Are you ready to peek into the future of wealth tech innovation? Buckle up, because our latest Beacon Flash podcast episode features none other than Michelle Feinstein, the esteemed Vice President and General Manager of Financial Services Group at Salesforce. She takes us on a thrilling journey, revealing the groundbreaking advancements at the recent Dreamforce event, including the cutting-edge Einstein Co-Pilot, an expanded data cloud strategy, and the integration of personal financial management in their industry-leading financial services cloud.
Looking for answers on how technology is morphing the wealth management industry? Feast your mind on our enlightening conversation about the vital role of data, the swift pace of industry evolution, and the challenges of catering to diverse client demographics, from the uber-rich to the mass affluent. Michelle decodes the complex role that AI plays in financial services and uncovers Salesforce's bold strategy in this space. We also tackle the technology hurdles wealth firms grapple with, emphasizing the importance of data unification, effective analytics, and the retirement of outdated systems to accelerate innovation. Don't miss out on this action-packed discussion!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi, my name is Chip Kispert and I'm the host of the
Beacon Flash podcast.
Today, my guest is MichelleFeinstein, a true wealth tech
industry leader who plays apivotal role at Salesforce as
they help the wealth managementindustry.
Michelle's expertise andinsights on Salesforce, along
with her wealth managementtechnology thought leadership,
(00:30):
are going to make for anengaging and informative podcast
episode.
As a little backdrop onMichelle Michelle has an
abundance of experience withinthe wealth tech space.
Currently, she is the vicepresident, general manager of
the financial services group atSalesforce.
She is also tasked with productinnovation and driving customer
(00:50):
success.
Michelle has the pulse on manyof the dynamics of an
ever-changing wealth techindustry.
Previously, michelle spent timeat Pershing, a bank of New York
Mellon company, where sheeffectively helped customers
intersect, clearing custody withtheir technology needs.
I am excited to have Michelle asa guest on the Beacon Flash
(01:12):
podcast and I am sure that you,our audience, will walk away
with valuable insights, alongwith a fresh perspective on the
wealth tech industry and itsfuture.
Let's get to the podcast,michelle.
Thank you so much for being onthe Beacon Flash podcast.
Now, we've been friends foryears, right, and even.
(01:34):
Furthermore, I look at you asone of those people in the
industry that, I believe, has aterrific handle on where we've
been, where we are and wherewe're going.
The work that you're doing isthoughtful and I'm so excited to
talk about it, so I'm excitedto get into the conversation and
again, welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Michelle.
Thank you so much, chip, andyes, we have been friends for
years, so it's my pleasure tojoin you on this podcast.
Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Chip.
So our background is we worktogether when you're at Pershing
.
We also are working togethernow that you're at Salesforce.
Right, You're just off a dreamforce.
What are a couple of the thingsthat you took away from the
event that should be of hugeimportance to investment
advisors and the enterprisewealth community at large,
(02:26):
Michelle.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, the biggest really theme of
focus at Dreamforce this yearwas data, AI and CRM and the
powerful combination All of thatbrings to the wealth management
community and to advisors.
So if you look at all theannouncements that went out at
Dreamforce, if you go toSalesforce live, you can see a
lot of the sessions.
(02:47):
I would touch on a couple ofthings.
First and foremost is datacloud, the LLMs and Salesforce
strategy around Einsteinco-pilot.
This is really really important, right?
You know, in our roundtables,the topic of AI has come up all
year, but I think in wealth, alot of firms are sitting back
and kind of trying to determinewhat to do with it.
(03:08):
Are they ready to use it?
And so there was a lot ofexcitement around the fact that
Salesforce has made such aninvestment and so much progress
in this area.
So, to give you a little bit ofcolor, like Einstein co-pilot
is basically generative AIconversational.
It's like a digital assistantthat Salesforce is embedding
into not just one cloud but allthe clouds at Salesforce, and
(03:32):
this is really important becausenow, well, firms don't have to
try and think up something.
They can.
Actually, if they're Salesforceusers, they're gonna be able to
start using Einstein Co-Pilotand what it does is it basically
is like a productivity enabler,right for financial advisors,
for sales, for service, formarketing, where I'll give you
the example of financialadvisors, Co-Pilot's gonna be
(03:54):
used to help them find cases, toact on cases, summarize meeting
notes, set up automatedschedules of meetings and so
much more.
And that's just in that onearea, right, If you apply that
in the sales scenario or servicescenario, super, super
impactful.
So that would be number one.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Okay, excellent.
What's number two?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So number two would be the expanded data cloud
strategy.
So there were many sessions anddemonstrations of data cloud
and what Salesforce is doing tobe a trusted data layer and
offer out an LLM and ability toact on that LLM and a lot of
conversation and strategymeetings I sat in.
Customers were saying well,what if I don't wanna put all my
(04:36):
data in Salesforce?
The beauty of this is you don'thave to.
What they're trying to do hereat Salesforce is be the
unification layer but be veryopen while we do it.
So it's really a bring your owndata model right.
Clients can go ahead and ifthey're using Snowflake or
Amazon products or somethingelse, and they just wanna
connect that data withSalesforce.
(04:56):
That's the whole point andwe'll just mirror the data, but
the goal is unifying it so allthat rich data can be acted upon
.
