Podcasts about advicent

Michael Kitces is a prominent speaker and content creator in the wealth management profession. He is the Head of Planning Strategy at Buckingham Wealth Partners, which oversees approximately $50 billion dollars of assets for their clients, and co-founder of the XY Planning Network, AdvicePay, fpPathfinder, New Planner Recruiting, publisher of his popular blog called "Nerd's Eye View", as well as being the co-founder of NexGen. NextGen is a community of financial planners, which includes pioneers and leaders already in the profession with the goal of transferring the wisdom, experience, and integrity to the next generation of financial planners. He holds several designations, with some including CFP, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, and many more. Along with this, he was named one of the 2010 recipients of the Financial Planning Association's “Heart of Financial Planning” awards and has received many other recognitions from other media outlets such as clientwise, Advicent, and Financial Social Media. Website: https://www.kitces.com/ The Financial Advisor Success Podcast: https://www.kitces.com/blog/category/21-financial-advisor-success-podcast/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkitces/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MichaelKitces WMA website: http://msuwma.com Contact: msuwma@gmail.com Song credits: Abstract Orchestra, Fancy Clown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYhN8is0Syg

In this episode, we sit down with Tony Stich, Mr. Purple himself and COO of Advicent. This conversation is one of our best – Tony is an absolute wealth of knowledge when it comes to the advisor and investor market. We get into some of the biggest hurdles he sees advisors facing in the current and future state of financial planning, and what they can do about it. We also technology discussion and how advisors can leverage big data to improve their client experience. This is our conversation with Tony Stich.

Tony Stich, COO of Advicent NaviPlan joins Mike Langford for an expansive conversation about the evolution and future of financial planning. Tony and Mike also explore how technology will be employed to allow financial advisors to serve clients at scale during the coming wave of advisor transition.

Tony Stich is the chief operating officer at Advicent (you may know him as “Mr. Purple”). After seeing a drastic increase in clients making updates to their financial plans during the COVID-19 pandemic, his company took the unprecedented step of making NaviPlan available for free. In this episode of Power Your Advice, Doug Heikkinen and … Continue reading Episode 17 – Entering the Third Wave of Financial Advice – with Tony Stich →

Advicent, an independent company based in Milwaukee, provides financial planning tools to the wealth management industry. It's CEO, Angela Pecoraro, shares the story of her 17 year career, and how her curiosity, her confidence, paying it forward, and having a key mentor were so critical to her success. 

Advicent, an independent company based in Milwaukee, provides financial planning tools to the wealth management industry. It's CEO, Angela Pecoraro, shares the story of her 17 year career, and how her curiosity, her confidence, paying it forward, and having a key mentor were so critical to her success. 

Is it Thursday again already? This week, the COO of NaviPlan by Advicent, Tony Stich, joins us for a truly epic episode. He talks with us about creating brand awareness, how to plan for and execute an amazing party, and he reveals that the best tacos in Milwaukee can be found...in a gas station? It's all in this episode of TacoTech.

This week, Jamie Hopkins talks with Anthony Stich about roboadvisors, the role of technology for advisors, and the importance of continuing to build relationships with clients. Anthony is the COO of Advicent, a Milwaukee-based financial services firm. You can find show notes and other information at CarsonGroup.com/Framework.

