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Spenser Segal is the CEO of ActiFi, Inc., a software and solutions company focused on delivering scalable practice management programs to advisors and the institutions that support them. He has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, both as a successful financial planner, and with leadership roles at American Express Financial Advisors, RBC Dain Rauscher, Barrington Capital Management, and BigCharts. In 2011, Spenser was named to Investment Advisor Magazine’s list of the Top 25 Most Influential People in the Financial Services Industry. 

Takeaway Quote:

“What got us from there to here isn’t going to get us from here to there.” 

Show Timeline:

01:30 Key trends in the industry that advisors should be noting
Evolution of client engagement, transparency, technology
03:39 Implementing “auditability”
The importance of documenting interactions and solutions using available systems
05:04 Quality control among multi-advisory firms
The benefits of embedding these processes and upholding consistent standards
06:11 How clients are becoming more empowered
The nature of meetings, communications, reporting, and the platinum rule
9:53 Standardization vs. customization
Understanding what to customize for maximum benefit for the firm and clients
13:14 Using goals-based data to inform the client experience
Thinking about the experience you’re trying to deliver and using the right tools to deliver it
15:39 The role of business processes in creating your client experience
Starting with processes to inform the work your technologies do
18:53 How a firm can start on a new path to re-engineering their processes
Acknowledging what needs to be done, mapping out the processes, and institutionalizing them
20:18 The role institutions need to play to support advisors
Why this partnership is becoming increasingly important
26:10 Embedding client feedback into a firm’s operating procedures
How Spenser practices what he preaches with his clients
29:28 How feedback is linked to increased referrals
A key question to ask clients to ensure they understand your solutions and value
33:24 The perception of clients about what a firm does, compared to the true value proposition
Training them, in a client-centric way, to articulate that proposition

Links:

Websites: www.actifi.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/spenseractifi
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spenser-segal-ba810b/

Want more?

Stephen Wershing: www.TheClientDrivenPractice.com/checklistblog
Julie Littlechild: www.absoluteengagement.com/blog

Episode Transcript:

[Audio Length: 0:37:09]

Stephen:       
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that shows you how to become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing, and on today’s episode we talk with Spenser Segal, who is CEO of ActiFi, a software and solutions company focused on delivering scalable practice management programs for financial advisors. We have a conversation about how to put together the right kind of client experience based on solid processes. We talk about why the DOL rule is driving the need to have a consistent auditable process regardless of which regulatory regime you fall under. We talk about how to deliver a customized experience to clients. We talk about why benchmarks are not necessarily the right way to measure portfolio performance. And we talk about why top performing firms invest in engineering solid processes based on today’s technology. It’s an interesting conversation with a lot of valuable information for anybody who wants to create the kind of experience that is consistent and that makes clients want to tell their friends about it. So, without any further delay, here is Spenser.

Julie: 
Well, Spenser, welcome! We are so excited to talk to you today. Every time I talk to you, I get so much insight about what’s going on in the industry. So welcome and thanks for being here.

Spenser:   
Yeah, my pleasure. A real privilege to be with you guys today.

Julie:   
That’s great. So look, hey, why don’t we just start high-level, and then we’ll try to dig down, but while we’ve got you, I know you have your eye on the industry and the trends and what’s going on, so maybe you could just kick us off by talking about some of the key trends that you see going on that ultimately will affect how advisors need to think about how they attract and service their clients.

Spenser: 
Well, I’ll talk about three specific ones in general. So starting with the clients themselves, there’s definitely an evolution that we’re seeing, and it’s across all sectors of our economy where clients are becoming more empowered. They are able to configure, if you will, or select the way they want to be served and how they want to be served. And increasingly, advisors are going to have to be able to listen in an increasingly effective manner to those preferences of the client: how they want to be served, where they want to be served, and the overall engagement model. So we just see this hard trend of consumer empowerment across industries. So that’s point, kind of trend one.

Trend two, with DOL and other regulatory changes, we are seeing this movement toward a more transparent, auditable process. So we don’t see, regardless of what ends of happening with DOL, what we’re going to see more and more of is firms looking to create that consistent, auditable experience.

And thirdly, which sort of ties to one and two, in order to be able to deliver that more customized client experience, to be able to do that in a documented and auditable way, advisors are going to have to be increasingly sophisticated in their use of technology. And we’ve seen a real explosion in innovation, the whole FinTech capabilities, all sorts of capabilities available to advisors, available to clients, and we don’t anticipate that level of innovation and change slowing down any time soon.

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