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In an industry where personal relationships are the backbone of how advisors interact with many clients, the value of a CRM is central to the service provided by an advisor and their team. Forrester Research found that of companies who use a CRM, 74% of them report better customer relationships. You can draw your own conclusions, but the evidence supports that a good CRM plays a pivotal role in growth and building long lasting relationships with clients.

The role of an advisor has shifted rapidly in recent years. Investors no longer approach them to “beat the market” or to perform the kind of stand-alone asset management that has quickly become commoditized in our industry. Now, our clients need our help to get them to their financial goals.

Over the past two decades as clients and the financial industry itself shifted online, advisors embraced education and learning as a powerful tool capable of attracting new prospects, transforming existing prospects to clients and keeping current clients engaged

Even before the pandemic upended traditional prospecting channels, many advisors saw the potential advantages of embracing social media. Facebook alone had more than 2.7 billion monthly active users in 2020. But it hasn’t always been obvious to our industry what could - and should - be done with social media.

Technology that can both scale up a practice and zoom-in to offer client experience enhancements is at a premium, said, Tom Westhoff, vice president of Global Sales at Practifi, a business management platform for financial services firms, because clients are demanding better experiences with their advisors.

Once upon a time, advisors measured success with benchmarks, indices, and market returns. They’re still important, and robust performance reporting and portfolio management technology will always have a place in an advisor’s arsenal. But that’s no longer enough.

As firms have moved to work from home due to the pandemic, and regulators have swept in with new and rapidly changing requirements, compliance has become a financial and operational burden for many RIAs.

For financial advisory firms to get their technology up-to-date at an institutional level will require some form of data Rosetta stone. That’s where Practifi, a Sydney-based Australian fintech making inroads among U.S. wealth managers, can help, said Adrian Johnstone, the firm’s chief commercial officer.

Months of pent-up entrepreneurial demand and the flexibility of on-demand, remote service have set the stage for a surge in breakaway activity. A good communications plan and a thoughtful tech stack are essential for advisors who want to preserve as many of their client relationships as possible after their leap to independence.

For far too long, financial advisors have led with proprietary product pitches or the assertion that they can outperform the market through superior investment acumen.