Self-Described “data scientists," Quovo’s (www.quovo.com) co-founders Lowell Putnam and Niko Karvounis explain how their firm is aggressively using data to make financial advisers smarter at their jobs.
Putnam: “Advisors are sitting next to a huge source of revenue and assets. They can’t charge fees on what they don’t know anything about. The old way of getting to know about held away assets is an admin would get statements from clients, and good luck getting that, upload them into a portfolio management system and then you don’t know if there’s any value there. Now we can see a 360 view of assets, a share of the wallet.
Karvounis: “There’s more of an expectation and table stakes in the industry, where people are aggregating accounts on free services to give someone a more holistic perspective. Clients now expect that perspective should be part of their experience with their advisor.”
Putnam: “Data used to be pieces of information like inputs. Let me pull it from somewhere and take a look at it. The way we view it today is to make data the center of gravity for operations and processes for a firm. We have a data platform under the hood that aggregates data from different sources, makes it more reliable, apples to apples, and makes analyses more simple.”
Karvounis: “If you are the type of client or investor who has the disposition to sit back and see what an advisor does with your money, you don’t want that to happen in a vacuum but in context of what information you have.”