So that was a big focus andwhat was really cool is they had
a demonstration and a booth onthis Einstein report formula
generation, where creatingreports can be really
complicated for advisors orsomebody in operations.
(05:17):
Very soon, I think at the endof the year, you're gonna
actually be able to have aprompt that says I wanna create
the certain type of report withthese attributes and the
system's gonna just go do it.
So it's basically you're ableto like voice how you wanna code
right into the system.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
You're gonna make it easy.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
We're trying to make it easy.
The last thing I'll touch on isFSC, so financial services
cloud, or those folks that arenot familiar, but there were a
lot of announcements around newinnovations coming around around
financial services cloud andthe one I'll touch upon is
personal financial managementand the ability to embed
(05:55):
financial insights intofinancial services cloud and
what it's gonna come from is theday layer of data cloud.
The other is an expanded goalof implants experience in FSC,
so this has been a long timecoming.
A lot of well firms use FSC astheir advisor experience and
they've taken on the burden ofbuilding out integrations with
leading planning providers.
(06:16):
What we have done on theproduct team has said we wanna
take that integration burdenaway, and so we've built in the
integration hooks.
I can't say the names of whothose providers are just yet,
but I will be able to soon.
But now the advisor doesn'thave to leave the platform when
they wanna see or take action ontheir financial planning
capabilities.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And I certainly am curious about that, cause we get
a lot of feedback.
I wanna go back to your firstand second points.
I was down in in South Carolinathis earlier this week and I
was giving a talk on AI, whichis something that a lot of our
community is super interested in, and we actually had some
(07:02):
advisors in the room and it wasamazing because one of the two
of the biggest things that theadvisors were concerned about
and couldn't get their armsaround was those meeting notes
you talked about.
Right, they're like, oh my gosh, I've gone out and I bought
remarkably, I bought orremarkable the note pads.
(07:23):
I bought an iPad for notes, yetthey couldn't get it hooked in
to their infrastructure.
The whole part as simple thingslike that is what I'm hearing
that Einstein is gonna take over.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
That's right.
Yeah, I mean, when people askwhat are the use cases you're
focused on, they're reallyactually pretty simple, right?
So in the areas of serviceefficiency, service automation,
advisor productivity, these aresome of the main areas we're
looking at and we're saying weknow advisors spend too much of
their time on non-coreactivities, right, they're doing
(08:02):
compliance training and they'retrying to learn new products
and services and they're doingall kinds of administrative work
.
That's very manual, right, andso the goal with these co-pilot
agents is to say what is manualthat regulators wouldn't be
overly concerned about.
Where, if we can have the AItake over some of that, but
still put in a layer for reviewso that we can make sure a human
(08:23):
is still comfortable with howAI has summarized.
That's the key.
As an example, even, we put AIinto action for one of my dream
force sessions.
After the panel was delivered,within I think it was 10 minutes
our marketing team sent me asummary of my entire panel and
it was summarized by AI and Ihad a chance to approve it, and
(08:45):
then it was attached on thewebsite to go with the session
as a recap.
So we're using it in real lifehere at Salesforce.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
So you have some voice activation in there as
well and those pieces of thepost.
That's awesome.
The other one and I'm chucklingis data right.
So these advisors who are veryparticular about their data,
especially as 1099 advisors, howdo they?
Oh, what am I giving, what am Ibringing in?
I think that's a huge item.
(09:12):
How is our friend Greg Belzer,mr RBC Wealth Management?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Greg is always amazing.
He did not have a dedicatedposter that I came across at
Dreamforce, but he was still oneof our experts, that one of our
expert clients that we calledupon and he spoke in many
sessions and he's just awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
He always needs to have the 30 foot poster.
I mean, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
He'll never be out of a job.
I'll tell you that One dayyou're gonna see him working
here at Salesforce.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
All right, hey, number two, and you and I have
both been doing this for longenough, right?
How do you see the wealthbusiness changing?
And I ask this, given both yourcurrency at Salesforce, your
past seed at Pershing, you know,and, and I really believe
(10:05):
you're kind of that intersectionof technology and advisor
experience, and you know I'mcurious about your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So it's how is it not changing right?
I think our wealth managementfirms are seeing more change in
the past two years in particular, than they have in the past 20,
and They've always been tryingto evolve and modernize.
But what I see is, on meetingwith all different kinds of
clients, is they're acceleratingtheir ability to make decisions
(10:35):
.
They're accelerating theirability to try and reduce
complexity, because they'reseeing that they're just not
going to scale if they don't.
So you know there are about sixkey areas that are the ones
that most often come up thesedays when wealth clients are
putting their priorities.
The first is definitelyconnecting ecosystems, and it's
not just a focus for advisors,it's also for operational
(10:58):
efficiency for the middle office.
So see a lot of wealth firmsthere kind of looking at their
tech stacks, seeing howcomplicated they are.
They have too many systems inthere and so they're really
being very strategic aboutRecognizing which of those
systems really maybe they don'tneed anymore.
I also see a big shift awayfrom them having to build all
(11:19):
their own tech.
You and I both know in theworld of wealth for a Lot of our
firms they did that for a longtime.
They're finally starting tobecome much more open and the
challenge there is some of thesefirms have not been in a
position, with talent, to bevery API driven, but they're
recognizing to connectecosystems.
They really they need to getthere.
