Beacon Flash

The conversation around AI keeps gaining momentum, and for today’s advisor, it’s something that can be tapped for a variety of uses. In the latest Beacon Flash podcast, we’re looking at one particular use – data collection.

CEO of Quik Forms Richard Walker joins Beacon Strategies’ Managing Partner Chip Kispert for a fascinating discussion on data management innovation and the evolving landscape of data gathering. Let’s face it, the investor journey comes with a lot of form filling, and that’s nobody’s favorite pastime.

And, as Richard explains, advisors should see AI as a tool in their arsenal, not a threat. "People are not going to be replaced by AI, people are going to be replaced by people who use AI better. It's just like when the word processor and Excel came out. If you had those skills, you got better paying jobs, and you moved up faster than people who didn't."

During the conversation, Richard highlights the critical yet often unnoticed role that efficient data handling plays in various industries, and envisions a future where AI transforms data gathering by making it more intuitive and secure.

Overview
Using Forms to gather Data (05:24)
The Next Generation of Data Gathering (08:15)
Benefits of Modern Data Gathering (13:13)
Flash Word: Artificial Intelligence (24:23)

Resources
Richard Walker's LinkedIn
Quik Forms Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

The advisor-client relationship has evolved from the days of an annual face-to-face meeting. Today’s investors expect more communication, and more personalized communication, from their financial advisors, who are under pressure to be readily accessible, proactive and well informed at all times.

This is something that ReachStack’s CMO, Data Scientist, and Advisor Content Strategist Brendan Kenalty understands deeply. “We need to scale up the communication, so the question becomes, how do we do it?” he says.

In conversation with Beacon Strategies’ Managing Director Chip Kispert on the latest Beacon Flash podcast episode, Brendan shares insights about how communication is transforming the way wealth firms work with their clients.

He talks about the importance of firms building their relevance using communication in order to grow and scale, touching on three trends that support this:

1. The shift from do-it-yourself tools to done-for-me services.

2. Using personalized communication to get in front of clients and increase advisors’ visibility.

3. Using communication to deliver actionable insights to advisors.

Brendan and Chip also discuss how advisors can leverage technology and data-driven insights to enhance their performance and deliver superior client service. Many of today’s communication tools incorporate AI-powered content sourcing and automated distribution elements, ideal for the modern advisor-client relationship. 

The question is, are enough firms making the most of this technology?

As Brendan says, “It will be interesting to see how we adjust these client and advisor relationships over the next few years.” 

Overview
Advisor Communication (01:24)
Technology Communication Tools (09:29)
Personalized Communication (15:33)

Resources
Ben Kenalty's LinkedIn
ReachStack's Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

With the pace of innovation in financial services, today’s advisors have an array of tools at their fingertips. But using those tools in the right way to manage a client’s portfolio can be daunting. They’re looking for positive outcomes, manageable costs, and minimized risk.   

For Matt Radgowski, COO of Halo Investing, helping advisors and investors achieve their goals through the development of pioneering solutions is what drives him. And powerful outcomes require powerful tools. “What keeps me up at night is the pace of innovation outpacing the ability to harness it,” he says.

In a chat with Beacon Strategies’ Managing Director Chip Kispert on a recent Beacon Flash podcast episode, Matt talks about how aligning outcomes is key to guarding investments, including what Halo has termed “protective investing.”

That protection is what both advisors and investors are looking for.

Solution providers and advisors are constantly on a journey to generate returns within client portfolios while including an element of downside risk mitigation, “Whether that's protecting against downward market movements and volatility, or securing of income,” Matt shares.

He talks about how the advisor/investor relationship is shifting, with an increasing focus on questioning the process – What impact are we looking to make with this investment? What outcome are we driving towards? How can investors actually personalize investments? How can they make a portfolio really reflect who they are?

Today’s advisory landscape has the framework and the technology that enables advisors to achieve more. Take Halo, creating an environment in which the advisor gets the best experience in terms of product features. As Matt explains, “The best protection, the best income, the best growth opportunity, at the lowest cost.”

Overview
Investing (02:18)
Product Evolution (10:57)
Technology (15:10)

Resources
Matt Radgowski's LinkedIn
Halo's Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

The advisor marketplace is in a state of flux. The question is, where is the market heading in this ever-changing ecosystem? And what trends should advisors be paying attention to the most?

It’s something that Ken Hullings, LPL Financial’s Executive VP of Enterprise Business Development, is in a prime position to speak about. Ken’s team takes a personal, consultative approach to helping wealth management executives and leaders to enable them meet their objectives and then some. Thanks to conversations with over 20,000 advisors last year, the team more than understands the needs and concerns of today’s advisor.

