here for Christopher.

(04:06):

And last but not least, Gennadiy, Todd fled political unrest in the former Soviet Union. He lived in what is now Ukraine and he came to the United States and started work as a physical therapist, transitioned into wealth management where he was with Hunt Valley Wealth in Maryland with a nonprofit creating assets, savings and hope. He works with low to moderate income families in Baltimore. He volunteers with an organization called Savvy Ladies, providing pro bono financial planning services to women to help them improve financial literacy. Again, Todd. Alright, so onto the next part of our program, the Innovation Awards. I'm going fast. Mason's going to kill me.

(04:51):

We open nomination for the Innovation awards. And whenever you start a new program like this, you wonder if the word is going to get out, if you're going to get a lot of nominations, how it's going to play in the industry. And I can tell you we didn't have to worry about that. We were not only pleasantly surprised with the number of nominations that we got, but also with the quality of those submissions. And in so many cases it was difficult to go through those spreadsheets and pick out just one winner in each of these categories. The best part about saying that is that AI clearly has a bright future in this industry. I don't think we had to get to this point to understand that over the last two days, but seeing, we're going to honor a few companies here tonight, but there are dozens of others that were out there putting forth all of the wonderful work that they're doing for AI and tech in the wealth management industry.

(05:48):

So these awards that we're about to hand out were announced last month on financial planning.com. They're split up between those developing technologies and those that are implementing those technologies and their wealth businesses. We're going to hand out honors for marketing, client onboarding, portfolio and investment strategy, lead generation, specialized planning, automation, client engagement, and professional developments. After we make those presentations, two of the firms that win those awards will be honored as our innovators of the year. We've not announced those. So those are surprises. You all get to hear it first. If there's a representative to accept the award, please come up. I'll hand you an award. I'd like you to come to the middle for our picture and then we'll move on to the next award. And when we're finished up with all of these, please join us for our cocktail reception to congratulate everyone. So first up, innovation in Marketing Technology. This word goes to Snappy Kraken, connecting with clients these days. Connecting with clients these days takes personalization, which as we know takes time. Snappy Krakens email builder technology allows advisors to rapidly craft customized marketing content, personalizing messages, engaging headlines, brand consistent images, open rate of over 40%. I know most of you would love to hit, have a number like that on your email marketing. So it's helping advisors connect with clients and saving them time so they can spend it with those clients. Join me in welcoming Snappy Kraken up to the stage.

(07:43):

Thank you, Snappy Kraken. Next up, innovation in marketing. This goes to RBC as we just discussed, making connections with clients is paramount and it's more difficult than ever. As we're inundated with emails, ads, calls for our time. RBC Wealth Management's Campaign Central allows advisors to send personalized messages to clients at scale, recurring messages, birthdays, other greetings. Nearly 43% of RBC wealth advisors are using it and they're seeing a 55% open rate on those emails. So welcome to the stage RBC Wealth Management US.

(08:40):

Thank you.

(08:47):

Next up is Innovation and client engagement. RBC Wealth Management, AI powered Insights partnering with Tiffin AG. That's the program that RBC submitted for this category. It's helping advisors track client behaviors and respond to their financial movements. Who's moving funds due to an inheritance selling a house, a business, these sorts of things. Major major opportunities for their advisors and one in three of the money move events, excuse me, one in three people who are being contacted about these Money Move events are Moving Money with RBC. So next up, innovation and specialized planning technology award is going to FP Alpha. FP Alpha is a firm that's been successful in helping read extract data and analyze complex documents for some time. Now, the estate snapshot rapidly summarizes key components of a client's estate plan, produces clients with deliverables and easy to follow visuals, helps advisors better explain potential scenarios and opportunities to their clients and formulate action plans. So also helps advisors identify liquidity events, creates a referral source with attorneys and does all of this in minutes rather than hours or days. FP alpha.

(10:43):

Next up is innovation in portfolio and investment strategy. And this award is going to Orion. Orion's tools include Redtail speak a ChatGPT integrated, real-time communication tool for advisors Orion Compare, as well as the data-driven portfolio comparison tool, which was released this March. This technology streamlines the portfolio comparisons for advisors so they can quickly customize portfolios. He uses Orion's portfolio accounting tool, Orion Risk Intelligence, Orion Planning, and Orion's BFI 20 tool advisors can rapidly generate presentation ready portfolio scenarios and get AI generated talking points to use with clients and prospects within minutes. Got some Orion fans out there. Next up, innovation and lead generation technology. This award is going to Wealth Hawk. Wealth Hawk is an powered prospecting platform. It scrapes the internet daily to find data on these in so-called Liquidity Events and Money on the Move events. This creates leads for advisors and also integrates a ChatGPT style interface to write personalized messages from advisors to these clients. Since January Wealth Hawk has identified more than, well, that's when we talked last 300,000 client prospects for advisors Wealth Hawk.

(12:38):

Next up innovation in professional developments. And this award is going to Nationwide. Financial marketing integration and enterprise innovation in digital units. The tool that Nationwide submitted here today, they worked with Morgan Stanley Wealth Management to create this and it creates tax efficient retirement income planning training in the metaverse so folks can sit with a headset or online and have interactive educational and training experiences. More than half of the people who have used this preferred it to the standard training that they normally take, and more than 60% said they were looking forward to opportunities to train in that way, Nationwide.

(13:40):

And next up is the innovation and client onboarding technology award. It's going to DNA Behavior client onboarding might be one of the most menial and time consuming tasks advisors have to do with the AI digital scan system. DNA behavior is helping in just large amounts of demographic data advisors have on their clients scouring the internet for information. Clients have voluntarily shared about themselves in social media posts, statements made to the media, these sorts of documents, and develops likely psychological traits and can match 4,000 personality traits with 92% accuracy. And then help determine where advisors are fit with clients. Congratulations, DNA behavior.

(14:42):

All right and the last award before we get to Innovators of the year is innovation and automation. This is going to Savvy Wealth. They're not here tonight, but I'd like to tell you a little bit about Savvy Wealth Submission. They were looking for a suite of time saving solutions for advisor and they came up with an AI powered advisor dashboard that automates client communications, portfolio management, and the client onboarding processes provides real time insights and proactive alerts that guide the advisor on when and how to interact with their clients. The goal of reducing back office operation time by 35%. So congratulations to Savvy Wealth. Alright, and now the moment we've all been waiting for it's time for the Innovators of the year before I announce them. Real quick, one last round of applause for all of the award winners so far tonight, please. Again, difficult to make these choices here, but at the end of the day, a couple firms stood above the rest and we want to honor them tonight as innovators of the years on the tech side. Our first interview of the year, Orion, it is just been a Mike Wilson day on stage really.

(16:26):

All right, and finally on the planning side, our final award for interview the year goes to RBC. It has been an honor to talk about these firms and it's been a thrill to learn about the ways that they're shaping the industry over the last couple of days. I want to thank everyone here for their innovative spirits being at the forefront of new technology, especially something like AI that is moving so quickly, it takes time, dedication, and not a little bit of courage. Thank you all for being here. Please join us for a cocktail and some conversations and safe travels back home.