This is the 18th episode of the Fintech Impact podcast, and Jason Pereira interviews Anthony Stich, the Chief Operating Officer of Advicent, the largest provider of financial software in the world. Anthony shares information reguarding Advicent’s product line which includes NaviPlan, the power of their advancements and influence, and the ways in which they are able to service their clients. ● 01:06 – Advicent is the financial software developer that created NaviPlan. They are in seven countries and on four continents. They also have client portals, advisor dashboard, and API technology.● 01:31 – They have about 100 enterprise clients, about 60 of which are blue chip clients, and service about 100,000 users.● 02:03 – Advicent’s roots trace back to 1969 by Gus Hansch, a CFP referred to as “The Father of Financial Planning.”● 03:18 – Anthony Stich began with Advicent, which is a name comprised of advice + enterprise, four years ago, and his career began in marketing first.● 04:25 – NaviPlan, by user counts, and adoption rates, is the biggest financial planning software in the world with a cash flow first priority.● 06:56 – NaviPlan’s average enterprise contract length is between 10-12 years.● 10:30 – NaviPlan is highly customizable thanks to building their portal on top of APIs.● 14:08 – Figlo is Advicent’s European tool, available in five countries, with an office in Rotterdam outside of Amsterdam. Figlo used the APIs first.● 15:51 – Adviser Briefcase is their marketing and communication engine that has about 700 documents that have been reviewed by FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority).● 17:01 – As far as integration, Advicent is enterprise-first with back offices with all the core processors of the top five custodians.● 23:35 – Advicent has about 300 team members, most are in Milwaukee Wisconsin, the Fintech capital of the world. There are also members in Toronto, Winnipeg, about 50 in Rotterdam, and scattered throughout the United States.● 30:36 – The mission state at Advicent is to enable everyone to understand and impact their financial future, and it is about the end client. 3 Key Points:1. Advicent has about 100 enterprise clients, about 60 of which are blue chip clients, and service about 100,000 users.2. NaviPlan’s average enterprise contract length is between 10-12 years.3. Advicent has about 300 team members, most are in Milwaukee Wisconsin, the Fintech capital of the world, the rest in here are also members in Toronto, Winnipeg, Rotterdam, and throughout the United States. Tweetable Quotes:- “We’ve built a portal on top of APIs. What we’ve done is decoupled the user experience from those engines itself. And by doing so, we’re allowing larger enterprises and institutions the ability to use that API within their ecosystem.” – Anthony Stich.- “We’ve given them the keys to the kingdom. We have unlocked the powerful calculations of NaviPlan, and allowed people to access them and put them wherever they so choose” – Anthony Stich.- “Not only are we thought leaders in consulting our partners through these regulatory challenges, we are also developing in advance.” – Anthony Stich. Resources Mentioned:● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook● Woodgate Financial – Website for Woodgate Financial● LinkedIn – Anthony Stich’s LinkedIn● Advicent – Website for Advicent See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you are in the “inform” business, and not the “transform” business, you won’t be long for this business. Technology services are quickly chipping away at the value-stack financial advisors offer to clients. There may come a time when, “I turn on my phone and I say, ‘Hi, Alexa. Tell me what my bank account is today. Transfer $10,000 from Bank A to Bank B. Open a 529 plan for my kid. Then, rebalance my brokerage account.’ And tell me how I'm doing against my goal of buying this house,” said Lex Sokolin, Global Director of Fintech Strategy and Partner at Autonomous. In this near future world, you won’t need MoneyGuidePro, e-Money, or Advicent. Instead, “You have a more modern architecture, so you don't have a UI. You might have APIs that allow machines to talk to each other. Then, you can plug that into all sorts of chatbots for conversational interfaces,” said Lex. Lex isn’t describing some crazy sci-fi dystopia. Rapid advancements in AI, algorithms, chatbots and a host of other technologies is bringing planning services to your favorite digital friend faster than you may think. And if Amazon, Google or some other behemoth decides to get into our business in a big way, well, you can forget about competing by using technology as a differentiator. There is only one ultimate differentiator; it is your ability to help transform people’s lives.

Male Speaker: Louis XI, the great Spider King of France, had a weakness for astrology. He kept a court astrologer whom he admired until one day the man predicted that a lady of the court would die within eight days. When the prophecy came true, Louis was terrified thinking that either the man had murdered the woman to prove his accuracy, or that he was so versed in his science that his powers threatened Louis himself. In either case, the man had to be killed. One evening, Louis summoned the astrologer to his room. Before the man arrived, the king told his servants that when he gave the signal, they were to pick the astrologer up, carry him to the window, and hurl him to the ground. The astrologer soon arrived, but before giving the signal, Louis decided to ask him one last question. You claim to understand astrology and to know the fate of others. So, tell me what your fate will be and how long you have to live. The astrologer replied, I shall die just three days before you, Your Majesty. The king’s signal was never given. The man’s life was spared. The Spider King not only protected his astrologer for as long as he was alive, but he lavished him with gifts and had him tended by the finest court doctors. The astrologer survived Louis by several years, disproving his power of prophecy, but proving his mastery of power. Announcer: Kelly Coughlin, is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping banks C-level offices, navigate risks, and discover reward. He’s the host of the syndicated audio podcast bankbosun.com.  Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyd’s Bank, and Merrill Lynch.  On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-suite offices risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discovery reward.  And now your host, Kelly Coughlin.  Kelly Coughlin: Greetings. This is Kelly Coughlin, CEO of Bank Bosun, helping bank C-Suite executives with risk, regulation, and revenue creation in a sea of threats and opportunities. As we all know, other than funding the bank operations, banks do two things with their customer deposits. They invest in customers in the form of loans, and they invest in financial assets like U.S. Treasuries, mortgage backs, muni bonds, bank-owned life insurance. All banks do some combination of these investments that match their cash flow needs and their future liabilities. The common denominator of all these investments, whether it be loans or financial assets, is the competition for customer deposits, and these deposits can come in the form of checking and savings accounts, time deposits, CDs, or these “deposits”, and I'm doing air quotes here, they can come in the form of private client assets, wealth management assets, and/or trust account assets. These types of deposits are a great source of other fee income a bank can generate to operate the bank, generate profits, and pay a return to its owners. The margins are typically higher than net interest income margins, and it's potentially a great source of revenues and profits to the bank. However, these assets are a great source of revenues and profits to many others participating in the financial services ecosystem. To paraphrase Tom Wolfe in Bonfire of the Vanities, as he's explaining to his daughter about what a bond was, he says, we don’t get the cake. We just fight for the crumbs, and there are many, many fighting for this cake that generates the crumbs. Other banks, big banks, small banks, brokers, small and large, independent financial planners, mutual fund companies, accounting firms. In fact, there are other one million individuals that fight for the crumbs as part of their business. I was CEO of an investment and financial technology company that helped some of these banks compete for trust and wealth management assets. And I know this implicitly. Competition is fierce, and harnessing the right tools and talents is critical to ensuring a bank can effectively compete. Having the ability to efficiently and consistently identify customer needs, risk tolerance, and financial profile, is important for all of these one million-plus advisors. But banks have multiple departments that face the client. The teller, private client rep, maybe securities broker, maybe insurance agent, wealth management, trust department, and of course the credit group. And this multi-facing setting presents interesting challenges to a bank. Today’s guest is the director of global marketing for a company that has one of the leading technology solutions that helps advisors, including banks, collect, compile, and present data related to customer needs, risk, and financial profiles. You might not recognize the company name Advicent, but you will probably recognize one of the flagship products, NaviPlan. Today’s guest is Tony Stich. Tony has experience with Bank Mutual in Milwaukee, and a number of other banks. I'll let him talk to you about that. He attended University of Wisconsin, and I'm very happy to have him today. And he's probably a dreaded Green Bay Packers fan, so I'm glad we're doing this before Super Bowl 51, because I'm fearful being a Minnesota Vikings fan, the Packers just might win the Super Bowl this year. Tony, are you there? Tony Stich: Kelly. Quite the introduction. Thank you so much. I am a Packer fan. I have to do full disclosure. In fact, my grandfather purchased original season tickets at Lambeau Field. He was one of the true attendees of the Ice Bowl. If you go by the stats, there was apparently about a quarter of a million attendees. My grandfather’s actually one of the real, authentic ones. We've had the same six tickets since they started selling season tickets, in fact. I attend myself the warmer games, and then the poor souls that like the December games, so be it. I do want to begin by just providing a brief history of my time in banking. I think it's very applicable to this conversation. I, in fact, started my career at a company called Guarantee Bank. They provided banking services for about a dozen states in the Midwest, but also across the country, they provided wholesale mortgage, secondary lending, you name it, again, to 49 states to which I served those needs. I also did some time first at AIG and then back to banking. And now, most recently, I was the director of marketing at Bank Mutual, third largest bank in Wisconsin. What we consider to be a community bank. We had 70 offices at the time. So, I have a great deal of understanding and awareness of the needs of banking. And in your introduction, and you talked a lot about the challenges a bank faces. I'd like to cover that today, ideally, but also how our technology can help bankers, especially at the C-Suite level in making sure they're saying relevant during this consumer revolution. Kelly Coughlin: I guess the, the thing that gets my attention first, Tony, there's been a lot of chatter about this robo advisor technology. My question to you is, where does the line between robo advisor and financial planning meet or differ? Or are they the same? Are you guys in the robo advisor space? Would you give us your definition of that and contrast it with a financial planning software? Tony Stich: Absolutely. Quite a hot topic. Let's define robo advice or robo advisor versus financial plan. Robo advisor is a technology that actually automates the entire process from obtaining the client through a website such as Betterment or WealthFront, and providing light advice based on data that is inputted from the user. A user could create a user profile, log into the system, provide a lot of data, both demographic data, but also financial data including in some cases goals, retirement age, and other objectives to meet retirement. And out from that robo advisor or technology, provides a lightweight plan. At no time is a human advisor involved with this