Recorded at the FSI OneVoice 2022 Presented by:
Advisorpedia interviewed the president of Wealth Consulting Partners, LLC, Gavin Spitzner, at the FSI OneVoice Conference in February, 2022.
"When it comes to advisors and the use of technology, the adoption numbers are actually way overstated. Because advisors, you'll see numbers, like 85% of advisors have CRM and 70% are using financial planning, etc. But the actual usage of those tools is probably in the 15 to 20% range of using it to its full capabilities. They're using it for what they're comfortable with. They're not rethinking workflows, client engagement again, so they really need to look at the tools they have, there's some amazing tools out there that are being underutilized.
The data that's resident in a lot of systems, planning data, portfolio management data, CRM data is sitting there, and it's not being utilized for the benefit of the client. This is where advisors can add tremendous value. Robo advice is good and need to be rethought in terms of how advisors use it. In the practice, it's been viewed as a either or there's Robo or there's me as a human advisor. The reality is, clients want that really strong digital engagement, but they also want the human element we just saw recently, WealthFront sell to UBS. WealthFront was all about pure digital clients pay us to not have to deal with a human, I think we've seen where we've started, that war has been won.
So it's about advisors, rethinking the role of technology to engage clients, and also free them up to be able to focus on the higher value activities that clients really care about.
What's given me hope, when it comes to advisors and the use of technology, I think part of it is what we've gone through with COVID, just as clients have hit the reset button when it comes to what they're doing with their lives, the great resignation, changing jobs, early retirement advisors are not immune to all that. So they're rethinking their value. They're rethinking the tools, what's going to give them time back in their day, what's going to make an impact on their clients lives. Same thing with with enterprise home offices, they're also rethinking their relationship with advisors, how they can add value to them, help them do more. So just as we're we're seeing some fee compression, more so on the asset management side than the planning and advice side, we have to be able to deliver more to the advisors and help them deliver more to their clients. So whether that's tax management, estate planning, college planning, decumulation. There's a whole host of things that clients desperately want somebody to engage with, with them on that not all advisors are because they're wearing too many hats.