Product manager from Croesus explains how the platform can best serve advisors as they call nervous clients
In the past few weeks, advisors have been having to talk down nervous clients and help rationalize away their anxieties while staying physically removed. In phone calls and video chats, many advisors haven’t been able to turn around a screen or hand their client a piece of paper, showing them vital data that will reassure them in a troubling time. Some advisors, though, bought into tech platforms with customer porting capabilities. Those investments are paying untold dividends.
The team behind one of those platforms, Croesus, told WP about how their fintech offerings have delivered for advisors managing their practices from home offices and talking down nervous clients. They think their tools are equipping advisors to deal with those difficult conversations and transition their clients into talking about the next steps they need to take to get through the crisis.
“When a client in this environment calls their advisor, they’re going to be nervous,” Steeve Pratte, business product manager at Croesus told WP. “They need to be reassured, they need to feel like a person. So having tools like our activity screen for example, where the advisor can quickly get up to speed on everything relevant to the client helps make them feel acknowledged.”
Pratte said their tools can help the advisor quickly transition into calming the nervous investor down and explaining how, in specific detail their portfolio is performing. He cited Croesus’ pre-configured reports function as a means to quickly share detailed data breakdowns over a secure portal or via screensharing.
From there the advisor can break down the details of a client’s position, using the platform’s ‘performance contribution’ function. This helps them understand exactly what their big scary 20 per cent loss is made of. Advisors can show that within that 20 per cent loss might be some gains and losses well below the broad market indices.
“The biggest reason people are fearful of something is the unknown,” Pratte said “So by breaking things down, the unknown becomes known and that allows you to move into the next discussion.”
Pratte believes that the “next discussion” is crucial. Clients need to be brought up to speed and make decisions about potential moves to start rebuilding their portfolios after the market hits bottom. They need to be taking all the right steps to get their investments healthy again.
Croesus’ has a few other functions that seemed mildly helpful before our current remote work era, and now feel prescient. Namely, their integrated CRM which hosts crucial notes and other client information that advisors can access remotely. The scribbled insights key to understanding a client can be hosted and accessed from outside the office meaning the whole relationship can be taken remote.
Pratte believes these functions to be the future of the advisory business. He thinks the industry was already on that trajectory, the current crisis has only sped it up. Working from home, removed from their assistants and running different routines, the advisors that invested in integrated platforms have a leg up, both in how they can port data to customers but also in how they can manage their new remote practices.
He thinks that at bottom, the tools Croesus provides exist to ease the client conversations all advisors need to be having right now. If that conversation is handled well and comprehensively, their most important job in this crisis will be done.
“If you don't know your tools very well, when the nervous investor finishes their call with you, they’re not yet sure that everything will be taken care of,” Pratte said. “If you've done that preparation and you have all those integrated tools, then the investor can be sure that it's taken care of and you're ready to move on to the next stages.”