(11:39):
The second theme and it came upa lot of dream force when I was
meeting with clients was clientsare now trying to figure out,
if they want to have Acceleratedgrowth, that they can only
focus on the ultra high networth segment and that they also
have to find a way to Serve themassive fluent.
You know, no longer is it justgive them a robo model and so
(12:00):
what their challenge is?
Okay, how do we maintainsupporting the needs of the
ultra high net worth but alsostart to put in a service model,
an operating model, a pricingmodel for this massive flu
Acceptment, because they don'twant just digital, they want
digital plus human support,human advice.
And For these firms that I'vebeen speaking to, a big problem
is advisor scalability.
(12:21):
In order to support that, theadvisors are going to have to
have some conversations with themass affluent and also
Personalize advice andportfolios for that segment.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
So I'll let you react to that one.
Yeah, so it's interesting, I wastalking to a chief marketing
officer last night and we weretalking about the same subject.
You know, if you look at a lotof these firms kind of that
ultra high net worth they'reonly so many customers, right,
that's right.
And and then you know, we lookat, you know, the other space,
(12:54):
right, the 401k.
We look at 403 B's, another.
We have some customers thatplay in the 403 B space.
I Don't know when.
The last time you went in anddug in that technology Maras was
.
But it's not easy for thesefirms to be able to support that
business, right, but they wantto be able to support it.
(13:14):
So they're looking for for thetechnology side.
So I think that's superimportant.
We had a round table last weekand and it was investment round
table, and one of the thingsthat I took away was this you
can have the technology, which Ithink is hugely.
You know, hey, I've been doingthis for a long time.
Tech has been our focus.
(13:34):
You have to change the behaviortoo.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And you know I was having aconversation this morning with
one of our market researchanalysts.
I'm about to head over and do awealth event over in France,
and so they're trying to learnfrom us here in the States, and
one of the big things waseducation.
So it's not just about thetechnology, but it's also about
education for advisors,financial literacy for investors
(13:59):
, and how are you going todeliver that education?
It can't all be in person, sothat starts to turn into more
technology, investment andprojects.
Right, are you going to use adigital assistant?
Are you going to use recordedsessions?
Are you going to use video?
Are you going to leverage chatbox, like?
How are you going to, you know,meet this need and in order to
really engage, especially theMass Affluent, for instance, you
(14:22):
can't not have that.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Right, hey, hey.
Anytime you go to France, letme know Happy to come.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Going soon, so I'll pack you in my suitcase.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
All right, the obligatory AI question, and you
know we talked a little bitabout it earlier with co-pilot,
right, but how does Salesforcesee AI fitting into really the
that broader financial servicefabric?
You know let who the bigwinners in this one?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah.
So, as I talked about earlier,right, we're making heavy
investment.
You can see in the news usmaking acquisitions of AI
companies and then also justenhancing the AI capabilities we
already have.
Right, salesforce isn't new tothe world of AI.
I mean, we have really beenplaying in that space since 2016
with Einstein, and so now it'sjust how do we take that to the
(15:17):
next level?
One of the new things that Ithink will benefit wealth firms
is the prompt builder technologyand templates that are starting
to roll out as part of thatco-pilot experience I was
mentioning.
So we know gen AI is only asgood as the data that it's, you
know, taking from, and it's alsotrial and error, and you have
to teach that AI with the rightway to ask questions in order to
(15:38):
get back the best responses.
And so one of thedifferentiators here at
Salesforce with prompt builderis we're going to enable users
to have a better way to be moreprescriptive with describing in
the prompt builder exactly whatthey want AI to do, but in
simple, plain English.
So we're going to come out withsome templates that have been
customer informed as a startingpoint, but then that prompt
(16:00):
builder is also going to behighly configurable and simple
to use and they demonstrated itat Salesforce, at Dreamforce
rather, and if you want to seeit, you can see it on that
Salesforce plus.
So that would be one example.
The other is with financialservices cloud.
We also are thinking about howdo we bring AI into the
financial services cloudexperience, and so for us it's
(16:22):
going to go back to thatpersonalized finance, but also
things like transaction disputes.
That's probably going to be oneof the first use cases that
shows up in February.
Yeah, we're going to use AIthere to kind of fine tune the
responses, give suggestedresponses or review kind of a
cue for that to try to make thateasier.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
That is incredible.
I always love to ask thisquestion.
Salesforce, we can see, is allin on the wealth management
business.
We see that with FSC.
We see it with how they'reutilizing AI, how they're
looking at data.
It's really incredible.
We can all see that.
How is Salesforce partneringwith those next-gen technology
(17:03):
companies that weave into theadvisor tech step, because
currently we see a lot of thosenext-gen being disparate from
the ecosystems of these wealthmanagement firms.
They become a complianceproblem where they become
challenging in terms ofadministration, and how do they
weave into process?
(17:23):
How are you guys thinking aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked me.
At Dreamforce this year, weprobably announced the most new
partnerships and coreintegrations and we ever have
for any Dreamforce that I'vebeen a part of.
I'll name a bunch of them thatjust recently came to light.
The first is the integrationthat's launching with Pershing X
.
Now, Pershing itself is acustodian that's been in place
(17:49):
for over two decades, butPershing X is the new fintech of
Pershing.