planning process. It has to be done by the user establishing during the application process they want to be contacted by a financial advisor. What makes it even more interesting with robo advisors is oftentimes, you're not allowed to use a human advisor unless you have particular assets under manage, let's say $25,000 or greater. The unique difference between a robo advisor and a financial planning software is that in one situation, the advisor or financial professional’s inputting the data and then outputting the plan. In a robo advisor, it's simply websites, where the user inputs their own data, links their accounts, and then gets financial advice through that. Kelly Coughlin: It's kind of like they're the Uber of financial planning. They're trying to at least dis-intermediate the financial advisors and save the end customer anywhere from 50 basis points to 150 I suppose. Tony Stich: Right, and that's actually a really great point. We talked initially about the driving down of fees or money, a profitability an advisor can make, because a robo advisor on average charges 75 basis points less than a financial advisor. But what's interesting, Kelly, is much of our socioeconomic data that we have indicates that while millennials like the interaction with the robo advisor, they still want the expert advice of a financial advisor. In the last couple of years, we witnessed a considerable amount of activity in that space, both enterprise companies engaging with robo advisor technology, robo advisors working directly with consumers, but also look at the venture capital, companies infusing money into robo advice. A prediction that we have for 2017 includes robo advice in how we believe it is now a race to the bottom. Robo advice is becoming a commodity. It's driving down fees to manage assets; driving down the cost of doing business. In fairness, it is drawing a concern for bankers, wealth managers, registered investment advisors. However, we feel, have no concern. In fact, we're seeing a lot of the opposite in terms of millennials’ expectations for retirement advice. We look at robo advisors as a lead generation tool. It's really shedding light on what is necessary in today’s environment. That is the value of a financial plan. When you look at robo advice, the fiduciary rule set forth by the Department of Labor, and you couple that with a consumer revolution, millennials are beginning to want, if not expect or demand, a financial plan. To stay competitive against robo advisors; to stay competitive against other institutions, what can banks do to provide that level of service? I think that's a great segue into kind of explaining our technology stack at Advicent to better provide your listeners with an understanding of what we can offer to the banking space. First of all, a little bit of background about Advicent. The name comes from the word, of course advice. We have been in this industry for 50 years. In fact, Gus Hansch was the founder of our company. He was what they called the godfather of financial planning. He developed the technology that we use today. One of our financial planning engines, in fact, Financial Profiles. As you mentioned before, we also have NaviPlan. Those are the two banner products underneath our flagship financial planning engines. NaviPlan, of course, is the more sophisticated, comprehensive financial planning software. Financial Profiles is more of a down-and-dirty forecaster. It provides goal-based advice. It's designed more for helping institutions sell particular products using forecasting technology. Let's focus, of course, on the United States. So, let's focus on NaviPlan for today’s conversation. Our software is the calculation engine that a wealth manager, financial advisor, or another financial professional uses to generate advice through a financial plan. This advice can include things like estate planning, tax planning, asset allocation, retirement planning. What's very important here is, we believe firmly that an advisor must be at the core of this relationship with the client. Kelly Coughlin: I have some experience using NaviPlan. Would it be a fair statement to say that you guys were kind of the first generation of robo advisor, before that term was even around back in 2000, 2003? Tony Stich: Even back early 2003, we were talking about client portal technology, the ability to have a client access data digitally. We did talk about that at that time, but it wasn’t on our road map. Let's tie this back to banking for a minute. We looked in the mortgage process. There were some reports that we put together that when a person walked into a bank to meet with a loan officer to apply for a loan, they have already done eight hours of research online. Yet, they still chose to walk into an institution prior to making that life changing decision. We are finding the same holds true for financial planning. While robo advisors are attracting millennials, they're attracting more investors than ever before. At the end of the day, millennials, Generation X, baby boomers, we all still seek out expert advice from a human. We talk at length about the fact that robo advice cannot empathize with the loss of a child. We talk about how robo advice can never empathize with the loss of a job. While a financial advisor, which is now becoming a life coach for financing can come to your house, can talk to about your options, can truly understand the dynamic you have with your spouse or with your children, which can never be replaced by robo advice or the next thing, artificial intelligence. Kelly Coughlin: All right. Let's talk about how this type of technology can work with all of the different potential departments that can face the client. The teller, the private client rep, the securities broker, insurance agent, wealth management, trust, credit, all of these groups that can potentially have a relationship with the client. Is it your vision that the bank will get all of these groups to buy into the technology platform that you have and kind of force the trust people, who are a completely different animal than the securities brokers, for instance, who are completely different than the tellers? Tony Stich: And that is our vision, in fact. Let me talk a little bit about NaviPlan and why it's the