Capturing The Collective Wisdom of Financial Advisors

Financial advisors often lack timely access to critical information for expanding their practice and articulating their firm’s unique position amidst industry disruptions. Traditional training and communication tools are too slow for today’s increasingly volatile markets. Advisors need information quickly, and they want to hear from their peers.

The Impending ‘Brain Drain’ in Wealth Management

The impending financial services “brain drain,” a phenomenon driven (in part) by Baby Boomer retirements, is an example for which capturing the wisdom of subject matter expert is essential.

As large numbers of experienced financial advisors and insurance adjusters leave the industry, their collective wisdom is in danger of evaporating. If it’s not captured and shared, a generation’s worth of experiential expertise will be lost instead of being passed to younger advisors.

Traditionally, such knowledge had to be conveyed in person. The best portfolio managers, in addition to meeting the everyday demands of their jobs, shared their insights and best practices via phone calls, meetings, and dinners. Often, the presence of these top performers was requested–if not required–by so many people that it proved impossible for the supply to meet the demand.

The Power of Peer-to-Peer Learning

The solution, as we’ve discovered at Allego, is mobile video. It allows anyone to quickly and easily create, distribute, and access content from their smartphone or tablet–from anywhere at any time.

Needless to say, information can be captured and shared much better using video and virtual sales meetings than phone calls and face-to-face meetings. Mobile video is the most cost-effective way to preserve the best ideas from your company’s subject matter experts top advisors.

Moreover, sharing peer-to-peer experiential knowledge is a more powerful training tool than classroom-based curriculums.

Historically, 90% of a financial advisor’s training consisted of formal classroom presentations, while just 10% comprised informal “on-the-job” training. As it turns out, that formal-to-informal training ratio should have been reversed. We now know that 90% of what advisors need to learn is gleaned from their colleagues and direct managers, whereas most classroom training is forgotten within 30 days.

Often, it’s the person sitting next to you–or the person who held the job before you–who teaches you most of what you need to know to do a better job going forward.

Record Wisdom Before It Vanishes

Think of how much collective wisdom exists in the wealth management industry today–in the form of people with lifetimes of professional experience. Unless that wisdom is recorded before they retire, it will vanish. Recording and preserving this knowledge in easy-to-access video libraries will ensure that it’s available for every new hire who joins the firm in the future.

Many wealth managers hear the word “innovate,” and think they have to achieve the equivalent of planting a flag on the moon. In reality, innovation can be as easy as looking at your smartphone and then deciding to make a short video about (say) a new fiduciary rule. That single, two- or three-minute video could be viewed by thousands of your colleagues, potentially giving your company a huge advantage over the competition.

For other examples of how Allego helps wealth managers drive collaboration, watch this video from InvestmentNews.