The data integration is justthat it's to connect the
platform of Wob with financialservices cloud and sales and
service cloud and make sure thatdata is syncing in the moments
that matter most for advisorsand their productivity.
We're really excited about thatone.
The second one is Broadridge.
Broadridge has really rich data, especially around books and
(18:13):
records, and it would be supervaluable to get that data and
unify it with CRM data.
We launched an integration atDreamforce that does just that.
In addition to that, Broadridgeis launching two new ISV app
exchange apps around security,space lending and a digitized
marketing experience calledAdvisor Stream, which, when an
(18:34):
advisor is trying to personalizean experience, Broadridge has
already purchased content fromnews outlets and providers
that's safe for the advisor touse, and so they can just access
that information directly fromSalesforce.
The other one I'll touch on isAccenture.
We know here at Salesforce wecan't always build everything on
(18:55):
our own, and we have a richpartner community.
What Accenture is doing isthey're extending the financial
services cloud data model.
They're putting on a pack ofintegrations that are most in
demand by wealth firms andthey're rolling out a user
experience that actually buildsnew account opening, unified new
account opening on top of FSC,so our firms don't have to build
(19:16):
it themselves.
Those are just a couple ofexamples.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So it's a small world , right.
So in the last couple of weeksI've seen the Pershing X piece
pretty impressive.
Yesterday, actually, our oldfriend Nick Facker got to go
through advisor stream with Nickand his Broadridge team and
what they're doing truly isimpressive, and weaving that
(19:41):
into Salesforce can pay bigdividends.
My last question for you here,and this is one I'd like to ask
right, when you think about thewealth business and, to a
greater extent, our technologyhub, what do you think keeps
advisors and large wealth firmsup at night when they think
(20:06):
about, hey, we have this techstack, we have advisors.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Is that the question?
That's the question.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
You know, I think, first and foremost, what keeps
advisors up at night is are theygoing to continue to remain
relevant, valuable and be ableto really grow their business at
scale?
Right, so they're facing off nowto more and more individuals
within the household.
Maybe in the beginning it usedto be just Michelle and her
husband, but now they really arereaching it to Michelle, the
(20:39):
husband, all the kids, anybodythat could potentially inherit
the wealth and so I think it'sputting a lot of pressure on
them to learn new technologies,to make sure those technologies
talk to each other and to betime efficient.
Time management, again, istheir biggest challenge, right,
so they spend too much timedoing manual administrative
things.
So I think what keeps them upat night really is not having a
(21:01):
unified platform experience.
Right, and still having toomuch friction, too much swivel
chair, and it can beoverwhelming, right, as their
wealth firms are piling on moreproducts to learn, more
solutions to sell and oh, by theway, expand your book faster
than you ever have before andshow growth.
I think the second, yeah, goahead.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
No, I was just going to say, and the other one is
really getting thesetechnologies to work seamlessly
together and for the advisors,they're still learning how to
use analytics.
Like a lot of these wealthfirms are going to start turning
on predictive insights andpredictive analytics, but the
advisors, I think, are still notreally used to using all that
analytic power and so, again, Ithink it goes back to a little
(21:42):
bit of fear factor of what do Ido with this data.
So wealth firms have to be verytargeted and supportive in
terms of what they roll out andhow they teach those advisors
how to maximize the value out ofthose reports.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, you know it's interesting.
You talked about the analytics.
We did a demo for a firmrecently and they're like, oh,
we have this great analyticspage and I look at it and, great
, I'm like, all right, what do Ido with it?
What are the activities I needto do from this analytics page?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
That's right, and so, instead of making it overly
complicated with every littledata point like a million
different analytic reports youcould use, I'm seeing wealth
firms scale back.
Here are five new reports witha very simple user interface so
that these advisors will getcomfortable enough to start
customizing those reports andusing it on your own.
Going back to the Greg Belzerexample, that's exactly what
(22:39):
they did and that's what hestarted to see that his advisor
and their support staff are notcalling the home office to get
reports customized.
They're actually using it now,but he brought them to the table
to inform their design.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
That's great.
Yeah, all right.
The final word.
This is where I give you 60seconds to share your thinking
on an aspect of our businessthat could be trends, concerns
or outliers.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Michelle, attention so okay, so I'll say my final
words are if you're thinkingabout where to prioritize your
strategy, I would start withsolving the data unification
problem.
This is the number one areawhere firms that are making the
most progress have started.
So it's really going back totake an inventory of your tech
stack.
Be open to retiring systemswith low adoption.
(23:27):
Think about those systems thatneed to connect, and start with
business outcomes.
Why are you trying to connectthem?
What do you want to achieve?
What is the data that's needed?
The second is, if you're someonein the seat of choosing where
to send your budget next, take alook at how open is your
architecture.
How open are you to outsourcingto an outside platform?
(23:50):
To be that unification layer,you don't have to hold on to the
customizations and maybe tosome of the homegrown systems
you've had.
Think about retiring that kindof philosophy, because you'll
accelerate your innovation byleveraging a unified platform
experience.
In the end, once that dataunification problem is solved
which is really dataconsolidation, normalization,
(24:12):
reconciliation and making itoperational then you can light
up onboarding, asset movementplanning, portfolio management
and a much more efficient andscalable deliverable offering.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Michelle, thank you for being on the Beacon Flash
podcast.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Thank you, chip, I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
What a podcast.