number one financial planning technology across the globe. And that's because it is sophisticated, yet it's also simple. So, it's a repeatable process, as well, which we talk about all the time. Simple and repeatable, but also sophisticated. So, when you talked about that internal architecture, you mentioned bankers, tellers first, of course, personal bankers, maybe your investment team. Let's just go up to your trust services. Our technology allows those advisors to help manage people’s money through the financial planning technology. The buy-in question, that's simple. If you provide a technology that's easy to use, that shows the benefits of a product or service, it will certainly be adopted by that whole group. One more unique characteristic about Advicent is that we are the only provider of financial planning software that has end-to-end solutions. We offer a technology called Advisor Briefcase. Advisor Briefcase is a marketing communications tool that has over 600 pieces of FINRA reviewed content. This content is customizable to the bank or the financial advisor, and can be distributed to different groups of customers. Now, what's beautiful about the system is that the content is relative in nature to that person’s financial place in life based on groupings of the names that the financial advisor sets for them. Secondly, that data is again all FINRA reviewed. Our marketing communications tool, everything is looked at by FINRA. No one else can say that. So, every document that you use within AB, the Advisor Briefcase, actually has a letter from FINRA saying that they've acknowledged receipt and review of this documentation. That is the beginning part of the process. Attracting that prospect into the bank’s product offering set. Then, you go into the leads technology or the financial planning engine, where the wealth manager or the advisor engages with the client, after being attracted, of course, by the marketing communications, and then we put together a plan. We also offer technology, our Narrator technology, which is a stack of technology that surrounds of financial planning engines that includes a client portal; that includes API technology and that also includes a dashboard for business intelligence and metrics. I'm going to focus on the client portal for just a moment. Many community banks have a core processor, but they don’t have a lot of money to invest in PFM tools; account aggregation tools; things like that. I understand. I've actually been in banking. I've seen what they charge, core processors charge, for PFM technology. We actually offer that, too, at a much lower rate. It's not a usage rate. It's not a transaction rate. It's a flat rate. Kelly Coughlin: Tell us what PFM is. Tony Stich: Personal financial management. It's the ability for someone to manage all of their accounts in one roof. The benefit, of course, this to a bank is that you then get to see all the accounts. You get to see the whole wallet, and you get to see where you can help. Where you can reduce a car payment; where you can invest the money into an annuity; where you can do x, y, or z. This is actually called Narrator Client. It's our client portal technology. Kelly Coughlin: Does Narrator have the ability to pull in “held-away” assets as well? Tony Stich: Yes, so that's the account ag features. We have account aggregation technology, which allows you to see all the other banks that they're with. You can bring all that in to this one PFM technology, this one personal financial manager. You can put your car loan in. You can put your 401K in. Kelly Coughlin: Of those “held-away” assets, are they static or are they market to market? Tony Stich: Nightly update. Every night, that's updated. So, as we go along this client journey, we're back in this client portal. The advisor, the wealth manager, the trust team can actually review this data with the individual. What's unique about our client portal is that we don’t just account ag. We overlay your financial plan on top of that. So the end user can actually see their financial plan. See if they're drifting from a goal. See if they're on track for retirement so that can make a course correction. This is where we get into this BI, business intelligence. The ability to kind of aggregate all of the data of your customers under one roof within a dashboard, which allows your audit team to review it to make sure there's no anomalies, but also to make sure your wealth managers are reviewing it to make sure you are not losing AUM. Your demographics are normalized, anything you can imagine for the BI. And we will close that client journey with Advisor Briefcase again, that marketing communications tool. Now that you have these customers under your roof, you can actually use again that marketing communications to further educate your new clients on trends, more important data, newsletters, things like that. Community banks oftentimes don’t have a dedicated marketing department. In fact, many times, marketing person might be the administrative assistant or someone in operations. Perhaps a personal banker that does two roles. Advisor Briefcase, a very inexpensive tool, will help provide that content, that extra little lift that a bank needs to kind of stay above and beyond and keep that relevant data going to their customers. That's what sets us apart, is that we provide a technology stack that spans the client journey. Kelly Coughlin: And all of that is allegedly simple and repeatable. Tony Stich: Simple and repeatable, and we promise you that. It's simple and repeatable. Of course, technology requires a bit of adoption. There certainly is a learning curve. However, we make it as seamless as possible, especially for these community banks. We will again come in, we'll educate through the procurement process, through the implementation stage, and then we have account managers dedicated to you going forward. After the technology’s implemented, we check back. We make sure everything’s going well. If it's going really, really, really well, we're going to write a case study on you. We're going to brag about you. We're going to show our friends about you, because we know NaviPlan and our other technologies are going to help the banks stave off robo advice. They're going to help these community