Many of the announcements and demos at this week's second annual Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach, Calif. centered on AI.
Morningstar revealed Monday the upcoming launch of Enterprise Analytics, a set of business intelligence dashboards in the firm’s Advisor Workstation, and the API debut of Mo, its recently released AI chatbot.
Other firms, including Orion Advisor Solutions and Intention.ly also debuted new AI-powered tools.
Orion Advisor Solutions to Combine Behavioral Finance With AI-Powered Portfolio Comparison Tool
Orion Advisor Solutions gave a preview of its new AI-powered Portfolio Comparison Tool at the conference.
Eric Clarke, founder and CEO; Dr. Daniel Crosby, chief behavioral officer; and Mike Wilson, executive vice president of technology, demonstrated the process on stage in what could be one of Clarke's last big on-stage presentations before he steps down from his CEO role by the end of the year. (Natalie Wolfsen, former CEO of AssetMark, has been named the company's new CEO).
Before the presentation, Clarke said with all the acquisitions Orion has completed, it had started to focus to integration, especially relating to behavioral finance. He said this coincided with the spread of generative AI.
Crosby said the No. 1 issue advisors were asking them to solve for centered around personalization. Orion's BeFi20 tool is a 20-question assessment, which generally takes under three minutes to complete. The result is a snapshot of how much clients worry about money, how they communicate around it and more.
Wilson said the soon-to-be-released Portfolio Comparison Tool then takes that information and uses AI to produces a narrative advisors can repeat back to the client.
“It gives the advisor the power to have a very personalized conversation that resonates with the investor, builds trust (and) leads to better decision-making,” he said.
Clarke said the language in the narrative produced by the AI is tailored to that specific type of investor.
Starting in November, Orion’s Portfolio Comparison tool will be accessible to selected advisor beta groups, according to the company. By Ascent 2024, scheduled for March 12 to 15, 2024, in San Diego, Calif., the tool will be open to all advisors using Orion Advantage.
Intention.ly Launches Advisor Brand Builder
Philadelphia-based marketing technology firm Intention.ly announced the launch of its new Advisor Brand Builder platform for advisors.
The tool starts with a speech-to-text transcription process that seeks to help advisors identify their firm’s style preferences and presentation, according to the company. A brand generation engine then serves three custom brand style boards, including a logo, color palette, brand imagery, complete firm message framework and more. Firms may then edit individual visual elements and messaging as needed. The Intention.ly team then reviews the newly created brand. Finally, advisors receive elements including business cards, email signatures and other templates.
The process generally takes around 48 hours and costs a one-time fee of $2,999. There is also a monthly charge for continued access to the platform. Intention.ly currently has around 50 clients.
John DeVincent, chief growth officer of Intention.ly, said the software has been in development for over six months.
He said the company had several advisors run through the process before it was launched as Advisor Brand Builder is powered by a proprietary AI engine, which requires human review,.
“AI rarely gets it right the first pass,” he said. “The idea is to then have a marketing agency behind it.”
Marstone Partners With Equity Bank
Turnkey digital wealth management platform provider Marstone announced a new partnership with Equity Bank to provide its white label robo advisor and RIA service to the community bank.
This latest partnership has been in the works for almost a year, said Margaret Hartigan, CEO of Marstone.
Equity Bank is a subsidiary of Equity Bancshares, which operates 66 bank locations across Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, and comprises more than $5 billion in assets. Equity Bank joins others including Amerant, American Bank & Trust and Bank of Oak Ridge in using Marstone’s platform.
In June 2022, American Century Investments announced it would be making the digital wealth management platform of Marstone available to retail investor clients.
Two former competitors to Marstone have been acquired in recent years. Asset manager Franklin Templeton bought AdvisorEngine and Goldman Sachs purchased Folio Financial, with both deals occurring in May 2020 for undisclosed amounts.
Hartigan said the company caters to banks, community banks, credit unions and insurance companies that white-label the platform. She said with the mortgage market softening and rising interest rates, banks are under pressure to provide “stickier services,” too.
“Deposit accounts that don’t have other services attached to them move quickly,” she said. “People are seeing wealth management as a great opportunity to increase new revenue streams (and) protect deposits.”