Whether it’s investors, advisors, or home offices, today everyone across the entire Wealth Management value chain seeks an elegant, simple solution for their various needs. The ‘holy grail’ for an advisor is that singular desktop experience. One of our industry’s most significant challenge is to eliminate ‘swivel chairing’ actions between disparate systems. Interoperability between integrations must go well beyond basic connectivity.
“Our industry tends to confuse Single Sign-On two ways with deep integration. Solving through a singular experience—that single pane of glass, where systems are genuinely connected—is something that everyone seeks. It is more of an economical challenge than a technology challenge to accomplish that singular experience due to an organization’s proprietary technology ecosystem,” says Michael Partnow, Group President, Wealth Management at JIFFY.ai, an autonomous enterprise platform for the Wealth Management industry.
“Specifically for larger organizations, it is often not in their best financial interest to allow open architecture because they own the underlying proprietary solutions.” Partnow adds.
Proprietary solution challenges
Many technology choices exist for investors, advisors, and home offices. Organizations must remember that one size only fits some. What may be the most appropriate planning software for one advisor may not meet the needs of others. You can apply that to billing, performance reporting, or new account openings. Everyone has their style—whether in clothing, jewelry, automobiles, or technology—we all like different things. So, the concept of best-of-breed or customization is incredibly relevant in our field and to everyone the solutions touch.
Regardless of all the different solutions available, creating a seamless, elegant experience the advisor views as essential to their practice should be a priority. Equally important is the uniqueness at the investor level or for the household. Investors desire solutions that may satisfy their needs, but their spouses or children may have different software needs.
As a result, organizations have higher operating expenses and too many manual processes. This trickle-down effect exacerbates the related expenses. Home office then passes some of these fees on to the advisor, who must absorb or pass them on to investor. So, now everyone is paying a premium for a disparate process because no singular solution exists that solves everyone’s pain points.
Integration vs. Single Sign-On
Our industry constantly needs clarification on the word ‘integration,’ which is different from single sign-on. Many believe that signing on to another piece of software or a platform and arriving at a landing page is deep integration, but it isn’t. The ability to go from one system and connect to another without retyping a password into the second system is table stakes.
What about the interoperability elements that bring in information and make it actionable? To have the system speak to one another in a seamless, fully integrated fashion. Interoperability goes beyond saving the step of not having to type in a password. Typical single sign-on also often means advisors must re-key information when the systems don’t speak to each other.
The information must be passed to each system in real-time, with systems ‘speaking’ to one another. As challenging as making this work is for technology providers, often, this isn’t always in an organization’s best interest because of the proprietary nature of their business. If an organization owns all the underlying elements of its platform, why would it make it easier to swap one component for a third party’s? Simply, they wouldn’t.
“Technology can solve many things when the industry works more collaboratively, ultimately for the benefit of the investors. The underlying challenge is that systems are proprietary, so whether it’s an institution or a solution provider, they won’t make it easier with true single sign-on. This occurs not only in our industry, but across multiple industries, none of which have solved for open architecture,” adds Partnow.
Once organizations realize the significance of true integration, they’ll recognize improved operating expenses, reduced friction in the marketplace, and better affordability of their technology for the broader organization.
Best-of-breed or best of experiences
JIFFy.ai helps to solve proprietary solution integration challenges by collaborating seamlessly with third-party providers. JIFFY.ai has no proprietary distribution, doesn’t compete with other solution providers, and has no biases regarding an organization’s proprietary solutions. With no conflict of interest, JIFFY.ai can bring a best-of-breed experience to the user, moving them away from manual processing toward a more improved experience with lower operating costs and better margins.
In closing, Partnow adds, “Using a single pane solution, we can add value where it matters, for the investor, advisor, and home office. Taking singular experiences, combining disparate pieces of information, and syncing solutions to help the organization’s technology systems speak to one another in real-time and making the data actionable is JIFFy.ai’s specialty.”
