A fireside chat with Julia Carreon, MD at Citi Global Wealth.
Transcription:
Bill Sullivan: (00:06)
Good morning everybody. My name is Bill Sullivan. I'm Managing Director of Enterprise Relationships at Riskalyze. We at Riskalyze firmly believe that with the right technology, advisors can deliver at best in class client experience. That's exactly why we are so excited to partner for the next three sessions here at today's conference. First up, we have taking remote compliant engagement to the next level. Please give a warm round of applause to Tobias Salinger and Julia Carion.
Tobias Salinger: (00:42)
Thank you so much, Bill. Thank you all for being here bright and early on a Friday morning. We are going to take, some great advice and start with a video this morning, a very short video. All right now, Julia, a lot of those tools, and that kind of interface, looks familiar, but, when was that video made?
Julia Carion: (01:10)
Yeah, so I think anybody sitting in this audience right now are looking at that and saying, well, of course everything that you see there is absolutely what clients high net worth and especially in the upper high net worth expect from their advisor and their experience. Today, especially after two years of COVID, the video makes sense. All of it is just, what's the big deal, right? Well, that movie wasn't made two years ago, it's 11 years old, right? So made that movie six months after the iPad had been launched, it was based on the future of advice, white paper that I wrote after doing nine to 12 months of research with clients, advisors, prospects, and financial advisors. They were very clearly Tobi telling us that this is what they expected, completely seamless digital transactions everywhere they went. So if you think about though, what was happening in the industry at that time?
Julia Carion: (02:13)
Right? We were at an inflection point, we knew it was settling in that digital was going to be the future, but what did that look like? If you're sitting in my seat, we were right in between two very different things going on. On one side, we had the silent generation and baby boomers still largely in charge of budgets and they firmly believed some of them that clients would forever want to do business over an old Oak desk. On the other side, you had executives who were absolutely certain that robot was the future because we believed then right, millennials were coming up and millennials would only wanna do business with a robot. So actually what clients were telling us is that they expected something in the middle. They expected seamless transactions. They expected friction to be completely removed from everything that they did, and they expected to be able to meet their advisor over any kind of multiple touchpoints.
Julia Carion: (03:17)
So here we are 11 years later and I'll just relay something that happened to me personally, we're moving and I'm changing firms. In the last six months, the only way for me to roll over my, accounts from my former firm were literally by paper mail, right? I had to get a check on behalf of and I get this paper check. Well, our mailboxes are broken and we're moving. The check is lost three times. It took six months to do a rollover, and then because I left my firm, I had to execute my RSU and the only way for computer share to get me credentials for my account was by paper mail. Seriously, like 11 years later. So 11 years ago, I said we had about 20 years to get our act together and we're halfway through and I'm telling you right now, asset management businesses are sitting on friction all over the place. So I'll take a breath because it just is absolutely shocking.
Tobias Salinger: (04:26)
It is, you would think they would at least have a fax machine, or I just think about 11 years ago, I didn't have a smartphone. I had a rumor, it had one of those flip up in a keyboard, which I thought was very advanced at at the time. But, kind of shocking to think about 11 years ago, making that video. I wanted to ask you to relate a story, with the audience, that you told me earlier, about a billionaire who began to cry on the topic of digital tools. Can you tell that story?
Julia Carion: (05:04)
Yeah, it's a great story. So, when we were doing this kind of deep research about where we thought the industry was headed, because I care a lot, I think as long as there are people, right, technology should be about people. So we built some wire frames to imagine a multigenerational family with a lot of assets, being able to attend a portfolio review from multiple places at the same time, no matter where they wanted. So some could come in person, some could come over video and the ability to schedule that appointment would be with one click. So I asked our top producer, if we could go, show these wire frames to his clients and he said, fine. He picked some out and I said, no, I wanna go do this with every single client that is coming in the office today.
Julia Carion: (06:06)
He said, well the first family has the patriarch is almost in his eighties and he said, he's not gonna care about this technology at all and he said, but I'll let you do it anyway. So we bring our wire frames. We tell our story and the gentleman in the room starts to silently weep and everybody's quiet and everybody's looking and a little bit uncomfortable. His son said, "my dad was just diagnosed with cancer." He is giving his family to multiple children who have their own heirs and they're all scattered around the country. What had happened up until that time is because the hassle of scheduling an appointment for just himself and his wife was back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with their advisor, looking at their calendar and calling back because we had made it that anyone in the family could sign up for that meeting and attend in multiple different places.
Julia Carion: (07:08)
Remember, this is 11 years ago. He said, this is the first time that my family would be able to have a portfolio review all at the same time. And why did that matter? Because he made his fortune developing an espresso machine that was sold to espresso and his money, the billion dollars that he had now, was based on his legacy and his legacy was his life and he wanted to share that with his family. So I tell that story because we are in the business of enabling experiences for people with their money, which is their most important. It's important to them, because it's who they are. It's an expression of who they are and I have so much passion for the fact that we, as an industry have not made it all that easy to do business with us. Right, and if not us who, if not now, when, so of course we've made advances, of course things are getting better, but I don't think that it's fast enough in terms of the rails, that we have today.
