BPN Insights Rich Walker QUIK Full Interview
Revolutionizing Wealth Management with QUIK: Forms Automation and AI-Driven Innovation
Podcast Introduction and Context
Chip Kispert interviews Rich Walker, CEO and co-founder of QUIK!, a leading forms automation platform focused on the financial services industry, particularly wealth management. Rich brings over 20 years of experience addressing paperwork inefficiencies in this sector. The conversation explores the industry’s ongoing struggle with back-office complexities and how technology—especially forms automation combined with AI—can alleviate these challenges.
Current Industry Challenges and QUIK!’s Solution
- Wealth management firms face persistent issues with disjointed workflows, paperwork inefficiencies, and regulatory compliance burdens.
- Rich highlights a critical oversight in the industry: firms often focus on reactive error correction and compliance checks instead of eliminating problems at the data collection source.
- QUIK!’s core strength lies in streamlining form completion and initial data capture, which improves downstream processing, compliance, and risk management.
- Rich emphasizes data privacy and minimizing unnecessary exposure of sensitive client information, a key innovation to reduce risk and increase client trust.
- The technology enables data validation upfront, diminishing the need for repeated checks later in the workflow.
Technological Evolution and the Role of AI
- Rich cautiously discusses AI’s impact, positioning it as a transformative force allowing rapid software development and industry reinvention.
- The current tech stacks in wealth management are typically complex and monolithic, often consisting of many disjointed systems that impede agility.
- AI-driven automation offers opportunities to rebuild legacy systems with modern architectures, making processes faster, more compliant, and secure.
- QUIK! itself is undertaking an initiative to completely redesign its platform in the next 6 to 12 months leveraging AI technologies to accelerate development speeds by up to 100x.
- Despite the complexity and challenges posed by legacy infrastructure, Rich expresses optimism about widespread modernization in the next few years.
Market Dynamics and Industry Knowledge
- New fintech entrants bring innovative ideas but often lack deep industry expertise, which is critical in this highly relationship-driven wealth management space.
- Rich’s long tenure (24 years) in the industry has been invaluable in understanding client needs and regulatory shifts.
- He encourages clients to collaborate with vendors, aiding new firms in understanding the business context and compliance requirements.
- Communication remains a challenge between providers, wealth firms, and clients, with the traditional workflow often starting internally rather than from the customer’s perspective.
- The industry is gradually shifting focus towards advisor productivity and reducing administrative burdens to enable more client-facing time.
Pricing Models and Industry Economics
- The current seat-based subscription pricing model in SaaS financial products is increasingly seen as inequitable because usage varies widely among users.
- Rich advocates for usage or outcome-based pricing models which could better align costs with actual value delivered, although this approach also faces economic feasibility challenges (e.g., onboarding costs).
- Both speakers agree that balancing fairness with business practicability is necessary, and usage-based models are becoming more prominent in fintech conversations.
Impact on Advisor Productivity and Client Experience
- Back-office improvements directly support advisors’ ability to grow organically by freeing significant time (often 22+ hours per week) spent on administrative tasks.
- By automating forms and improving data flow, QUIK! reduces errors and form rejections that can delay important client transactions, thus increasing customer retention and satisfaction.
- QUIK! supports seamless data integration with CRM systems and compliance workflows, preventing forms from becoming bottlenecks.
- The platform is typically white-labeled, embedded invisibly into bespoke client systems (e.g., Salesforce solutions for Edelman Financial Engines), enabling tailored workflows without imposing a “one-size-fits-all” product.
Data Hygiene, Governance, and Enterprise Standardization
- Rich discusses the importance of data hygiene—clean, well-structured data that is usable across systems like APIs for account openings.
- QUIK! now manages over 3.7 million discrete data fields, reflecting the vast complexity of their forms ecosystem.
- Forms are a significant leverage point to standardize processes and enforce compliance across workflows.
- Effective form control supports broader enterprise governance and risk mitigation strategies in wealth management operations.
Reflections on Industry Changes Post-COVID and AI Adoption
- The rapid emergence and adoption of generative AI in 2022 and beyond have fundamentally changed QUIK!’s vision and capabilities.
