President of Broadridge Canada outlines the promises of technologies like generative AI for advisors, highlights where advisors may want to focus
Karin Kirkwood has a clear view of Canada’s wealth technology uptake. The President of Broadridge Canada oversees a wealth technology operation that touches the banks, the independent broker-dealers, the credit unions, insurance companies, asset managers, and distribution business. With a view into almost every facet of the Canadian financial services industry, Kirkwood has seen what a year of technological change has done to impact advisors of almost every stripe.
For all the ways technology has advanced in the Canadian advisory business, Kirkwood believes it has marched to the drumbeats driving this industry as a whole.
“Technology is the driver of all things we do these days, there’s no way around the fact that we all need tools and technologies to be a better version of what we do for a living,” Kirkwood says. “The key is for dealers in particular to provide a platform-based viewpoint on how to serve investors versus disparate function points.”
Demographics, the aging baby boomer generation and the great wealth transfer are shaping trends in wealth technology as much as they are in any other segment of financial services. The endless rise of technology across society has also created a wider sense of tech fatigue, which firms like Broadridge are keeping in mind as the industry seeks to scale while personalizing service.
From a tech firm’s standpoint, personalization of service to the next generation is key. A survey conducted by Broadridge of US advisors found that 85 per cent said younger advisors would require different products, different services, and a different service experience. Only 34 per cent of firms, the study found, had pivoted to a consideration of what that might mean for them. Kirkwood says that Broadridge is now working closely with their clients on that very issue.
That is not to say an advisor now needs to reach their millennial and gen Z clients with emojis and snapchats. In fact, Kirkwood cautions against leaning too heavily on these aspects of social media even for digital-native generations. She says, instead, that these investors still require a personalized touch and human advice that they expect from an advisor. Technology can help the advisors provide that personalized service and a more digitally savvy generation should be more receptive to those tech supplements, so long as they remain supplementary to a core human experience.
Generative AI, Kirkwood says, can help advisors scale and personalize all at once, if executed correctly. Generative AI has been the technology story of the year and it’s something that Kirkwood believes may enable advisors to better prepare for their own futures.
“AI can be encapsulated in that simple way, doing more with less effort, proving higher value to investors with less effort,” Kirkwood says. “Doing more in the advisor’s front office and doing it with less back-office requirements has become an overarching theme.”
There are plenty of quick wins to be had with AI. Kirkwood notes that simple tasks like process notes and meeting recordings. These small time consumers can add efficiency and ideally produce a more consistent and accurate level of service.
The promise, though, of doing more with less hinges on the data that an AI is fed. In line with the idea of ‘garbage in garbage out,’ an AI fed poor information will yield a poor service. An AI fed good information will yield a better service. Kirkwood says that organizations need to be very careful about how they use their data. At Broadridge, for example, they don’t pull data external to organizations in any of the AI models they build out. That is to both ensure security of data and to ensure that the AI is trained on the correct information set.
In addition to automating tasks, Kirkwood believes that AI can help create that more seamlessly integrated ‘platform’ idea of technology at a firm. Through an AI, they can create greater interoperability and communication between tools, allowing the advisor to avoid redundancies and overlaps, the endless re-entry of the same information.
For all the promises of a new technology area like AI, Kirkwood notes that there can be a tendency to chase the ‘shiny toy’ and add some kind of AI capacity just for the sake of it. It’s important, she accepts, that firms don’t allow the technology tail to wag the dog, and the same trends of demographics, shifting client demand, and organizational strategy should govern their decision making rather than the appearance of a new piece of tech.
As firms develop AI tools, tackle demographic trends, and continue to seek new ways to grow, Kirkwood says that individual advisors need to prepare themselves for ongoing change.
“Advisors need to embrace change. We will always be using technology to drive further improvement, so make sure they stay on top of that in order to absorb change into their business models,” Kirkwood says.
