ADVISOR PRACTICE MANAGEMENT | THE BIG Q
We Asked Advisors for Their Best New Tech Solutions. Here’s What They Said.
By
Steve Garmhausen
April 19, 2022 2:26 pm ET
Financial advisors: If there’s a pain point or frustration in any aspect of your practice, you can be sure that someone has developed a new piece of software to help you, or is currently working on it, or soon will be.
To find out which new programs are worth exploring, we periodically ask advisors to weigh in with their own experiences. Thus the topic for this week’s Big Q: Describe a piece of tech you’ve recently adopted that you’ve really been pleased with. Here’s what six advisors had to say:
Domenick D'Andrea
Domenick D’Andrea, financial advisor, Cetera Investors: I’ve been using Riskalyze since February of 2021. I have 27 years in the business. In my first 26 years, you’d ask a client, are you conservative, moderate or aggressive? The bulk of the people don’t even understand what that means. So I’d have to go back and really do a detailed explanation. And then they’d end up saying to me, “What do you think I should be?”
I’m exceptionally happy with the elite version of Riskalyze. Now when I go to a client, I engage with them. I’m not asking if they’re conservative, moderate, or aggressive. They have a series of questions that make them think, and they make decisions and get involved in it. At the end, they get a risk score: Zero is ultra conservative; 99 is aggressive. Most people feel comfortable when they get to the number, because they understand how it came about and what it means.
And then I’m able to design a portfolio that falls into their risk number. I’m able to tell them that I’m picking the funds or advisory accounts that I think are the best ones for their situation.
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On the Reg BI [Regulation Best Interest]side, the great thing with this program is that it produces an investment policy statement on the recommendation. So now I can give that to the client and have them sign it, and I’ve covered myself, because I know I made the right recommendation.
Nancy Daoud
Nancy Daoud, private wealth advisor, Ameriprise Financial: My favorite app right now is theAmeriprise mobile app, where clients can do every single thing right from their phone. It’s fantastic; it’s actually even more user friendly than the desktop. Clients can be almost anywhere and sign things or transfer money or look up something. It’s so user friendly; we have found it to be a real game changer for the client experience.
The thing that is even cooler is this Glance app, which allows any one of my team members to be on the same screen with a client. So if they can’t figure out how to do something, they click on this Glance tool, and we can see their screen and guide them through it. This has been especially effective with older clients who are just so scared of all the technology. We get one of our 20-something team members with them, they walk clients through it, and make it like a game. And the clients realize, “Wow, I can do this; this is easy.” They feel so empowered, and they feel great about it.
Alyssa Jennings
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Alyssa Jennings, financial advisor, Edward Jones: The most impactful technology that I can implement with clients is a tool that helps propel relationships forward faster. It’s called My Priorities. It’s a digital tool and it functions like a quiz. There are 15 different priorities that clients will work through. The priorities are presented two at a time, and clients choose which one in each pair is the most important to them. At the end, the client is presented with a list of their prioritized values. And we get to talk about that as a group. So that tool in particular has been very useful.
It’s ongoing, so we’ll revisit it over time. For example, I went through it last year with a client who has been with us for almost 10 years. He laughed when we got to the “major purchases” value. He said, “You know, if we had gone through this when I first got divorced, I wanted a motorcycle, and that would have been one of my top priorities.” Well, he had bought a motorcycle and he used it to work through the aftereffects of the divorce; he would go on long rides every week and have that time to himself. As we talked last year, he was realizing that he doesn’t really use the motorcycle that way anymore. It’s sitting in his garage unused. And maybe it’s time to sell that motorcycle and let somebody else get the value out of it.
Keith Spencer
Keith Spencer, financial planner, Spencer Financial Planning: Income Lab is my pick. It’s been a game changer for me. I’ve used other financial planning software, but one thing that always bothered me is the Monte Carlo probability-of-success percentages. You put in a client’s numbers, and it spits out that you have a, you know, 67% probability of success. I’ve always found that to be vague and unsatisfactory, especially when it becomes client facing.
Income Lab uses all the same calculations, but it goes even deeper based on 150 years’ worth of market returns, and it incorporates longevity settings. It’s client friendly, so you can say using a slider, “I expect to live longer than most people my age,” or, “I expect to live not as long.” Based on all of that, it says you, Mr. And Mrs. Client, will be able to spend, say, $11,000 per month on an after-tax basis.
It provides a very concrete number for a client, not “a 67% probability.” And it builds in risk-based guardrails as well. If a client has, say, a $1.5 million portfolio, it says that if your portfolio goes up to $2 million, you can take a $700 increase [in spending] per month. If it goes down to $1.2 million, you have to take a $300 decrease. So it’s very clear in terms of, here’s the number you can spend, and here are the guardrails around that number.
David Vallieres
David Vallieres, chief operating officer, Synergy Capital Solutions: I’d like to tell you aboutClear Teams. It’s a workflow management system that sits on top of [CRM platform]
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Salesforce . When Synergy began working with Hightower [Synergy was bought by Hightower in 2017], we were super excited to get Salesforce. We thought it was going to solve all of our workflow management problems. And then we pretty quickly realized that it was like we got a Ferrari engine with no transmission. It wasn’t letting us connect all the workflows we wanted.
So we created our own language, and made it work for our team. And then Hightower approached us and said, “You guys are working really efficiently, is this something that we could share with the rest of the Hightower ecosystem?” Clear Teams was born out of that. And it became a collaboration, where myself and a few other Hightower advisors would say, “Here’s what we think is going to work best.” And then Hightower would go back and build that, and then they’d bring it back to us and let us test it. It’s been an ongoing journey for the last couple of years. And it’s unique because it’s advisor driven.
Al Yambor
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEN LOVE
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Al Yambor, wealth advisor, Sequoia Financial Group: We’ve been really happy with how Holistiplan’s 1040 diagnostic tool has enhanced our client experience. We don’t believe that you can provide holistic financial advice without having an in-depth understanding of the client’s tax return. And not every financial advisor has the same abilities as a CPA. The tool analyzes and extracts key information from a client’s return. This has allowed us to have thoughtful conversations about what information on the tax return really means for the client’s financial picture.
The tool looks at where the client’s tax situation is today, and finds opportunities for future improvement. This has allowed us to share actionable insights on strategies like bracket topping [where an individual converts enough of their IRA to go to the edge of their existing tax bracket], and taking advantage of lower tax brackets to complete Roth conversions. It’s also helped us identify ways clients can be more strategic in their philanthropy, through strategies like gift bunching with donor advised funds. And it has identified opportunities for clients to donate RMDs [required minimum distributions] they don’t need to charities.
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