banks stave off the bigger competitors. They're going to keep you relevant during this consumer revolution. They're going to keep you relevant during this generational wealth transfer of $30 trillion in North America alone. We're going to help keep you relevant so that you are maintaining that AUM, maintaining those bank accounts, but also growing your business through digital technology. Kelly Coughlin: Yes. That’s good. If a bank wants to explore this further, should I just have them give you a call, then you can get them routed to the right person? Would that be fair enough? Tony Stich: You know what? That's probably the best approach. Our 800-number is 855-885-7526. If you want to shoot us an email, it's simply sales@AdvicentSolutions.com, but I want to encourage your listeners to visit Advicent, A-D-V-I-C-E-N-T.com, because we have a great deal of thought leadership content, blogs, videos, and you know what's really important for these C-Suite guys? They should be reading our white papers and downloads. We have some really intelligent stuff on client journey mapping; on staying relevant in the year 2020. This kind of, this is the kind of documents that these guys and gals want to read, because it's going to help them craft their one, three, and five year strategies and help them relay that message both vertically to their counterparts, and of course, horizontally. Kelly Coughlin: Tony, that's good stuff. Okay, thanks a lot for your time. I appreciate it. Tony Stich: Thank you, Kelly. We'll talk soon. Kelly Coughlin: Well that concludes Part One of my interview with Tony Stich, Director of Global Marketing for Advicent. In part one we spent quite a bit of time on robo-advisory technology and the difference between that and financial planning technology. And as I see it, the difference really is you have a system…a robot…with all its behind the scenes algorithims and logic creating a financial plan as opposed to Advicent’s advisor-driven technology, where you have a human wealth advisor utilizing some pretty cool technology with algorithims and logic that are simple and repeatable…I think you heard Tony say that a few times. In part two, we will focus on how Advicent integrates with a bank’s platform. How the technology passes bank procurement and vendor management standards and how Advicent’s technology can help a bank compete against non-bank brokers and advisors. Thanks for listening. Announcer: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com. The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, market domination with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by the Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. Voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The view expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity, and do not in any way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor, or supplier.

Kelly Coughlin This is part two of my interview with Tony Stich, Director of Global Marketing at Advicent. In part one of my interview with Tony Stich, we focused on the definitions and differences between financial planning technology versus robo-advisory technology; and we spent some time on their technology solution, Naviplan which is designed to enable a bank financial advisor and other representatives of the bank collect, compile and review relevant customer financial planning information in a simple and repeatable way…simple and repeatable are Tony’s words and seem to be the enterprise-wide mantra of Advicent. We will start part two with some of the unique and special procurement and vendor management needs of banks and how Tony thinks Advicent is uniquely prepared versus all other of his competitors, when dealing with the integration of this technology with the banks platform. And also, how this technology can help banks better compete against non-bank brokers and advisors. Part two, Tony Stich, Advicent. We’ll start talking about procurement. Announcer: Kelly Coughlin, is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping banks C-level offices, navigate risks, and discover reward. He’s the host of the syndicated audio podcast bankbosun.com.  Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyd’s Bank, and Merrill Lynch.  On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-suite offices risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discovery reward.  And now your host, Kelly Coughlin.  Kelly Coughlin You said you wanted to talk about procurement. Is that procurement of data? Tony Stich: Technology procurement…the challenges the bank based due to Dodd-Frank legislation, when it wanted to add any new vendor into the fold. This regulation makes it very cumbersome and challenging to add new vendors. Now, this was all done in the efforts to minimize cyber security, privacy risks, but also the jeopardizing anyone’s accounts, deposits, things of that nature. So, when I mentioned procurement, Advicent keenly understands the challenges a bank faces when it attempts to adopt a new technology. First and foremost, we understand that that decision is not made lightly. When you consider a new, in this case, financial technology product, such as NaviPlan, you want to consider the alternatives. You want to look at our competitors. You want to look at what your core processor might offer. You want to look at all those decisions. Then, you want to talk with IT. You want to talk with auditing. You want to talk with the executive team. Advicent knows this, in fact, and we go through a step-by-step process that our competitors do not to make sure that procurement goes smoothly and all of the boxes are checked. So we know with a great deal of certainty the time it’ll take for us to implement our technology with your existing banking ecosystem. Our competitors simply don’t do that. And that comes from nearly 50 years of our experience in implementing enterprise wide technology. We have over 4,000 customers globally. We service their needs with our technologies. We are uniquely qualified to go through that procurement process; to show you our financials; to show you our ISO certification; to show you how we are going to tie back to your core processor, your legacy back office systems. I would argue that that is probably the largest