Our annual ‘meeting-of-the-minds,’ or more formally known as the 2023 Wealth Access Summit, concluded last week leaving our 30+ leaders from all areas of the financial and banking industry reinvigorated and reenergized with new ideas and creative solutions. Unlike other meetings, our annual summit is completely driven by our clients, this means conversations, product roadmaps and more are specifically designed based on their thoughts and feedback. This year’s conversations focused heavily on the broad role of technology improving operational efficiency, driving stronger customer engagement and best practices in using the Wealth Access platform to successfully grow business both short-and-long term.
Our long-time friend, and co-founder and CEO of F2 Strategy, Doug Fritz, along with director Scott Lamont led this year’s discussion again, focusing on key themes:
While conversations are kept between the attending parties, a few key takeaways include:
As the leading theme of our summit, our conversation began by acknowledging data’s role in driving customer engagement. According to a recent report from McKinsey Global Institute, organizations who leverage data-driven insights are 23 times more likely to acquire customers and six times more likely to retain customers. These organizations are also 19 times more likely to be profitable. Our participants clearly understood this and moved directly into how each could leverage the data-driven insights found by using the Wealth Access platform to ease operational and customer challenges.
Bryant Jones, President and CEO, Sabal Trust referenced how Wealth Access’ tools were instrumental in helping his organization during a recent core conversation. "Recently, we saw the need to completely enhance our client experience. We were in the midst of a core conversation and needed to ensure our end result was an all-around client experience that ensured our clients felt appreciated and satisfied. As we rolled out the core conversion, to our amazement Wealth Access’ platform was able to keep our operations and insights intact, thus making the transition near seamless for our end-users. In fact, we did not encounter our first help center query until about 10 days after the conversion, which is unheard of.”
Conversations were particularly strong on how to effectively drive adoption at the enterprise level. While our leaders, and the industry at large, understand the importance and impact that the digital channel has on the customer and client experience, it became clear that there is a challenge in driving adoption both among internal stakeholders as well as the strategies that drive adoption to thus make it better for the customer.
Michael Wilson, Managing Director of Wealth Management, First Citizens Bank, shared, “The Wealth Access platform offers a seamless client display without borders. Ideally, our team aims to have the ability to access all of our client information as needed in an optimized structure for our needs without facing friction. Listening to the other leaders included in this forum openly address the challenges we all face has led to discussions on the inhibitors to creating an omnichannel experience. What Wealth Access offers is a true unified interface that doesn’t disrupt books and records, creating a frictionless environment for the end consumer.”
Innovation takes various forms, but it is clear that our Summit participants see it taking center stage with customer engagement. Bankers are keen to reach customers where they are, regardless of whether it is digital-first, in-person, or a hybrid of the two.
“Within the digital environment we’re living in today, everyone wants to leverage technology as much as possible,” said Tori Phillips, Senior Manager, Digital Products & Strategy of BOK Financial. “However, it’s becoming clear that many of our clients still want and need personable human interactions. Working to balance those elements seems to be an emerging barrier to strong client engagement for our organization and peer institutions. As we begin returning to the office and resuming these hands-on interactions, data-driven technology will play a crucial role in powering more meaningful conversations with each of our clients.
Participants agree that it is through these conversations that customer relationships are able to grow deeper and in turn fuel the growth and expansion organizations need. The insights produced via Wealth Access’ platform enables bankers and advisors to gain a better picture of the customers and/or clients complete financial picture, making it easier to provide financial advice and cross-sell at the most optimal moments in time.
Again, these conversations and executive feedback drive what we do at Wealth Access. We are excited to help you drive engagement through technology. Please feel free to watch any of our demos and schedule a call with us to learn how you can unify your customer data to produce remarkable insights and create hyper-personalized experiences.