I want to thank my wonderfulguest, michelle Feinstein, for
joining me today.
Also, I want to thank you, ouraudience, for taking the time to
listen to this interview.
For those of you that arecurious about what we do at
Beacon, please go to the bio andclick on the link to our site.
There we have an overview ofwhat we do.
We really would enjoy talkingwith you and learning about how
(24:54):
you look at the enterprise.
Well, space In closing.
Be well Until next time.
Hi, my name is Chip Kispert and I'm the host of the
Beacon Flash podcast.
Today, my guest is MichelleFeinstein, a true wealth tech
industry leader who plays apivotal role at Salesforce as
they help the wealth managementindustry.
Michelle's expertise andinsights on Salesforce, along
with her wealth managementtechnology thought leadership,
(00:30):
are going to make for anengaging and informative podcast
episode.
As a little backdrop onMichelle Michelle has an
abundance of experience withinthe wealth tech space.
Currently, she is the vicepresident, general manager of
the financial services group atSalesforce.
She is also tasked with productinnovation and driving customer
(00:50):
success.
Michelle has the pulse on manyof the dynamics of an
ever-changing wealth techindustry.
Previously, michelle spent timeat Pershing, a bank of New York
Mellon company, where sheeffectively helped customers
intersect, clearing custody withtheir technology needs.
I am excited to have Michelle asa guest on the Beacon Flash
(01:12):
podcast and I am sure that you,our audience, will walk away
with valuable insights, alongwith a fresh perspective on the
wealth tech industry and itsfuture.
Let's get to the podcast,michelle.
Thank you so much for being onthe Beacon Flash podcast.
Now, we've been friends foryears, right, and even.
(01:34):
Furthermore, I look at you asone of those people in the
industry that, I believe, has aterrific handle on where we've
been, where we are and wherewe're going.
The work that you're doing isthoughtful and I'm so excited to
talk about it, so I'm excitedto get into the conversation and
again, welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Michelle.
Thank you so much, chip, andyes, we have been friends for
years, so it's my pleasure tojoin you on this podcast.
Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Chip.
So our background is we worktogether when you're at Pershing
.
We also are working togethernow that you're at Salesforce.
Right, You're just off a dreamforce.
What are a couple of the thingsthat you took away from the
event that should be of hugeimportance to investment
advisors and the enterprisewealth community at large,
(02:26):
Michelle.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, the biggest really theme of
focus at Dreamforce this yearwas data, AI and CRM and the
powerful combination All of thatbrings to the wealth management
community and to advisors.
So if you look at all theannouncements that went out at
Dreamforce, if you go toSalesforce live, you can see a
lot of the sessions.
(02:47):
I would touch on a couple ofthings.
First and foremost is datacloud, the LLMs and Salesforce
strategy around Einsteinco-pilot.
This is really really important, right?
You know, in our roundtables,the topic of AI has come up all
year, but I think in wealth, alot of firms are sitting back
and kind of trying to determinewhat to do with it.
(03:08):
Are they ready to use it?
And so there was a lot ofexcitement around the fact that
Salesforce has made such aninvestment and so much progress
in this area.
So, to give you a little bit ofcolor, like Einstein co-pilot
is basically generative AIconversational.
It's like a digital assistantthat Salesforce is embedding
into not just one cloud but allthe clouds at Salesforce, and
(03:32):
this is really important becausenow, well, firms don't have to
try and think up something.
They can.
Actually, if they're Salesforceusers, they're gonna be able to
start using Einstein Co-Pilotand what it does is it basically
is like a productivity enabler,right for financial advisors,
for sales, for service, formarketing, where I'll give you
the example of financialadvisors, Co-Pilot's gonna be
(03:54):
used to help them find cases, toact on cases, summarize meeting
notes, set up automatedschedules of meetings and so
much more.
And that's just in that onearea, right, If you apply that
in the sales scenario or servicescenario, super, super
impactful.
So that would be number one.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Okay, excellent.
What's number two?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So number two would be the expanded data cloud
strategy.
So there were many sessions anddemonstrations of data cloud
and what Salesforce is doing tobe a trusted data layer and
offer out an LLM and ability toact on that LLM and a lot of
conversation and strategymeetings I sat in.
Customers were saying well,what if I don't wanna put all my
(04:36):
data in Salesforce?
The beauty of this is you don'thave to.
What they're trying to do hereat Salesforce is be the
unification layer but be veryopen while we do it.
So it's really a bring your owndata model right.
Clients can go ahead and ifthey're using Snowflake or
Amazon products or somethingelse, and they just wanna
connect that data withSalesforce.
(04:56):
That's the whole point andwe'll just mirror the data, but
the goal is unifying it so allthat rich data can be acted upon
.
So that was a big focus andwhat was really cool is they had
a demonstration and a booth onthis Einstein report formula
generation, where creatingreports can be really
complicated for advisors orsomebody in operations.
(05:17):
Very soon, I think at the endof the year, you're gonna
actually be able to have aprompt that says I wanna create
the certain type of report withthese attributes and the
system's gonna just go do it.
So it's basically you're ableto like voice how you wanna code
right into the system.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
You're gonna make it easy.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
We're trying to make it easy.