inhibitor to making a decision, is the core processor, that back office solution. We know how to work with those individuals. We know how to work with that technology. We have the APIs. We have the integration. We are uniquely qualified to do that through the procurement process all the way through delivery. Kelly Coughlin: You understand the financial situation that community banks are in. They can't afford a $100,000 installation. Do you guys have an offering that recognizes the financial statement of these banks that gives them a solution they can afford? Tony Stich: Great question, Kelly, and absolutely. We have installed the large enterprise companies in the world. We have provided installations at the smallest community banks in the world. One thing remains the same. We understand this implementation process, and we have different levels of service; which includes onsite visits; which includes training the trainers; which includes implementation. That all can cost a variety of different levels that will meet those needs. But what's important is, we'll help you go through ROI calculations. We can actually go through the procurement process with you. We're going to show you the cost to both implement and stand up the program, but then we'll show you the recovery time. For the sake of this discussion, let's just walk into a community bank. There's your tellers, your loan officers, and in some cases, you will have a wealth manager or trust team on demand right there at the office. The point of our technology is, we can make it readily available. Simple, easy to use, right at your teller line. I think the biggest thing a bank wants to do is increase the share of wallet. I think we'd all agree. What better way to do that is at the teller line? Making sure the teller’s asking the correct questions. Making sure the teller’s offering the opportunity to answer a quick questionnaire on this iPad or tablet, where a bank visit can turn into a conversion. I remember back in the days when the financial advisor at a bank would say to the teller, hey, do me a favor. Next time you see someone with a larger savings account, that should still happen today. That seamless communication between tellers, personal bankers, and your trust teams, that should still happen, and we allow that to happen with our technology. Unless they opt in, a bank cannot share with a wealth manager the data of that customer, because they're two separate entities, correct? Kelly Coughlin: Yeah. Tony Stich: A wealth management company, which is not FDIC insured, of course, and the bank. So, how do you get past that? How do you get that wallet share? You use our technology. Let me explain. When the individual’s waiting in line for the teller. If you have, for instance, tablets set up with the nice leads tools, just sitting there waiting to be touched or waiting to be engaged with while the teller’s transacting, that's a great time for that individual perhaps to key in some data. Once that data’s keyed in, then the tellers picks up on that cue. I don’t want to go into too much detail on that whole buying or selling process, but what I'm suggesting is, technology bridges the gap between the teller and the wealth manager or financial advisor, and then of course, the customer kind of goes through that process more seamlessly. Kelly Coughlin: I'm sure that all banks have some sort of financial planning process going. It may not be very efficient and simple and repeatable, but they have something. Aside from kind of a home-grown bunch of Excel spreadsheets connected together, linked with a word processing document type thing, aside from that, are you guys tending to replace existing technology solutions? Or are these all pretty much new installations that are kind of replacing, upgrading a home-grown process? Tony Stich: We will come in, and it's just you with taking out your existing process and implementing our technology. And I want to be very clear, Kelly. Our technology replaces your process in a good way. We show you how to best provide financial advice. We're not going to tell you to do your jobs. What we're going to do is say, hey, you want to follow fiduciary standard? Do you want to make sure you're providing the right advice? Our technology will do so. I cringe at the idea of financial advice being provided through Microsoft Excel. Nothing wrong with Microsoft, but the very idea that calculations through Microsoft Excel are providing financial advice, I'm just not sure that that is the right thing to do for yourself clients. Our technology replaces all of that. It makes it easy to do. And finally, if you do have existing technology, possibly through your core processor, oftentimes we win those deals because our calculations are better. Our processes are simpler. And quite frankly, we are the best at providing financial plans through our technology. We usually replace but I'll tell you one thing. You won't miss a beat. We will integrate your back-office technology. We'll make sure your processes still follow the same course, and with our work flow technology, with our compliance frameworks, we're going to help make sure that the plans are going the right way. Auditing sees them. Your trust team might see them. If a personal banker’s getting involved, making sure the financial advisor’s always seeing it as well. This will help replace processes that are quite frankly, probably antiquated in nature. This will help make sure that you are competing against robo advice, because you are now providing a technological solution that provides good advice, good reporting, and if you choose to do so, a client portal that exceeds the expectations of the modern-day investor. Kelly Coughlin: Banks are competing against brokers and financial advisors that are using a Schwab platform, Fidelity platform, Pershing, and TD Ameritrade. I think between those four custodian brokers, it's probably about 75% to 85% of the market. When you look at the offering Schwab, Ameritrade, Fidelity, Pershing have what competitive edge do you think banks would have by using your technology? What are you seeing those four are using in terms of technology that these banks would compete against? Tony Stich: This is one of our value props. This is our value proposition. We will tell