In our recent Digital Wealth News interview, Michael Partnow, Group President, Wealth Management at JIFFY.ai, shed light on advisor transfers, and transforming the moving experience from “darkness” to “transparent.”
Regardless of their experience level, advisors may still need to fully understand what will occur when they move and transfer their clients to a new firm. Of course, the advisor has explained to their clients why moving to another firm is in the best interest of all parties. However, when moving clients’ assets, they often need help seeing the custodian or clearing firm as they see their ‘brick-and-mortar’ bank on the corner.
The transfer process happens behind the scenes, and the client cannot see everything. They have become used to getting statements from one organization, and now they will get statements from another. Depending upon the timing, they will see their accounts zeroed out, and hopefully, all their assets have moved to this new location by this tiime.
In some situations, only some of the assets are transferred at once, causing a period of complete and utter confusion. All the while, the advisor is addressing thousands of items to move their book of business.
Starting to Pack Up And Move
“My favorite example is moving your items from one home to a new one. How do you pack the breakables? For example, will you pack your fine china with bubble wrap and place it into the strongest boxes, double and triple-secured with tape? Or will you place it into a box without bubble wrap, throw it onto the truck, and hope for the best?” asks Partnow.
Unfortunately, what is happening behind the scenes more often these days, is the latter. Post-recruiting process, valuable client assets get thrown into this chaotic moving truck that is twisting, turning, and shifting all along, breaking them along the way. Money is not moving, documents need to be signed, and positions must be moved quickly.
“I equate a bad transfer experience to that moving truck service that does it cheaply. They show up at your house and start throwing things on trucks, and things break, get chipped, and get scratched,” Partnow adds.
When The Moving Truck Breaks Down
Transitioning advisors and their clients into an organization is often fraught with manual, paper-based procedures, resulting in “not in good order” (NIGO) documents, poor first impressions, and frustrating delays. Thousands of tasks must be completed during a transfer, from recruiting through the accounts being opened and funded.
Without any insight into what is going on with the transfer, clients could lose patience, forget to sign documents, or get lost in the process. Some action always needs to take place. For example, out of 100 clients, 10 still need to sign the new account form and can quickly become ‘lost.’
On average, only 60% of investor accounts are successfully transferred within 60 days of an advisor’s transition.
Partnow explains that operations teams often struggle with numerous challenges during transfers, including pre-screening new accounts for compliance and risk mitigation and validating client data, signatures, and dates—across multiple document types and registrations. The transfer process can be cumbersome and prone to errors, jeopardizing client service, satisfaction, and advisor expectations.
Hire A Better Movoing Company
Instead, advisors must choose an organization that takes the time to wrap their book of business the same way you would want to wrap your fine china. They wrap your clients and assets in bubble wrap, put them into a sturdy box marked “breakable,” and tape the box shut. Then, someone comes, picks everything up, and carefully puts it into the truck. It is a step-by-step process where everything is handled with care.
Partnow says JIFFY.ai, a leading provider of Financial Services AI solutions, has solved the challenges involved in advisor and client transitions by creating a unified dashboard experience. All parties across the entire value chain have access to an actionable dashboard where tasks are assigned, updates happen, and notifications are sent to clients and the advisor if there are delays in transferring assets.
“The organization can see what’s going on, and so can the advisor and the clients. That’s the approach we took at JIFFY.ai,— creating this transparent, centralized dashboard where all parties have access to the information they need in real-time for these non-physical assets transferring,” Partnow explains.
Elevating the moving process to another level, Partnow describes the JIFFY.ai moving truck as ‘transparent.’
“The JIFFY.ai moving truck is made of the strongest, non-breakable glass; everyone can see everything inside: all of the assets and how they are all packed and made safe for transfer. It’s vital to treat everything that moves with the advisor as fragile and with the utmost care because it’s someone’s business, livelihood, assets, or life savings,” he adds.
“Do you want to join an organization that uses a Gantt chart of thousands of items or be able to look at an interoperable dashboard customized to your book of business every step of the way? Most advisors prefer the latter, knowing that their clients and assets have been ‘bubble-wrapped’ and transported with care,” Partnow says.
Michael S. Partnow is the Group President of Wealth Management at JIFFY.ai. JIFFY.ai’s intelligent automation platform enables enterprises to build business applications that run their processes end to end. Using cognitive capabilities such as intelligent document processing, AI, RPA, ML and advanced analytics, these apps learn and adapt to changing situations impacting the business landscape, and even mimic human thinking and actions intelligently.
Contact Michael at [email protected]