The last thing I'll touch on isFSC, so financial services
cloud, or those folks that arenot familiar, but there were a
lot of announcements around newinnovations coming around around
financial services cloud andthe one I'll touch upon is
personal financial managementand the ability to embed
(05:55):
financial insights intofinancial services cloud and
what it's gonna come from is theday layer of data cloud.
The other is an expanded goalof implants experience in FSC,
so this has been a long timecoming.
A lot of well firms use FSC astheir advisor experience and
they've taken on the burden ofbuilding out integrations with
leading planning providers.
(06:16):
What we have done on theproduct team has said we wanna
take that integration burdenaway, and so we've built in the
integration hooks.
I can't say the names of whothose providers are just yet,
but I will be able to soon.
But now the advisor doesn'thave to leave the platform when
they wanna see or take action ontheir financial planning
capabilities.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
And I certainly am curious about that, cause we get
a lot of feedback.
I wanna go back to your firstand second points.
I was down in in South Carolinathis earlier this week and I
was giving a talk on AI, whichis something that a lot of our
community is super interested in, and we actually had some
(07:02):
advisors in the room and it wasamazing because one of the two
of the biggest things that theadvisors were concerned about
and couldn't get their armsaround was those meeting notes
you talked about.
Right, they're like, oh my gosh, I've gone out and I bought
remarkably, I bought orremarkable the note pads.
(07:23):
I bought an iPad for notes, yetthey couldn't get it hooked in
to their infrastructure.
The whole part as simple thingslike that is what I'm hearing
that Einstein is gonna take over.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
That's right.
Yeah, I mean, when people askwhat are the use cases you're
focused on, they're reallyactually pretty simple, right?
So in the areas of serviceefficiency, service automation,
advisor productivity, these aresome of the main areas we're
looking at and we're saying weknow advisors spend too much of
their time on non-coreactivities, right, they're doing
(08:02):
compliance training and they'retrying to learn new products
and services and they're doingall kinds of administrative work
.
That's very manual, right, andso the goal with these co-pilot
agents is to say what is manualthat regulators wouldn't be
overly concerned about.
Where, if we can have the AItake over some of that, but
still put in a layer for reviewso that we can make sure a human
(08:23):
is still comfortable with howAI has summarized.
That's the key.
As an example, even, we put AIinto action for one of my dream
force sessions.
After the panel was delivered,within I think it was 10 minutes
our marketing team sent me asummary of my entire panel and
it was summarized by AI and Ihad a chance to approve it, and
(08:45):
then it was attached on thewebsite to go with the session
as a recap.
So we're using it in real lifehere at Salesforce.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
So you have some voice activation in there as
well and those pieces of thepost.
That's awesome.
The other one and I'm chucklingis data right.
So these advisors who are veryparticular about their data,
especially as 1099 advisors, howdo they?
Oh, what am I giving, what am Ibringing in?
I think that's a huge item.
(09:12):
How is our friend Greg Belzer,mr RBC Wealth Management?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Greg is always amazing.
He did not have a dedicatedposter that I came across at
Dreamforce, but he was still oneof our experts, that one of our
expert clients that we calledupon and he spoke in many
sessions and he's just awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
He always needs to have the 30 foot poster.
I mean, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
He'll never be out of a job.
I'll tell you that One dayyou're gonna see him working
here at Salesforce.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
All right, hey, number two, and you and I have
both been doing this for longenough, right?
How do you see the wealthbusiness changing?
And I ask this, given both yourcurrency at Salesforce, your
past seed at Pershing, you know,and, and I really believe
(10:05):
you're kind of that intersectionof technology and advisor
experience, and you know I'mcurious about your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So it's how is it not changing right?
I think our wealth managementfirms are seeing more change in
the past two years in particular, than they have in the past 20,
and They've always been tryingto evolve and modernize.
But what I see is, on meetingwith all different kinds of
clients, is they're acceleratingtheir ability to make decisions
(10:35):
.
They're accelerating theirability to try and reduce
complexity, because they'reseeing that they're just not
going to scale if they don't.
So you know there are about sixkey areas that are the ones
that most often come up thesedays when wealth clients are
putting their priorities.
The first is definitelyconnecting ecosystems, and it's
not just a focus for advisors,it's also for operational
(10:58):
efficiency for the middle office.
So see a lot of wealth firmsthere kind of looking at their
tech stacks, seeing howcomplicated they are.
They have too many systems inthere and so they're really
being very strategic aboutRecognizing which of those
systems really maybe they don'tneed anymore.
I also see a big shift awayfrom them having to build all
(11:19):
their own tech.
You and I both know in theworld of wealth for a Lot of our
firms they did that for a longtime.
They're finally starting tobecome much more open and the
challenge there is some of thesefirms have not been in a
position, with talent, to bevery API driven, but they're
recognizing to connectecosystems.
They really they need to getthere.
(11:39):
The second theme and it came upa lot of dream force when I was
meeting with clients was clientsare now trying to figure out,
if they want to have Acceleratedgrowth, that they can only
focus on the ultra high networth segment and that they also
have to find a way to Serve themassive fluent.
You know, no longer is it justgive them a robo model and so
(12:00):
what their challenge is?
Okay, how do we maintainsupporting the needs of the
ultra high net worth but alsostart to put in a service model,
an operating model, a pricingmodel for this massive flu
Acceptment, because they don'twant just digital, they want
digital plus human support,human advice.
