The AltExchange team had the pleasure of attending the 2023 Orion Ascent Conference in Orlando, Florida last week. We had an amazing time learning from and meeting all the fantastic RIAs, financial advisors, and fintech attendees. Among many hot topics, we’re breaking it down into a few simple highlights that we expect to continue trending well into this year.
Here are the top three takeaways from this year’s Orion Ascent Conference that wealth professionals need to know about.
1. The Importance of Integrated Technology
Integrated technology is a term that applies to the software and services that advisors use to manage their clients’ financial data, operations, and investments. Through these tools, advisors can automate mundane tasks, access real-time analytics, and create comprehensive portfolios tailored to each client’s individual risk appetite. In addition, advisors are able to better control costs through using integrated technology.
Technology can be a huge benefit for your firm. In fact, according to new research from Orion, advisors with 75% of technology that’s integrated have 30% more assets than those with less integrated technology.
Here is where it gets interesting though: While advisors report wanting more technology, they still aren’t utilizing their current technology enough. According to the same survey, 60% of advisors report having most of the technology they need, but are only using 70% of its total capabilities.
Overall, advisors should consider investing in more technology to help increase efficiency and growth, but must assess whether or not they are using their existing technology and future technology to its full capacity.
2. Winning the Next Generation of Clients
The wealth advisory business is shifting, and has been for years. But now as Gen Z will soon become eligible clients – or in some cases, already are – advisors must shift gears to win this next generation of business. But how do they do it?
According to research from Fidelity, younger investors (Millennials and Gen Z) value and are willing to pay for financial advice from professionals, are motivated to improve their finances, prefer to consolidate assets with one advisor, and are loyal clients. In fact, 74% of 30 to 39 year-olds are willing to pay for financial advice, compared to 50% of 70-year olds and above.
In comparison to Baby Boomers, Millennials and Gen Zers want to actively engage with their finances, seek holistic advice, desire a professional to hold them accountable, want to achieve financial freedom, and ultimately gain access to new investments, such as alternative investments.
3. How to Effectively Communicate With Existing Clients
This section could also have been titled: Meet your clients where they are now.
But we wanted the focus to remain on communication, as this is a misunderstood area between some advisors and their clients. Clients do crave more consistent communication from their advisors, but they may not want to be communicated with in the way that you’ve been doing so thus far.
Meeting your clients where they are when it comes to their preferred communication style is one of the most effective and simple ways to build and maintain strong relationships. Asking your clients their preferred communication style (email, 1:1 meetings, texting, phone check-ins, push notifications from technology platforms, etc.) and customizing communication based on their responses will go a long way.
Not only will customized communication help you build a stronger relationship with your clients, but it will help build trust and ultimately allow you to provide a more personalized client experience (another hot topic of the moment – more to come on that).
Final Takeaways…
While there are plenty more important topics that came out of this year’s conference, the overarching theme is that the advisor landscape is shifting alongside client expectations. But meeting your clients’ demands doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right technology and strategies on your side, you’ll be on track to win new clients and better serve your existing ones.
We built AltExchange to help advisors better serve clients by 1) Meeting the growing demand for alts with one simple management and reporting solution, and 2) Providing a personalized experience through a holistic, transparent view of clients’ alts portfolios.
If you’re interested in how AltExchange can help you meet higher client expectations and provide a personalized experience this year, please respond directly or book a time.
We hope you enjoyed this round-up of Orion Ascent 2023, and look forward to meeting you next year!