The Advisor’s Robo

A Safe Set of Hands

Computers and algorithms have changed every aspect of our lives, and the way we manage our finances is no exception. Robo-advisors, which provide automated, algorithm-driven portfolio management, have already become prevalent in the wealth management world, and they will play a dominant role in personal portfolio management going forward. Firms and companies that do not embrace these new technologies may well go the way of Yellow Cab and Blockbuster after they went head-to-head with Uber and Netflix. Financial advisors who harness these innovative technologies on their own behalf have the chance not only to survive but to thrive and possibly scale their businesses as never before.  

The term “robo-advisor” invokes the image of a fully-automated financial advisor, and for many robo-advisors that is accurate. But a handful of the applications are designed specifically for registered financial advisors to use when serving clients. Our application, Emotomy, is one of these — designed from the ground up to augment and serve the needs of human advisors.

Our platform is tailored to help advisors manage their businesses, with the aim of helping them work more efficiently with clients and focus on the priorities that benefit most from their attention. We have a deep appreciation of the unique value of human advisors, people who can respond thoughtfully to client questions, listen to concerns about market changes, and understand and respond to fear arising from market or asset conditions. But we also see the myriad ways that technology can help make advising more efficient. Some fully automated robo-advisors protect users from making snap decisions by setting up checks to deter selling funds too frequently or reactively; we believe that such automated checks are not as robust a deterrent as an actual human advisor who stands between the individual investor and the market. A human advisor can offer wisdom and adapt intuitively to investor concerns, while at the same time protecting them from jeopardizing their financial welfare.

Technology can help financial advisors become more effective, but it will never be able to offer a hand during a financial or family crisis or give calming advice during periods of “irrational exuberance.” Technology will never be able to ask that single spontaneous question that illuminates an aspect of an investor’s future plans, thereby prompting an alternative course for investing. Emotomy, our robo-advisor tool, offers advisors many suggested questions for investors, but it also provides advisors the option of writing their own questions to elucidate information relevant to a particular client or group of clients. Where technology serves, humans guide. We are fairly certain that Emotomy will never become the inspiration for a science fiction movie script, because our platform always keeps humans at the helm.

Scalability:  An Investor’s Vision of Efficient Portfolio Management

Emotomy’s end-to-end investment management solution was developed by financial industry veteran Dr. Patrick Beaudan to streamline his own investment operations. After many years of managing client portfolios, Dr. Beaudan felt the need to cut out tasks that were time-consuming and did not require human discretion. To solve that problem for himself, he created a platform that helps CIOs, RIAs, and other financial advisors scale their businesses — and, effectively, to scale themselves.

Emotomy automates many of the client onboarding activities that are cumbersome and repetitive to the advisor, including the gathering of personal information and detail about financial accounts, asset inventories, and other data necessary to set up accounts. The Emotomy platform allows CIOs to specify high-level investment strategies in the system that can be used by front-line sales agents or advisors, so they can focus on efficiently providing tailored and thoughtful solutions to individual clients. Pre-designed marketing materials can be customized easily for specific individuals, eliminating the need to prepare one-off presentations and saving enormous amounts of time and repetitive effort. Senior investment managers can use the system to monitor large groups of client portfolios, including setting up alerts to help a firm respond to each individual client.

Emotomy also provides ongoing tracking and reporting that helps the advisor offer genuine, real-time portfolio monitoring. If the advisor desires, clients can also gain direct access. The net result is that advisors can concentrate on what they do best: formulate and execute investment strategies to manage client assets effectively and profitably.  They can focus on providing what they have always been best at: strategy, advice, and human contact.

Succession: Continuity of Records, Continuity of Service

How miserable it is when we lose our advisors — trusted doctors, financial planners, accountants, and other professionals who know us, who are familiar with our lives and ambitions, and who have been by our side to help us achieve our goals. Their successors may be full of innovative ideas, but it’s equally possible that those great ideas are exactly the wrong fit for our life stage, health, accounts, and finances. The process of getting to know new advisors and educating them about our needs and desires can be tedious and uncertain. The new professionals may have different philosophies or approaches, and the transitions can be disruptive, destructive, or just annoying to deal with. Succession challenges can sometimes be so problematic that we might elect to abandon advice altogether and attempt to manage on our own.

But succession and transition do not have to be such difficult issues. For financial planners who use Emotomy’s robo-advisor as a platform to work with their clients, succession changes and other shifts can be seamless and pain-free. If one advisor is removed or retires, a successor can access the client’s digital portfolio and all historic records of previous activities through Emotomy. Transitions from one advisor to another become far less cumbersome, saving time and money and reducing errors, thereby vastly lowering liability. No one wants to have to print out reams of paperwork to scour their past moves, purchases and sales in order to provide relevant information about an advisor. When all of a client’s data, preferences and history are stored in an advisory tool like Emotomy’s, none of that scouring or second-guessing is necessary.

Ultimately, it is the human element we miss when we are transitioning from one advisor to another. When a client’s choices, preferences and history are preserved and showcased as vividly and accessibly as they are in Emotomy, it becomes far easier for a successor to understand a new client and connect to him or her at a truly human level.