you any bank of any size that we can give you technology that will enable your advisors to provide the same experience as the Fidelitys and the Schwabs of the world. Now, to be completely fair and on the record, we integrate very deeply with all those brokers. We have great relationships with all of them. However, it's very important—Pershing, for instance, Schwab, Fidelity, they all offer client portals. They all offer simplified financial planning technology. They let advisors use our technology. So, the bank has to compete. How do you compete? By offering the same service. Now, I'm going to tell you in my opinion, what the gamma is. Let's lay it on the table. You have a bank. Let's say a community bank, and you adopt or implement NaviPlan technology in a client portal. It's beautifully designed. It's well branded. It offers the same level of service that you're going to get from Pershing’s client portal with their technology. Here's the gamma. It's the community banker. That’s the value add. The person I believe is going to naturally gravitate to that community banker, to that trusted source. We offer technology better than those four custodians, and what we'll do differently is, we'll help your advisors, your wealth managers, become that gamma, become that value proposition that you can say, hey, you should be investing with us. You should be getting your advice from us. In short, we provide you the technology to stay competitive and to be valuable to your customers and prospects. You're on par with technology. You have evened the playing field, and now it goes to the bread and butter. It goes to the community relationships. It goes to your charitable efforts. We talk about that. That, again, that's the value prop. That's why community banks are going to win, is because, keep it equal in technology, you're going to win everywhere else. Kelly Coughlin: Yes. Right. Tony Stich: You know, we have a mission here at Advicent, and that's for everyone to understand and impact their financial future, and we really believe that people ought to have a financial plan. If we can help one bank or 1,000 banks provide financial advice to the customers, that makes us happy. I think it's important that people understand that there are options out there that you can beat the robos. You can beat the custodians. You just need to know that the technologies available to you, and you need to embrace that change. Kelly Coughlin: Great, okay. I think I've got all my questions. Anything else you wanted to add to this? Tony Stich: Banks are slow to adopt. They are, they're hesitant for change, and we just hope we can be the catalyst, because the reality is, they do need to change. I don’t think the branch infrastructure’s going to go away. I think it's going to iterate. It's going to, it's going to, like, look different. The banks really need to embrace technology. We were over in London back in March, and we actually wrote a white paper on how incumbent banks need to start thinking like startups, and I'll get you that white paper, because it's really fascinating how what we lay out in a few steps of how to change the culture of your bank or your large enterprise institution and how you can start thinking like a startup so you can start adopting the technology to be successful, especially in, in, in today’s day and age. I want to encourage your listeners to visit Advicent, because we have a great deal of thought leadership content, blogs, videos, and you know what's really important for these C-Suite guys? They should be reading our white papers and downloads. We have some really intelligent stuff on client journey mapping, on staying relevant in the year 2020. Thank you so much for having me, Kelly Kelly Coughlin: Okay, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. That concludes my two part interview series with Tony Stitch at Advicent. Tony can be reached at 855-885-7526 or you can shoot him an email a sales@AdvicentSolutions.com, A-D-V-I-C-E-N-T.com That’s it for me. Kelly Coughlin at BankBosun. Thanks for listening. Announcer: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com. The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, market domination with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by the Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. Voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The view expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity, and do not in any way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor, or supplier.

Financial planning as practiced today is going away and will be replaced by an entirely new way of interacting with and delivering value and connection to clients. The days of offering a free financial plan in order to snag AUM are done. In today's show, I chat with Phil Cunningham, CEO of Advicent, the global provider of SaaS technology solutions for the financial services industry. You may know them better through their products including NaviPlan®, Profiles™ and Figlo™ financial planning tools, the Advisor Briefcase® marketing tool and the Narrator™ application builder. Advicent has about 100,000 advisor clients across North America so Phil has a bird's-eye view of what's happening in the fintech space. Our conversation covers the spectrum including: The changing role of the financial advisor (See: Going beyond money management to make a deeper client connection). How advisors can stay relevant and add value. The impact of technology on the client experience, managing your business, marketing it, and advising clients. What "big data" means for advisors and how you'll benefit from it (See: Jud Bergman discussing big data). Where financial planning fits into the equation and how the definition of financial planning is changing radically. What you should do with Robo-technology to benefit from it instead of being threatened by it. How to compete against a big brand like Vanguard.

I met with Pietro La Greca, Jr., Vice President of Corporate Development at Advicent Solutions, between sessions at T3 Enterprise 2015 to dive into the details of what he discussed during his general session presentation at the conference. According to La Greca, Advicent Solutions is the largest provider of financial planning software in the world. La […]