Most wealth management firms offer a wide range of products and services, the provision of which requires a host of middle- and back-office applications. Unfortunately, as a firm’s technology tools multiply, the complexity of its information infrastructure intensifies, and it becomes increasingly difficult to aggregate this information meaningfully to perform everyday business activities.

The Holy Grail for wealth management firms is to provide a truly holistic client view that enables financial advisors to make strong short- and long-term financial recommendations for their clients. But to achieve this, financial advisors need to be able to leverage a single wealth management information platform to get streamlined, rapid access to all important information about their client, without hunting through multiple applications.
           
Recognizing this need, seasoned customer relationship management company Pivotal Corporation has developed a tailor-made customer relationship management (CRM) system for wealth management. We spoke with Jason Rushforth, Pivotal’s global vice president, Financial Services, about the company’s vision for a unified broker information platform.

You’ve talked about Pivotal CRM as a “hub” in the broker platform. What do you mean?

The technology needs of a wealth management firm are too complex to be served by one or two systems – it is unavoidable that they are going to need a growing number of best-of-breed tools to operate. This in itself is not the problem: the inefficiency fallout comes when financial advisors have to open six different applications to retrieve the information they need to answer a simple question from their client. This is not sustainable, and it does not foster good financial advising.

As a CRM company, we of course feel that a good customer relationship management system is an essential part of a wealth management firm’s technology infrastructure. But beyond that, we feel that CRM is the perfect tool to pull together information residing in other systems and databases, making it more useful and accessible to financial advisors. For example, to give clients updates on portfolio valuation and trade status, an advisor may need to access both a portfolio accounting system and a trade order management system. By pulling this information into a deep client profile within the CRM system, this information is available instantly, in context, and without toggling between multiple systems.

How does this benefit the firm?

First, there is a clear impact on productivity. Analysts estimate workers spend up to 30% of their workday looking for the information they need to do their jobs. That is painfully inefficient, and thoroughly unnecessary. Bringing all the needed information together in a single resource lets financial advisors work faster and more fluidly, cutting costs and increasing productivity. But more than that, a unified 360-degree client view helps them work smarter because it reveals full client value, including household affiliations, as well as cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, helping advisors grow their book of business. Firms can institutionalize best practices by embedding them in the system workflows. Giving advisors these kinds of insight-generating tools also helps attract savvy advisors to the firm, who recognize the company is investing in ways to make advisors happier and more successful.

What trends are you seeing in the application of this “hub” model?

We’ve seen this model applied very successfully across a range of firms. What we’re seeing is that as firms see how well it’s working, they are looking for ways to extend its usefulness to wealth managers. As advisors’ roles become increasingly consultative rather than transactional, mobility is becoming a major factor in advisors’ success. Pivotal offers a range of options for extending the value of Pivotal CRM to users on the road – from disconnected laptop use to BlackBerry-resident applications. Our vision is to enable wealth management firms to equip their financial advisors with rich client insight that grows their book of business – anytime, anywhere.