And For these firms that I'vebeen speaking to, a big problem
is advisor scalability.
(12:21):
In order to support that, theadvisors are going to have to
have some conversations with themass affluent and also
Personalize advice andportfolios for that segment.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
So I'll let you react to that one.
Yeah, so it's interesting, I wastalking to a chief marketing
officer last night and we weretalking about the same subject.
You know, if you look at a lotof these firms kind of that
ultra high net worth they'reonly so many customers, right,
that's right.
And and then you know, we lookat, you know, the other space,
(12:54):
right, the 401k.
We look at 403 B's, another.
We have some customers thatplay in the 403 B space.
I Don't know when.
The last time you went in anddug in that technology Maras was
.
But it's not easy for thesefirms to be able to support that
business, right, but they wantto be able to support it.
(13:14):
So they're looking for for thetechnology side.
So I think that's superimportant.
We had a round table last weekand and it was investment round
table, and one of the thingsthat I took away was this you
can have the technology, which Ithink is hugely.
You know, hey, I've been doingthis for a long time.
Tech has been our focus.
(13:34):
You have to change the behaviortoo.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And you know I was having aconversation this morning with
one of our market researchanalysts.
I'm about to head over and do awealth event over in France,
and so they're trying to learnfrom us here in the States, and
one of the big things waseducation.
So it's not just about thetechnology, but it's also about
education for advisors,financial literacy for investors
(13:59):
, and how are you going todeliver that education?
It can't all be in person, sothat starts to turn into more
technology, investment andprojects.
Right, are you going to use adigital assistant?
Are you going to use recordedsessions?
Are you going to use video?
Are you going to leverage chatbox, like?
How are you going to, you know,meet this need and in order to
really engage, especially theMass Affluent, for instance, you
(14:22):
can't not have that.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Right, hey, hey.
Anytime you go to France, letme know Happy to come.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Going soon, so I'll pack you in my suitcase.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
All right, the obligatory AI question, and you
know we talked a little bitabout it earlier with co-pilot,
right, but how does Salesforcesee AI fitting into really the
that broader financial servicefabric?
You know let who the bigwinners in this one?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah.
So, as I talked about earlier,right, we're making heavy
investment.
You can see in the news usmaking acquisitions of AI
companies and then also justenhancing the AI capabilities we
already have.
Right, salesforce isn't new tothe world of AI.
I mean, we have really beenplaying in that space since 2016
with Einstein, and so now it'sjust how do we take that to the
(15:17):
next level?
One of the new things that Ithink will benefit wealth firms
is the prompt builder technologyand templates that are starting
to roll out as part of thatco-pilot experience I was
mentioning.
So we know gen AI is only asgood as the data that it's, you
know, taking from, and it's alsotrial and error, and you have
to teach that AI with the rightway to ask questions in order to
(15:38):
get back the best responses.
And so one of thedifferentiators here at
Salesforce with prompt builderis we're going to enable users
to have a better way to be moreprescriptive with describing in
the prompt builder exactly whatthey want AI to do, but in
simple, plain English.
So we're going to come out withsome templates that have been
customer informed as a startingpoint, but then that prompt
(16:00):
builder is also going to behighly configurable and simple
to use and they demonstrated itat Salesforce, at Dreamforce
rather, and if you want to seeit, you can see it on that
Salesforce plus.
So that would be one example.
The other is with financialservices cloud.
We also are thinking about howdo we bring AI into the
financial services cloudexperience, and so for us it's
(16:22):
going to go back to thatpersonalized finance, but also
things like transaction disputes.
That's probably going to be oneof the first use cases that
shows up in February.
Yeah, we're going to use AIthere to kind of fine tune the
responses, give suggestedresponses or review kind of a
cue for that to try to make thateasier.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
That is incredible.
I always love to ask thisquestion.
Salesforce, we can see, is allin on the wealth management
business.
We see that with FSC.
We see it with how they'reutilizing AI, how they're
looking at data.
It's really incredible.
We can all see that.
How is Salesforce partneringwith those next-gen technology
(17:03):
companies that weave into theadvisor tech step, because
currently we see a lot of thosenext-gen being disparate from
the ecosystems of these wealthmanagement firms.
They become a complianceproblem where they become
challenging in terms ofadministration, and how do they
weave into process?
(17:23):
How are you guys thinking aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked me.
At Dreamforce this year, weprobably announced the most new
partnerships and coreintegrations and we ever have
for any Dreamforce that I'vebeen a part of.
I'll name a bunch of them thatjust recently came to light.
The first is the integrationthat's launching with Pershing X
.
Now, Pershing itself is acustodian that's been in place
(17:49):
for over two decades, butPershing X is the new fintech of
Pershing.
The data integration is justthat it's to connect the
platform of Wob with financialservices cloud and sales and
service cloud and make sure thatdata is syncing in the moments
that matter most for advisorsand their productivity.
We're really excited about thatone.
The second one is Broadridge.
Broadridge has really rich data, especially around books and
(18:13):
records, and it would be supervaluable to get that data and
unify it with CRM data.
We launched an integration atDreamforce that does just that.
