Which tech tool has been the biggest lifesaver for your business?

This article appears in the February 2022 issue of Advisor’s Edge magazine. Subscribe to the print edition, read the digital edition or read the articles online.

Jean-François Démoré Partner, chartered investment manager, Innova Wealth Partners, Sudbury, Ont.

Copper’s customer relationship management (CRM) tool has been a game changer for our business from an advisor’s perspective. It’s fully integrated into Gmail, so it allows us to have a client’s data and our company’s processes all in one place. We are seeing this trend of teams coming together, but we found that we had very different tools for how we track client data, how we track client interaction, how we process trades, etc., so we amalgamated as much as we could into one platform. We wanted to streamline practices so our whole team could execute consistently. The biggest thing Copper has done is help us formalize specific processes, such as initiating a trade or keeping track of client communication, so that we can implement different advisors’ ways of doing business in a systematized way.

Meagan Balaneski Portfolio manager, Aligned Capital Partners, Vermilion, Alta.

The number one lifesaver for me has been Loom, a video messaging software that allows me to reply to my emails with a video. It’s especially helpful when calendars don’t line up or I don’t want to type a large amount of text. So, even if I’m asked a simple question, I can describe complex reasoning with visuals. The program also has neat little tools, like an electronic highlighter, so I can point out certain aspects of a portfolio as I’m talking about them. The biggest thing for me is the timesaving aspect. It takes me 10 minutes to record a video that would take me 30 minutes to write as an email.

Amy Dietz-Graham Senior vice-president, portfolio manager, National Bank Financial Wealth Management, Toronto

Our in-house financial planning tool, Advice Suite: financial planning is how we make a portfolio relevant to a client’s day-to-day life, so having a tool that’s easy to use is important to me because I’m always updating the plans. It’s one thing to have a really cool tool as an advisor, but it has to make sense to the client. They aren’t left looking at lines of Excel; instead, they see a barometer and graphs showing where they are in terms of reaching their very specific goals. The biggest reason I find clients don’t feel like they’ve been successful is because they don’t understand — they compare their rates of return to the market, which is interesting but in no way helps them understand if they’re on track to meet their own specific goals. Having a goal-based financial planning tool allows you to make that connection.

Maddie Johnson

Maddie is a freelance writer and editor who has been reporting for Advisor.ca since 2019.