FinTech—the technology available to help financial advisors enhance, streamline and grow their practices—is growing by leaps and bounds. Just take a look at the Kitces Financial Advisor Technology Map! One of the many ways FinTech can help advisors both serve clients better and boost revenue is by making it easier to personalize advice and add value to client engagements.

If you follow our BreakThrough Advisor Podcast or read this blog on the regular, you know we talk about why personalization is important a lot (personalized advice, messaging, engagement type, etc.). We talk about it a lot because personalization distinguishes top advisors from the rest of the pack—the top advisors who are running million dollar practices.

Consider one compelling statistic: Advisors who connect with clients regularly (at least once a month) attain 56% higher gross revenue than those who don’t.

A whopping 56% higher! This statistic comes from RBC Wealth Management’s Richard Beckel, who leads the firm’s practice management group. And these monthly touch points need to be more meaningful than a generic mass email or birthday card. They need to speak specifically to what’s really on the client’s mind, what’s keeping them awake at night, their pain points.

As Beckel explained, “It’s a consistent pattern of touches that you could almost systematize so you are always connecting with your clients. It’s getting in front of your clients’ needs, wants and wishes and wowing them by reaching out to them before they are reaching out to you.”

FinTech helps advisors “get personal,” systemize processes and fuel organic growth

How do you stay ahead of the game, provide proactive advice and systemize things, so you’re regularly prepared to reach out to clients before they even think about reaching out to you? FinTech.

During a recent episode of the Breakthrough Advisor Podcast, Engaging Client Advice Around Moments That Matter, InsurMark Virtual CMO Jack Martin and his guest Philipp Hecker, CEO of FinTech firm Bento Engine, discussed the role of advice engagement in creating exceptional customer experiences. The two also shed light on how technology can help advisors engage clients at the right time, with the right message, using the right mode of communication.

Early in the conversation, Hecker referred back to Kitces FinTech Map and the burgeoning, 3-year-old category of Advice Engagement. As the name implies, Advice Engagement technologies help advisors engage and serve their clients and prospects in more efficient and impactful ways.

According to Hecker, “Everybody wins if and when advisors do the right thing and serve their clients with comprehensive advice. Not only does that lead to better client experiences and outcomes, but also, the advisor wins in terms of organic growth. Organic growth goes up via loyalty, net promoter score, share of wallet and referral rate. All of that is well understood in terms of research, and advisors probably observe the same dynamics in their own book of business as well.”

As someone who has his fingertips on the pulse of marketing and FinTech tools used by InsurMark advisors, Martin says, “When advisors get to that level of personalization, magic happens. From a KPI perspective, we see conversion rates skyrocket. Clients are also more likely to trust the advisor at a deeper level, which translates to two tangible benefits. First, loyalty, which means the revenue streams continue. Second, clients are more likely to have an ‘aha’ moment at a cocktail party saying, ‘Wow, you won’t believe what my financial advisor just did for me.’” (We all want client evangelists, right?)

FinTech can help advisors scale around ‘moments that matter’

Hecker’s company Bento Engine developed technology that prompts advisors to communicate with clients based on moments that matter—milestone moments that trigger distinct wealth management risks or opportunities. Some of those moments are age-based and highly predictable, while others are more reactive (marriage, divorce, having a child, buying/selling a business, moving to a retirement community, etc.).

As an example of an age-based milestone, when a client is turning 50, that’s a good time to have a conversation about making catch-up contributions to retirement accounts. Or say a philanthropically inclined client is turning 70 and half years, that’s a great time to discuss utilizing QCDs to maximize the impact of philanthropic giving and/or optimize tax savings.

These proactive engagements build trust and goodwill, which helps solidify the advisor-client relationship. As Hecker explains, “When you lead with personal, proactive, timely and impactful advice that goes beyond a product or solution and truly focuses on the client and their needs and opportunities, that is a premier way of showing how much you care.”

Hecker also noted that much of the advice advisors share at these milestone moments goes beyond being “feel good or the right thing to do.” Oftentimes, it’s also “quantifiable and value add to the relationship.”

The one milestone conversation you should have with every client

Martin and Hecker discussed another milestone moment that most 62-year-olds get wrong—when to start taking Social Security benefits. As a financial professional, you know your clients are leaving big bucks on the table if they take Social Security too early, yet many people do it anyway. Why? They haven’t had a timely conversation with their advisor about it.

According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, roughly 90 percent of Americans should wait until age 70 to file, yet only about 10 percent do. For those who file at age 62, “the median loss for this age group in the present value of household lifetime discretionary spending is $182,370.” Talk about quantifiable and value add!

FinTech, like the software Bento Engine provides, can trigger advisors to engage with clients for critical, milestones conversations like these. All of these moments that matter represent major opportunities for advisors to lead with advice and capture money in motion.

Bento Engine not only provides heads up alerts, it also gives advisors—all embedded into the CRM—compliance pre-approved impactful materials to leverage in multiple formats (because different clients like to receive information in different ways). By the way, advisors also love how fast and easy it is to integrate Bento Engine into their existing CRM systems.

We can hook you up with the FinTech solutions your business needs

As an advisor development organization, InsurMark prides itself on partnering with product and solution providers that help our advisors maximize opportunities to grow their practices. Bento Engine is one of the many FinTech solutions we’re excited about.

To learn more about the FinTech and other resources InsurMark recommends, contact us at (800) 752-0207 or connect with us online.

As an ADO – Advisor Development Organization™, InsurMark provides solutions to meet the ever-evolving needs of financial professionals with a mission to protect and enhance the financial security of every home in America.