In addition to that, Broadridgeis launching two new ISV app
exchange apps around security,space lending and a digitized
marketing experience calledAdvisor Stream, which, when an
(18:34):
advisor is trying to personalizean experience, Broadridge has
already purchased content fromnews outlets and providers
that's safe for the advisor touse, and so they can just access
that information directly fromSalesforce.
The other one I'll touch on isAccenture.
We know here at Salesforce wecan't always build everything on
(18:55):
our own, and we have a richpartner community.
What Accenture is doing isthey're extending the financial
services cloud data model.
They're putting on a pack ofintegrations that are most in
demand by wealth firms andthey're rolling out a user
experience that actually buildsnew account opening, unified new
account opening on top of FSC,so our firms don't have to build
(19:16):
it themselves.
Those are just a couple ofexamples.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So it's a small world , right.
So in the last couple of weeksI've seen the Pershing X piece
pretty impressive.
Yesterday, actually, our oldfriend Nick Facker got to go
through advisor stream with Nickand his Broadridge team and
what they're doing truly isimpressive, and weaving that
(19:41):
into Salesforce can pay bigdividends.
My last question for you here,and this is one I'd like to ask
right, when you think about thewealth business and, to a
greater extent, our technologyhub, what do you think keeps
advisors and large wealth firmsup at night when they think
(20:06):
about, hey, we have this techstack, we have advisors.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Is that the question?
That's the question.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
You know, I think, first and foremost, what keeps
advisors up at night is are theygoing to continue to remain
relevant, valuable and be ableto really grow their business at
scale?
Right, so they're facing off nowto more and more individuals
within the household.
Maybe in the beginning it usedto be just Michelle and her
husband, but now they really arereaching it to Michelle, the
(20:39):
husband, all the kids, anybodythat could potentially inherit
the wealth and so I think it'sputting a lot of pressure on
them to learn new technologies,to make sure those technologies
talk to each other and to betime efficient.
Time management, again, istheir biggest challenge, right,
so they spend too much timedoing manual administrative
things.
So I think what keeps them upat night really is not having a
(21:01):
unified platform experience.
Right, and still having toomuch friction, too much swivel
chair, and it can beoverwhelming, right, as their
wealth firms are piling on moreproducts to learn, more
solutions to sell and oh, by theway, expand your book faster
than you ever have before andshow growth.
I think the second, yeah, goahead.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
No, I was just going to say, and the other one is
really getting thesetechnologies to work seamlessly
together and for the advisors,they're still learning how to
use analytics.
Like a lot of these wealthfirms are going to start turning
on predictive insights andpredictive analytics, but the
advisors, I think, are still notreally used to using all that
analytic power and so, again, Ithink it goes back to a little
(21:42):
bit of fear factor of what do Ido with this data.
So wealth firms have to be verytargeted and supportive in
terms of what they roll out andhow they teach those advisors
how to maximize the value out ofthose reports.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, you know it's interesting.
You talked about the analytics.
We did a demo for a firmrecently and they're like, oh,
we have this great analyticspage and I look at it and, great
, I'm like, all right, what do Ido with it?
What are the activities I needto do from this analytics page?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
That's right, and so, instead of making it overly
complicated with every littledata point like a million
different analytic reports youcould use, I'm seeing wealth
firms scale back.
Here are five new reports witha very simple user interface so
that these advisors will getcomfortable enough to start
customizing those reports andusing it on your own.
Going back to the Greg Belzerexample, that's exactly what
(22:39):
they did and that's what hestarted to see that his advisor
and their support staff are notcalling the home office to get
reports customized.
They're actually using it now,but he brought them to the table
to inform their design.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
That's great.
Yeah, all right.
The final word.
This is where I give you 60seconds to share your thinking
on an aspect of our businessthat could be trends, concerns
or outliers.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Michelle, attention so okay, so I'll say my final
words are if you're thinkingabout where to prioritize your
strategy, I would start withsolving the data unification
problem.
This is the number one areawhere firms that are making the
most progress have started.
So it's really going back totake an inventory of your tech
stack.
Be open to retiring systemswith low adoption.
(23:27):
Think about those systems thatneed to connect, and start with
business outcomes.
Why are you trying to connectthem?
What do you want to achieve?
What is the data that's needed?
The second is, if you're someonein the seat of choosing where
to send your budget next, take alook at how open is your
architecture.
How open are you to outsourcingto an outside platform?
(23:50):
To be that unification layer,you don't have to hold on to the
customizations and maybe tosome of the homegrown systems
you've had.
Think about retiring that kindof philosophy, because you'll
accelerate your innovation byleveraging a unified platform
experience.
In the end, once that dataunification problem is solved
which is really dataconsolidation, normalization,
(24:12):
reconciliation and making itoperational then you can light
up onboarding, asset movementplanning, portfolio management
and a much more efficient andscalable deliverable offering.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Michelle, thank you for being on the Beacon Flash
podcast.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Thank you, chip, I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
What a podcast.
I want to thank my wonderfulguest, michelle Feinstein, for
joining me today.
Also, I want to thank you, ouraudience, for taking the time to
listen to this interview.
For those of you that arecurious about what we do at
Beacon, please go to the bio andclick on the link to our site.
There we have an overview ofwhat we do.
We really would enjoy talkingwith you and learning about how
(24:54):
you look at the enterprise.
Well, space In closing.
Be well Until next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!