And Ken shares those insights with Beacon Strategies’ Managing Director Chip Kispert on a recent Beacon Flash podcast episode. “We get to hear a lot of what is on their mind,” says Ken, “What are they worried about? What are they looking for?”

Today’s advisors are keen to explore different options, Ken explains, and the movement of advisors is coming back after last year’s market volatility saw that movement slow down. “It’s back to what we would call the normal market,” he says, “around five to six percent of advisors in motion every year.”

Ultimately, notes Ken, advisor behavior is always going to be driven by investor behavior, which means advisors are looking for firms that are ahead of the curve in things like digital tools and aggregation.

Differentiating themselves is key to keeping up with investor behavior and demand, and Ken shares a number of suggestions to help achieve that differentiation. Do you have the time that you need to build and strengthen client relationships, for example? Do you have the technology solutions to deliver what they need?

“Can I provide my clients a great experience? Can I get to know them and their families deeper than anyone else? And do I have solutions that can help them achieve what they're looking to achieve?”

LPL believes the best outcomes for investors come from working with an advisor, but advisors need more than just great relationships to differentiate themselves from the competition. That’s why last year alone the firm invested over $300 million in new technology capabilities.

Overview
Advisor Marketplace (01:39)
LPL Model (10:35)
Enterprise Management (19:01)

Resources
Ken Hulling's LinkedIn
LPL's Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

In a piece of music, the bridge acts as a connector – true to its name – often bringing together the chorus and the verse.

For Sheryl O’Connor, professional musician turned CEO and founder of IncomeConductor, financial planning is the bridge in wealth management. “How do clients generate wealth through investing? And how do they use that wealth to meet their goals, which usually involve saving, spending, and passing that wealth on to others?”

On a recent Beacon Flash podcast episode with Beacon Strategies’ Managing Partner Chip Kispert, Sheryl explains that the role of a financial advisor is to ensure his or her clients are financially secure. To do so requires taking a look at their entire balance sheet and approaching financial management as a continuous arc, from working years to retirement. 

Traditionally, Sheryl points out, from a product perspective, there have been two camps: investment and insurance, both competing for client assets, with the investment camp further divided into the wealth and retirement plan camps. 

“From a client's perspective, it really doesn't make sense to approach the issues that they have this way,” she says. “It really doesn’t serve them well.”

Instead, being a true fiduciary and acting in the client’s best interest means using products from both the investment and insurance sides based on which product best meets a specific goal. Advisors can no longer be successful simply managing clients’ investment portfolios and running Monte Carlo simulations.

To Sheryl, the future of the advisory business requires restructuring to address each client’s full financial lifecycle, creating a service model where the advisor becomes the go-to professional for all things financial. 

At IncomeConductor, which empowers advisors, their firms and their clients to plan for retirement more simply, more accurately and more reliably, Sheryl and her team bring together the science of financial planning and the client persona. The science, she explains, focuses on rates of return, tax efficiency, withdrawal rates – all traditional elements of financial planning, while the client persona focuses on client goals and concerns, biases and attitudes, and their appetite for risk, along with their health and longevity.

“I think advisors need to surround themselves with the professionals and resources to address their client's needs,” she points out. “And that includes legal accounting professionals, social services, community services, grief services, having those curated professionals around them at the ready when their clients need them. Can you just imagine how that would increase client satisfaction, client loyalty, and client referrals?”

Overview
The State of Financial Planning (02:52)
Retirement (10:32)
Financial Planning Software (20:09)

Resources
Sheryl O'Connor's LinkedIn
IncomeConductor's Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

Cybersecurity can keep us up at night. It’s always a major concern for advisors, even when you feel like you’ve done everything right to the best of your ability. It can feel like a never-ending battle. FINRA keeps the pressure on advisors to uphold the most rigorous cybersecurity protocols, but it isn’t just them. From your firm to your clients, everyone is hyper-focused on ensuring private financial data is always secure.

Fortunately for advisors, there are people like Geoff Moore. As Chief Information Officer for our partner, Valmark Financial Group, Geoff leads a team of experts who use technology to solve business challenges and manage the cybersecurity of Valmark and its Member Firms. He has served on multiple industry committees such as the FSI Operations / Tech council, and in 2022, he was selected to the Surge Ventures Advisory Board for his expertise in cybersecurity for financial service firms.

On a recent Beacon Flash podcast episode with Beacon Strategies’ Managing Partner Chip Kispert, the self-proclaimed technology enthusiast shares his best tips for advisors looking to batten down the hatches. “We’re like the perfect target,” shares Geoff, noting that independent advisors work with primarily wealthy families and often have a small team without much technology or cybersecurity awareness.