Tobias Salinger: (08:20)
It is, so powerful. Wealth is people, wealth is family. Wealth is generations. You've brought up to me, a lot about, generation Z. They're an interesting generation, they look down on my generation as a geriatric millennial. So they're a challenging base of clients, how can remote client engagement, draw in generation Z, into this industry?
Julia Carion: (09:00)
So those of you who follow me on Twitter, know this guy.
Tobias Salinger: (09:06)
He's a must follow by the way. Yeah. I just have to say that.
Julia Carion: (09:08)
This is my son, Josh, he's 11. So let's take a minute to think about this 11 years ago, when I made that video, he wasn't born. 11 years from now, he will be graduating college. He will be entering the workforce. He will not be happy with the tools that he has to use when he goes to work, if we don't accelerate technology and innovation in our business. So why is it that, I'm convinced, this generation who is rising at a rapid rate. Remember I just said it was 11 years ago, it went like that, he didn't exist. 11 years from now, he's in the workforce right now. This kid is so savvy that he gives edits to my video producer and my video producer asks him for feedback on the videos he's producing, that I'm not even paying for, right?
Julia Carion: (10:20)
Because this kid is so digitally, native that we don't even know what's coming for us. And I wanna tell you why that is. It's because of haptic memory. I don't think that designers and technologists in our business pay enough attention to haptic memory. It's formed when we're little and it stays with us until we die. So it's one reason why generational disruption and digital disruption takes longer than we expect, right because it's with us. Silent generation, baby boomers, gen X, we still exist. Thank God. And we have different haptic memory generation Z is the first generation of human being to have a primary haptic memory of the smartphone, right? So they grew up using their mama's telephone at three years old, to play angry birds. That has shaped and formed who they are, and it will continue to shape and form who they are.
Julia Carion: (11:26)
I believe that it will accelerate disruption, where it's kind of one of those things where change is very, very slow and it happens, but then it happens overnight. So these are some statistics about the impending generational turnover that we're sitting on. And so I think, these times of, breaks, in the recession, in 2008 and potentially the recession that we're having now is a time to hunker down and really get some table stakes, right? Because this disruption is coming. Somebody just did a podcast this week that I watched, about the number of baby boomers that are retiring every single day and the, workforce gap and all of this. So this generational turnover that we are experiencing right now is significant. It's meaningful. And what we'll witness with the rise of gen Z, I think, is this expectation of hyper seamless, experiences. Again, I do, obviously we're innovating in pockets, but I just don't know that I think is fast enough.
Tobias Salinger: (12:31)
Well, it's such an important question facing the industry and, of course we don't have to get into any names here. It would be great, but we don't have to, I want to ask you, what are some of the main areas of friction right now? You kind of alluded to it earlier, what are, among the large incumbents, what are the main areas of friction in, meeting that, generational challenge?
Julia Carion: (13:05)
So I think it's on two fronts, right? I think industry executives are faced constantly with limited budgets and difficult choices. So obviously if you're an executive, you're thinking, okay, I need to be investing in those tools that are client facing, and how do you do that in a way, buy versus build and all of that. So they have that situation facing them. I think the unfortunate reality is that the internal team member tools often take a backseat to the client facing, and so it's a matter of threading the needle in a way to actually make both better. But, another thing that I wanna say is I am seeing opportunity for the industry itself to band together, to stop looking at each other, always like a competitor and figuring out how to work together to actually innovate in a way using our own shared rails that we have all built over time.
Julia Carion: (14:13)
Right? So an example of that is Zelle, which came out to, to combat Venmo. Citibank also recently announced something in the capital market space amongst its competitors to help each other this week. But another example of where I think we really missed the boat is in data aggregation, right? We, as a industry, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, should have been figuring out how to manage data aggregation as peers so that you didn't need mint. Right. We could have really changed the game if we had done that together, and really protected, I think consumers, right? You see, the fracturing of the business is not good for consumers. So you've got to think about that in new ways. I think the other boat that was missed, was after the financial crisis of 2008, when we didn't come together and tackle this notion of financial advice and, investment acumen together.
Julia Carion: (15:20)
Imagine if we had all come up with the same terminologies, the same similar marketing programs in the US, especially that would've been really powerful and we would have really changed the game in terms of the perception of we are just the bad guys, right. Selling product. So thinking about these things creatively and solving problems as an industry, I think is really important. Then depending on where you work, I always tell advisors, I spend a lot of time with advisors and clients and what I say is advisors are in an incredibly, rare position of having the ears of executives to tell them what their clients want and cuz innovation isn't about me. It isn't about a one person. It isn't about your CTO. It's about all of us working together to make sure that we're digitizing things end to end and really thinking about our consumer and figuring out how we meet them, where they are and not just where we think they are. Right. I mean, what happened with robo is that people who thought they knew better than other people were chasing that without really staying close to what were clients and prospects telling us.
