3 Takeaways from the 2018 BISA Annual Convention
March 15, 2018 by Katie Condon
Last week, BISA members traveled to sunny Hollywood, Florida, for the BISA Annual Convention to connect with fellow bank insurance and securities professionals, discuss best practices in an evolving industry and learn from industry experts from around the country. Author and speaker Connie Podesta kicked off the event with a presentation on leadership styles, followed by SigFig’s Mike Sha, who discussed the digital wealth management model. With a variety of breakout sessions on Thursday — not to mention Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s keynote presentation — there was no lack of educational and inspirational material to draw from.
This year’s BISA Annual Convention continued to serve as a pulse on what’s happening in the industry today, as well as where it’s headed. Even if you couldn’t attend the convention, your business will benefit from considering better ways to help your customers and providing more value than the competition. In general, much of the discussion centered on technology, automation and how to use both to better serve clients. These three ideas from the convention are important to keep in mind, especially when devising new business strategies for the year to come.
In his opening keynote presentation, “The Death of ‘Robo-Advice’ and the Birth of Digital Wealth Management,” Mike Sha challenged the audience not to compartmentalize all of their services, particularly digital advice platforms. Although there has been a lot of discussion lately about leading with a digital advice model in order to respond to the needs of younger clients, he argued that all the elements of your product offering should support each other. Be it dedicated field advisors, bank advisors, a call center or digital advice, give your clients the power to define the kind of relationship they want and then customize solutions that speak directly to their needs — the key is to evolve with them. Why? Because most customers don’t want to stay in one channel. They might read an email and then come directly to your office to speak to someone. Perhaps the next time, they want to do it all online. Configuring your services to allow your clients to get what they need when they need it will only function to improve their relationships with you.
The temptation to jump onto the latest tech trends because “everyone else is doing it” is tempting. Software certainly is changing the world every day, and the majority of banks and credit unions have already implemented or are considering a digital advice platform. Still, it’s crucial to consider why and how your financial services company is integrating technology. It’s likely a combination of human and digital advisory services. In the “How Banks Are Taking the Next Step to Evolve Digital Strategy” session, Will Trout, head of Wealth Management Research at Celent, noted, “Human-led engagement naturally lends itself to more human-led proposition, but I am seeing a huge expansion of technology offerings. I believe at end of day what can be automated will be automated; we will see an increased automation process, but human advisory won’t go away.”
By pairing digital advice with a human advisor, your business can offer a truly holistic viewpoint for your clients. Consider, for instance, a digital product offering that generates more accurate advice, consistently incorporating risk and compliance factors. As powerful as this is, it isn’t necessarily helpful to someone who has a lot of questions. When you offer these products in tandem, both sides win. Your advisors get to maintain a relationship with their clients and ultimately spend less time on report generation, and your clients receive well-rounded advice.
Finding and retaining new business is a challenge for all service providers. At the convention, many BISA members voiced concerns over how to attract new clients as well as leverage existing business, particularly as they shift to different service models. In the Planning 101 session, Kevin Hughes, the Executive Vice President of Sales for MoneyGuidePro, mentioned that “everyone needs and deserves a quality financial plan.” However, the selling model has traditionally focused on the more affluent customers; they get the lion’s share of advisory services and products because they can pay the most for it. Of course it makes sense to focus your efforts on the most profitable business, but remember that there are other options and opportunities out there. Providing the option of lower cost financial advisory to clients, particularly those who are already purchasing your other services, can open the doors to further sales opportunities. If you could automate financial advisory, even just some aspects of it, to create a scalable solution, your team could efficiently serve a much broader range of people who are also in need of financial advice. The more you can increase efficiency in portfolio report production, the more clientele you can serve. Even though the less affluent clients pay less, they can collectively make up the bulk of your sales.
These are just some of the ideas and topics discussed at the 2018 Annual Convention. Overall, the convention education sessions were considered informative and sparked important conversations among members of the BISA community. Be sure to check out Portfolio in the following weeks for additional coverage of the event. If you wish to provide feedback on a certain session or keynote, feel free to submit a survey via the BISA app or contact us today.
