Richard Napolitano – Phew, what a year.
 
There’s nothing like a time of adversity to forge a new company. Many thanks to our clients, investors, and especially our employees for their commitment to our mission of building a great WealthTech company that does well as a business and does good in the world.
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One year into my tenure here, there were lots of learnings, building and growing in a pandemic. We made it through, and we are positioned well for the future, helping clients achieve Digital Transformation.

Digital Transformation of wealth management—what does that mean?

Digital Transformation WealthTech means leveraging technology to:

1. ​Increase advisor productivity and drive sales/AUM growth
2. Increase advisor satisfaction
3. Sell more and different product types to your clients:
   • If you are an insurance broker-dealer, sell more investments or banking products
   • If you are an independent broker-dealer, sell more banking or insurance products
   • If you are a bank broker-dealer, sell more insurance or investment products
4. Recruit and retain more advisors
5. Reduce your costs as you build your business
6. Reduce your risks and increase your regulation compliance with:
   • SEC
   • HIPAA
   • FINRA
   ​• SOC 2
   • GDPR/CCPA
7. Empower advisors to become an investor’s “personal CFO”

In my discussions with broker-dealers, these benefits have emerged. But what does Advisor360° bring to the table?

Today, many wealth management companies have been using homebrewed systems or manual processes to operate their businesses. While these systems and processes have brought companies to this point, what about the future?

The paradox of choice
Some companies have chosen to assemble their own solution stacks from the parts bin that is the WealthTech industry. There are so many parts to choose from.

Choice is good, until it is not.

​With integrated technology, advisors, IBDs, and RIAs experience:

• 44% more clients served
• 73% higher AUM
• 20% more time for clients
• Reduced risk exposure
• Large reduction in costs

So, how do we produce this value?

It’s all about the data. It’s all about how we gather, collect, cleanse, and present the data. We have over 400 direct data feeds that we ingest daily; this data is reconciled, scrubbed, and enriched using automation, AI, and in some cases human intervention. Further, this cleansed data set is stored in what we call our Unified Data Fabric™ (UDF). The UDF includes all customer information, such as trades, books and records, products (aggregation), documents, compliance information, goals and objectives, workflow, etc.

This data is not organized by account, rather it is organized by household.

This allows for a holistic view of the client between and among all the software components of the Advisor360° platform, beyond what other WealthTechs describe as a “unified experience.”

Advisor360° is not just a common UI with single sign-on. We offer a seamless experience because the UDF presents a common household data view from the home office, through the advisor portal to the client portal. And you cannot buy your way into this experience or UDF, it must be built.

Further, this experience is delivered as an enterprise-class SaaS offering to broker-dealers and their advisors and advisors’ clients. “Enterprise-class” means hardened, secure, and highly available. The Advisor360° system is a hardened enterprise-class solution that has been delivered at scale for years and meets various SOC, FINRA, and SEC regulations.  

What have I learned?
The wealth management business is ripe for modernization through technology (a.k.a. digital transformation). Wealth managers (broker-dealers and advisors) are under pressure from:

1. Changes in regulation and compliance requirements
2. Increasing investor expectations around returns and satisfaction
3. Low interest rates’ impact on their business models
4. Their need to drive product sales, AUM growth, and advisor satisfaction and productivity
5. Keeping up with the technology arms race in financial services

The market needs a full-featured AND easy-to-use deeply integrated platform for broker-dealers, their advisors, and clients. This software must be delivered as a service (SaaS). This WealthTech (Advisor360°) must be delivered as an enterprise-class solution at scale to be the trusted platform for broker-dealers to: 1) grow their business; 2) reduce their costs; and 3) reduce their risks.
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The benefits to broker-dealers and their advisors and clients are significant—unlocked with the Advisor360° suite of software that can be taken in their entirety or as bundled components. Born inside of a broker-dealer, we have now evolved into an enterprise software company that is delivering our software as a service to other broker-dealers.

​That’s our digital transformation.

Richard Napolitano is Advisor360°’s Chief Executive Officer, ensuring every team in the company is focused on a simple strategic vision: creating outstanding WealthTech products for our clients’ success.

