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Long before COVID made working from home normal for the rest of us, working away from the office — in places like coffee shops & client homes — was business as usual for financial advisors. Enabling your financial advisors to work effectively when out of the office yields significant benefits to both the advisor and the firm they are working for.

The secret ingredient to a successful financial services cloud implementation?

It’s a critical success factor that is independent of the tools and technology being implemented: organizational change management.

Wealth firms and independent advisors have invested heavily in systems & process design to improve their client onboarding processes. Even with that effort, the average time to onboard a new high-net-worth client is 41 days. In that time period, your new clients aren’t merely waiting. They are frequently asked to provide the same information multiple times, or manually complete several similar forms. 

Advisors expect a personalized approach to help them feel connected and sure that their clients will transition to their new firm with minimal hassle and disruption to their portfolio. Onboarding journeys can start with a welcome note and take the advisor on a one-to-one guided tour based on live data, which pushes them into desired selling behaviors. 

The average financial advisor in the United States is more than 50 years old; only 5% are under the age of 30. With more than half of advisors spending as much time planning their own retirement as they plan for their clients’ retirement, the table is set for a massive disruption in existing advisor/client relationships. 

Even without the pressure of these demographic shifts, a key area wealth managers have struggled with is recruiting and developing new advisors. 

2020 changed every industry, and wealth management is no exception.

Wealth management faces significant disruption on several fronts — primary among them are increasing customer expectations, demographic shifts, and a rise in regulatory obligations. 

Let’s dive a little deeper into these leading wealth management trends.

Growing a base of satisfied and engaged policyholders will pay significant dividends for any carrier, agency, or brokerage. A great customer experience isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore – your customers demand it. 

Last week, I had the pleasure of chatting with Phil Ostberg from Salesforce Industries. Phil is the Senior Product Manager overseeing Vlocity Claims functionality and we discussed the power of combining FSC Insurance and Vlocity Claims.

It takes a significant amount of time, effort, and resources to secure and onboard an agent before they sell anything. Many carriers have had experiences in which an agent sells one opportunity and then never sells another product. How does a company avoid this loss of ROI? And how can a carrier take an agent to the next level to become (and stay) productive?

We cannot yet know the long-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak has presented major challenges to all kinds of financial service businesses as they rush to shift strategies and tactics in response to changing customer needs. For insurance carriers, likely effects of the pandemic will include slower growth, additional pressure on profitability, as well as a permanent shift in the ways they engage with employees and customers alike. Even before the crisis, a key area carriers have struggled with is recruiting insurance agents and quickly developing new producers. We say it’s time to overhaul the standard process.