Tim Welsh, President of Nexus Strategy, joined Julie Cooling, Founder and CEO of RIA Channel, to discuss how RIA firms can select and integrate new technology solutions.
As fiduciaries with growing businesses, the RIA industry has attracted the attention of technology firms and solution providers. Nexus Strategy works with RIAs to sort through which of the myriad service providers might be right for their firm. The choices of products continue to multiply. At some industry conferences, 5,000 advisors may attend to meet with over 500 vendors. Nexus Strategy operates as a boutique, with the consultants traveling with and to clients to best evaluate their technology needs.
With a background as an advisor at Schwab and Merrill Lynch, Welsh has the background to serve as a consultant who can help match advisors with solutions. By understanding the pain points, the firm can assist advisors in what works to streamline their operations. Many of those pain points revolve around manual back-office processes that need to be automated and run more efficiently. By letting the robots take care of the manual processes, human advisor are freed up to spend time and build relationships with their human clients.
Much of the innovation and client demand today is on platforms based on artificial intelligence. Software platforms are now seeking to make processes easier while delivering on a beautifully executed user interface.
Welsh notes that it is advantageous to be a newcomer building a firm from scratch. Firms that have been around for a while may have a number of legacy systems that don’t communicate well with each other. Firms starting new today can build a platform using cloud-based tools from one or more vendors that fit together seamlessly.
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