Era of the Smarter Advisor delivered with Cognitive Computing

Smarter Teams

Financial advisors serve as the client facing quarterback for the firm’s broader network of experts and specialists.  However, expertise is often difficult to locate across verticals and is sub-optimally utilized to reduce costs or maximize revenue opportunities.  By connecting experts based on actual experience and not just the directory professional profile, Expertise Finder will help organizations build engaged, social and collaborative teams that drive deeper client relationships and  deliver better business outcomes.  Smarter Process can elevate everyday routines such as opening accounts, determining eligibility, and managing inquiries into competitive advantages.  By delivering an integrated enterprise with full visibility, control and management of business processes, Smarter Process can make real-time adjustments to operations while ensuring strict compliance to business rules through decision management and automation capabilities.  Finally, to address emerging business demands, Workforce Analytics can combine industry skills frameworks, role-based competency testing, project management tools and consulting services for greater precision in role and team design. Machine learning can continuously compile and analyze high-volume workforce data—from exit interviews to real-time SaaS-based employee analysis—to understand risk factors and reduce attrition.

Smarter Conversations

Clients expect wealth advisors to know them and engage with them in innovative ways at the right time, in the right context. These deepened personalized experiences lead to new clients, new partnerships and long term, high value relationships.  However, current tools, which bombard wealth managers as big data generates alerts, can lead to big headaches.  Wealth managers need smarter productivity tools that help bubble up the most important and relevant talking points or action items that deliver high client impact. Conversation Starter presents to-do’s or discussion items in a prioritized manner with the underlying evidence and detail to accelerate the advisor’s ability to service client needs. The time it takes to prep for client meetings is decreased while a high level of relevancy and client service is maintained.  Recommendation Engine will improve upon today’s static and rules-based systems limited to narrow, scripted processes. Cognitive capabilities will present recommendations based on real-time interactions and guide users to consider the best activity to build the relationship, based on their specific responses, profiles or habits. Lastly, leading wealth management firms are experimenting with Deep Q&A technologies that allow for natural language inquires on complex financial data streams. For example, firms are exploring the possibility of answering natural language questions such as “what are the most important calls I need to make this morning” or “what are the top financial concerns of clients like mine.” While the nuances of portfolio analysis, risk return assessment and trade off analytics continue to reside in proprietary systems built by advanced financial experts, cognitive applications can help make these systems more robust and accessible.

The road ahead

A promising journey awaits for organizations ready to take an analytics and cognitive-enabled approach to managing their business and enhancing client relationships, teams and conversations. Leading firms will move from paper to mobile, from spreadsheet to visualization, from reactive to predictive, from a limited view to 360 degree client relationship data, and from static to learning cognitive systems. Smarter enterprises that create a single "system of satisfaction" and infuse intelligence throughout their organizations will lead their industries and benefit from larger wallet share, greater assets under management, enhanced advisor productivity and most importantly, loyal and happy clients.