Geoff recommends advisors consider:

1. The Smell Test – A lot of scamming occurs via email, and none of us are immune. Advisors must pay attention to avoid costly mistakes. Does that email make sense, is that really coming from someone the advisor knows?

2. Making Tough Decisions – Compliance and cost intersect, and not always in an optimal way. When compromises are made, advisors should err on the side of security and compliance, but the cost must make sense for the firm.

3. Improvements Are Essential, But Unpredictable – “Even if it's something as simple as just doing a single sign on integration. I usually tell somebody it's either going to take me 15 minutes, or it's going to take me two months.” As firms update client portals and add new services, it’s great for clients. But advisors should recognize it could take much longer and become far more intense of a project than they might expect.

Right now, Geoff is most excited to see advisors continuing to focus on their work with clients. “We're helping people realize their dreams in the future.” And to that end, he reminds advisors to stay diligent and up-to-date on their cybersecurity and tech infrastructure, because we are always “one trapdoor away from something happening.”

Overview
Cybersecurity (00:48)
Compliance and Costs (09:29)
Improvements Are Essential, But Unpredictable (18:36)

Resources
Geoff Moore's LinkedIn
Valmark's Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

Fintech and financial services marketing has always been Kelly Waltrich’s playground. 

From her days as a CMO at major players eMoney and Orion to her new role as co-founder and CEO of the marketing and growth engine design firm, Intention.ly, Kelly has not only seen the evolution of marketing in the financial services space, she’s helped to drive it. 

And what she’s seeing now, working with over 35 financial services and financial technology firms to transform the role of marketing in their organizations, is that the miseducation about marketing in our industry is slowly being corrected.

Advisors, who have long been taught that marketing could be cookie-cutter or set it and forget it in order to be scalable, are learning that personalization is the key to success.

During her conversation with Beacon Strategies’ Managing Partner Chip Kispert on a recent Beacon Flash podcast episode, Kelly laid out the five non-negotiables for advisors and firms looking to leverage marketing to grow their businesses in the new year:

1. The appropriate resources and budget. The highest-functioning businesses think about marketing as a revenue-generating program, and allocate resources to it accordingly. 

2. A differentiated point of view. Whether firms are interested in attracting investors or recruiting advisors to their firms, one of the most important things they can do is develop and communicate a unique point of view. People want to work with people they relate to, and unfortunately, so much of the messaging we see today is too generic to be relatable.

3. An understanding of how people want to consume content. Especially when it comes to client experience, Kelly points out, advisors need to take the time to learn how to communicate with the investors they serve. Do they prefer video to the written word? Are they looking for weekly outreach, or is once a month perfectly sufficient? 

4. The marriage of personalization and automation. And when it comes to communication, Kelly says, firms can’t rely exclusively on automation. Setting up onboarding email workflows, for example, doesn’t relieve the advisor of the task of personalizing those emails for each new client.

5. A realistic view of the competitive landscape. Finally, firms need an understanding of what’s around them. Kelly points out that almost daily, she talks with the leadership team of a firm building what they believe is the next best thing in fintech – when in fact, that next best thing already exists and has captured the majority of market share.

Kelly’s best advice for firms looking to grow in 2023 is to take a fresh look at everything out in the market that represents them, from their website to Linkedin to blog articles to advertisements. Ask: “Does this truly represent who I am, or is there an opportunity for transformation?”

Overview
How us Advisor Marketing Evolving (02:05)
Personalized Marketing (05:55)
Recruitment Marketing (10:13)
Automation (15:18)

Resources
WealthManagement.com and FMG Study
Kelly Waltrich's LinkedIn
Intention.ly's Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

A recent Fidelity Charitable study indicates that advisors who have added charitable giving to their suite of services have experienced 3x growth (approximately 30% more assets) than advisory practices that don’t offer charitable giving.

In a recent conversation on the Beacon Flash Podcast, Niharikah Shah, EVP, Chief Growth Officer at TIFIN Wealth told host and managing partner of Beacon Strategies, Chip Kispert, why she believes this is the case. 

Charitable giving, Shah explained, gives advisors a unique opportunity to provide clients with a more personalized experience. Helping them put together a charitable giving strategy not only creates a more comprehensive approach to financial wellness, but it also enables advisors to better understand what their clients care about the most – which in turn, deepens relationships and can lead to consolidated assets, more referrals and greater loyalty. 

That hyper-personalized client experience is key to advisors’ success, and Shah believes technology unlocks the ability to deliver it at scale.