Doug Wood – When a wealth management company makes a decision to “bank” on core, supplier-provided, business critical software or services that plug in to the heart of the company’s day-to-day workflow, they aren’t looking for a vendor/customer relationship.
 
Wealth management companies are looking for more: a true, deep, and total partnership they can rely on over the long term.
 
For a supplier in this kind of partnership, this calls for a shared understanding of every aspect of the client’s relevant business and ongoing requirements. This calls for responding to and anticipating a client’s needs with consistent, predictable execution and market-leading capabilities that equal or surpass the competition.
 
In addition to all of that, a true partnership calls for unwavering, quantifiable, excellent service and support. At Advisor360°, we refer to this level of support as Extraordinary Systematic Care.
 
“Extraordinary” in the way we respond to and exceed the needs of our clients. “Systematic” in the way we proactively leverage state-of-the-art tools and practices while measuring everything we do. “Care” in the way our people deeply commit to serving our clients, ensuring they succeed.
 
Our clients are at the top of their games. Earning the initial right to partner with them at that level, and then re-earning that right every day, is our primary focus.
 
Are your vendors true, deep partners? Are your vendors up to the challenge your mission-critical business represents to them?

Last month, Rich Hart asked if your wealth management platform was up to this kind of challenge—and then showed that Advisor360°’s platform is uniquely constructed for this role in your business. Jenn Sawan followed up by emphasizing the service component of an adaptive and responsive SaaS offering, and referenced real-world examples that show how we’ve responded and why that is so critical.
 
My role at Advisor360° targets Customer Success & Operations. My team’s responsibilities include supplying a trustworthy, enterprise-class infrastructure for our SaaS platform. Also, as that platform is delivered and improved, my team ensures that our customers are immensely successful as they come online and use our offerings effectively. In those roles, we can never be satisfied, and instead must show clients we are constantly improving.
 
What’s the difference between a “Supplier/Client” and a “Partner/Partner” relationship?
 
Client expectations of a partner related to service and support go very deep. Partners align and collaborate at every stage of the product lifecycle. That alignment is necessary during the sales, customization, onboarding, go-live, and road mapping phases. It is also central to every aspect of ongoing use, as well as service and support.
 
If you’re my partner, and you care about my business, then you understand that I don’t want to need your service or support.
 
Partnered clients expect that you have taken every opportunity to deliver on a platform and its surrounding infrastructure with an eye toward avoiding the need to resolve issues and to ensure continuous operation indefinitely.
 
To meet these client expectations, the supplier must:

1. Build a high-quality, dependable, and resilient SaaS offering
2. Ensure those characteristics extend beyond the offering to the infrastructure it runs on, and the service and support model that backs it up
3. Monitor all operations and infrastructure proactively, anticipating and avoiding errors
4. Deliver intuitive and adaptive interfaces that guide users to successful outcomes
5. Offer training options designed to increase efficiency and overall proficiency
6. Supply useful, well-constructed, and evolving self-help features including context-sensitive help, online resources, FAQ, and other reference material

 
Even with all of these, problems may be encountered. At these times, the strength of a partnership will be most thoroughly tested.
 
Clients demand a partner that:

1. Understands the nature of the impact on the client’s business
2. Plans for success across the duration of a long-term relationship
3. Positively and proactively engages with the client in advance of specific requests or encountered problems
4. Reacts nimbly based on the nature of the client’s issues
5. Expects to be held accountable, measured, and inspected at every step during the resolution process
6. Deploys allocated, expert-level staff that are ready to respond
7. Shows exceptional problem solving and diagnostic skills
8. Constantly learns from experiences while showing particular intolerance to recurrent problems
9. Listens clearly to the client, every step of the way, learning from that interaction

 
No supplier meets all of these objectives all the time. But a supplier partner needs to achieve at a very high level and continuously improve.  
 
At Advisor360°, our partners are our business. Their success is our mission.  

​Douglas A. Wood is Senior Vice President for Customer Success & Operations at Advisor360°, ensuring clients have a true partner, and the service and support they need to achieve anything.