Tobias Salinger: (16:39)
Wow. well I have, many more questions that, I'd like to ask you, Julia, but, I do want to open it up to the audience. We have a few minutes, to work with here. Does, anyone in the audience, have any questions for Julia about remote client engagement or should I continue picking her brain, oh yes, sir.
Speaker 4: (17:04)
Are you, I don't know how much this is remote client engagement, but how are you trying to convert some of your traditional banking clients, especially younger banking clients into wealth management clients, I guess, does remote fit into that transition?
Julia Carion: (17:19)
You mean in terms of bringing them up the scale up the relationship deepening, the relationship. So really, really important question. I think there is a huge opportunity for, I actually really love that question cuz there's a huge opportunity to engage the next generation in meaningful ways. I don't think that we have done enough of that. I go and talk to, one of the things that I talk about and learn from the ultra high net worth clients in particular they have often, older generations have often said we know better, so we're not asking you and for what you think about anything and if you have a large family business that you have built up over time, what I'm going out and saying to clients is you need to go ask your teenagers how to keep your business relevant.
Julia Carion: (18:19)
By the way, that has a twofold effect, it means that your kid is suddenly feels invested in that business. Whereas a lot of those people now grow up, inherit the wealth and don't have a purpose driven life. So I'm saying to people, you need to engage your teenagers. This is not even about 20 year olds anymore, engage their other gen people in the family household to find out what's relevant and meaningful to them. We need to be doing that more. There is a mindset I think, that, it just seems prevalent everywhere. That just because you're older, more and maybe that's true. Maybe that was true before, but I am here to tell you that the haptic memory of this generation is so powerful that you should be asking even kids what they think, you should be doing to stay relevant. There are a number of ways that we should be doing that advisors should be talking to and asking for that next generation opinion, not in a way that's patronizing, but in a way that really seeks to learn.
Tobias Salinger: (19:29)
Other questions, sir?
Speaker 5: (19:41)
Level problem, and then you ended with I versus, disruptive problem and so we've got lenses. So I guess representing Incumbent in the industry talk about, should do procedurally to solve this problem.
Julia Carion: (20:09)
Well, so first of all, Jim, I think we should be working together to digitally enable our own rails, as much as possible collaborating with each other and getting rid of that mindset. Then I think it's really so, as somebody who everybody in this room knows has worked at at not Fintech's, but actually at the incumbents. What I really think we need to do is not try to do it all, but figure out based on your space, based on who you are in the industry, what is it that is your bread and butter? Where are you making your money today and how are you taking aggressively taking the friction out of every end to end process that you are sitting on? That is a core competitive advantage. And I think that that's different at all of the major firms, not hugely different, but marginally different. I think what's happening now from my lens. When I talk to my peers at competitors is everybody is doing too much. So everybody is trying to, eat everything at the table all at once. Instead of just eating one thing that tastes good all the way to the very end. I mean, it's really a fascinating dynamic and I think if people wanna win, especially the incumbents, they gotta figure out where they're winning the most and just be excellent at it.
Tobias Salinger: (21:45)
Yes. Ma'am
Speaker 5: (21:46)
What you think about gen Z? .
Julia Carion: (21:56)
Yeah. So I love that question. I think so what people get wrong about gen Z is that they think that they're digitally only and want to do be digitally only all the time and how they're very different. I know, I think we're running outta time, but I wanna say this is just interesting. Millennials. grew up with devices largely one-on-one on their own because digital devices were very new. So it ended up being a one-on-one experience for them. What many people miss about gen Z is that they are using social. They are using digital right to socially engage with each other. So they're changing the dynamic of social media in a way that I think we are unprepared for as a business. So what I really think that they'll be bringing is hyper accelerated new ways of thinking about planning, financial advice, how to engage with people in a social way that is yet to be written.
Tobias Salinger: (23:05)
Excellent. I think we have time for one more question, if there's anyone else in the audience, then I'll just wrap it up with, with just one last question for you. I wanted to just ask, for your predictions, why don't we close, thinking about the future we were just talking about gen Z. So what are your main predictions for where client engagement will go over the next decade? Yeah,
Julia Carion: (23:38)
So I really, and by the way, I know a lot of, you know, me in the room, I don't pretend to, be some especially wise person and or futurist or any of that.
Tobias Salinger: (23:51)
But you are a wise person!
Julia Carion: (23:52)
But thank you. I really feel like personalization, hyper personalization is really where we're going because in our business we naturally know a lot about the client and there is a lot that we can do to deliver very, this is kind of an old lady word, sorry, but lovely experiences that are contextualized and make sense and are not either on one end, unnerving, and yet on the other end enable convenience. So that really goes to data. So data is critical. It is everything and figuring out how to deliver hyper personalized advice and experiences is absolutely essential. I think that's really my main, that's really where I think is gonna be very important that we get it right.
Tobias Salinger: (24:57)
Excellent. Well, let's have one more round of applause for Julia Carion, Managing Director of City, Private Wealth City, Global Wealth, excuse me.