Innovations in data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning have accelerated the way the wealth management industry facilitates stronger long-term client relationships that are based on a foundation of client delight, trust in their advisor, and recommendations based on personal preferences, timelines and goals. 

Tune in to the full Beacon Flash Podcast episode to learn more about advances in technology utilization and find out why using technology in a meaningful way to help both advisors and clients is what inspires Shah to get out of bed in the morning.

Overview
Charitable Giving (02:43)
Communication with Clients (17:15)
Adopting Technology (22:14)

Resources
Fidelity Charitable Study
Niharikah Shah's LinkedIn
TIFIN Wealth's Website
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

Sid Yenamandra is no stranger to data complexities.

As the CEO and founder of Entreda, he’s spent more than a decade focused on helping advisors and broker-dealers navigate what he calls the ‘Wild West’ of cybersecurity and compliance. But still, he believes, the wealth management industry is only scratching the surface of its data management problem.

On a recent Beacon Flash Podcast episode, Beacon Strategies’ Managing Partner Chip Kispert sat down with Yenamandra for a conversation about cybersecurity, compliance and data management, as well as Yenamandra’s latest entrepreneurial initiative, Surge Ventures, a new kind of venture platform built specifically to enable companies to test ideas more quickly, solve problems at an accelerated pace and ultimately get to market faster.

When it comes to data management, Yenamandra explains, organizations are amassing data at an exponential, non-linear rate. And particularly for broker-dealers, whose offices have become more dispersed than ever as a result of the pandemic, managing ownership of and responsibility for all of that data has become even more challenging.

Data organization, governance, privacy and compliance complications are plaguing the industry, and multiple stakeholders – advisors, broker-dealers, custodians, tech vendors, CRM players – only compound the problem by making it more difficult to visualize exactly how much data any one organization has. 

“The data problem is an octopus in my opinion,” Yenamandra says. 

Solving it will require focusing on one facet at a time. One area he believes is ripe with opportunity is the permissioning of data ownership and data rights.

“How do you dole out ownership and manage the ownership of that data in an effective way, and how do you do that continuously as you’re growing data at an exponential rate?”

Every organization, he explains, is focused on more data. More data equals more insights equals better business decisions – but as more data is being amassed, they’re losing sight of how it’s being organized and governed. 

“That keeps me up at night,” he says. “But I’m also excited because I feel like it’s an opportunity.”

Overview
A Changing Industry (05:35)
Trends in the Wealth Management Space (17:15)
Data and Cybersecurity (22:14)

Resources
Sid Yenamandra's Linkedin
Surge Ventures' LinkedIn
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Beacon Strategies' Website

With SEC and FINRA regulations constantly evolving and new, more sophisticated cyber threats emerging every day, cybersecurity and compliance are becoming increasingly top of mind for financial advisory firms.

On a recent Beacon Flash Podcast episode, Beacon Strategies’ Managing Partner Chip Kispert sat down with Aaron Spradlin, Chief Information Officer at United Planners, for a conversation about what it means to create a ‘culture of compliance,’ why it’s so important, and how United Planners has done so at their firm.

First, Spradlin defined culture of compliance as organizational buy-in to the importance of compliance and improving change management, as opposed to resisting new controls or looking at compliance as the ‘business killing division.’

Spradlin brought up the idea of ‘Cowboy Ethics’ as it applies to financial services and compliance, meaning that just because regulations don’t explicitly prohibit something, doesn’t mean you should do it. We shouldn’t be trying to skirt the edges, Spradlin explained. We should always be acting in the best interests of those we serve.

To that point, Spradlin believes it’s wealth management and investment advisory firms making the most significant advancements towards building cultures of compliance, while technology vendors are slower to understand and adopt their compliance obligations. Most vendors tend to believe they’ve found a silver bullet compliance technology or that a SOC II audit covers all their cybersecurity needs.

At United Planners, Spradlin and his team have turned cybersecurity into a recruitment tool by providing innovative solutions to advisors’ problems that also align with what’s best for the firm. For example, providing a private network removes data from the open internet, which is great for cybersecurity, but it also increases network performance and speed, which improves the advisor experience.

Over the next three years, Spradlin says, moving data infrastructures off the open internet will become the norm. Firms that don’t keep pace with cybersecurity and compliance trends by requiring authentication, offering IP restriction, managing known devices and segmenting data will no longer be in business. 

Overview

Cybersecurity 1:25
Culter of Compliance 3:16
Where The Industry is Headed 11:34
Vendor Due Diligence 15:36

Resources
Chip Kispert's LinkedIn
Aaron Spradlin's Linkedin
Beacon Strategies' Website
United Planners' Website