- Rich personally invested time building AI-based software development agents to accelerate product iteration.
- Their AI framework enables autonomous, compliant software generation, turning what historically took months and multiple developers into projects completed in days.
- This AI-driven approach is pivotal for managing thousands of forms (over 40,000) at scale with limited resources.
- The upcoming product “FormStream” will provide a rich JSON data stream for forms rather than traditional PDFs or HTML, allowing dynamic rendering and interaction, including via voice AI.
FormStream: A Breakthrough in Form Standardization and Flexibility
- FormStream deconstructs forms into modular components such as content, fields, section headers, and logical flow.
- It gives firms real-time control to customize workflows dynamically, showing or hiding sections based on business rules (e.g., joint owners).
- This approach enables standardization across the industry—for example, creating a single new-account form standard adaptable to Fidelity, Schwab, and others downstream.
- This also applies to maintenance transactions like change of address or beneficiary requests, often neglected but constituting the majority of transaction volume.
- The system enables continuous workflow adaptation without costly developer intervention or downtime, driving operational agility.
Industry Leaders and Innovators to Watch
Rich highlights three notable leaders reshaping wealth management and fintech innovation:
| Name | Role | Contribution |
| Rabih Ramadi | CEO & Co-Founder, Avantos | Partner with QUIK!; strong institutional backing with clients like Guardian and Vanguard; tackling industry problems innovatively. |
| Allan Thygesen | CEO, DocuSign | Transforming DocuSign from signature platform to AI-driven workflow and platform powerhouse, expanding wealth management solutions. |
| Geoff Moore | CIO, Valmark | Progressive thought leader in wealth management technology adoption; active industry participant and innovator. |
Closing Insights: The Future of Wealth Tech and Customer Experience
- Rich’s BPN Insight Flash highlights FormStream’s potential to revolutionize software development by modularizing and standardizing forms.
- The shift from static forms to dynamic, data-rich streams facilitates unprecedented flexibility, speed, and compliance alignment.
- Chip Kispert reflects on how improved paperwork processes are fundamentally a growth and retention strategy, not just an operational necessity.
- The conversation underscores how AI-driven tools are unlocking entirely new possibilities in wealth tech, transforming longstanding industry challenges into opportunities.
- For further information or to connect with Rich Walker and QUIK!, visit quickforms.com or find Rich on LinkedIn.
Key Takeaways:
- QUIK! is central to reducing paperwork inefficiencies by focusing on front-end data capture, validation, and privacy.
- The adoption of AI-enabled software development is accelerating innovation and operational improvements, enabling rapid product redesigns.
- FormStream exemplifies next-gen form technology—modular, customizable, and real-time adaptive, reshaping workflows.
- Industry success depends on deep domain expertise, strong partnerships with clients, and flexible technology architectures.
- The transformation in wealth management tech directly correlates to advisor productivity and client satisfaction, driving growth organically.
This episode offers critical insights into how financial services firms can leverage automation and AI to modernize back-office functions and significantly improve their client onboarding and service delivery experience.
RJ Malyk 0:03
Welcome to the BPN Insights podcast. I’m your producer RJ Malik and today Chip Kispert sits down with Rich Walker, CEO and Co-founder of QUIK!. The industry standard in forms automation for financial services.
0:17
Rich has spent more than 20 years solving the paperwork problem in wealth management, and today Chip and Rich are talking about how that world is changing fast.
0:26
Chip, take it away.
Chip Kispert 0:28
RJ, thank you so much. I appreciate that intro. Rich, welcome.
Rich Walker 0:33
Hey, thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here today.
Chip Kispert 0:35
I’m loving you being here as one of my dear friends in out there and don’t get to talk to you enough because you just make me smarter every time I chat with you.
Rich Walker 0:46
Thanks.
Chip Kispert 0:47
Well, hey, I’m going to jump right in because we only have 20 minutes here or so.
0:53
You and I have talked about wealth management quite a bit, obviously given our we’re both in the industry.
I’m going to get right to the point, wealth management has been talking about fixing the back office since I’ve been in the business over 20 years.
And most of the firms are still struggling with this, based on the conversations I’m having every day.
1:19
And, and a lot of them are buried in kind of this paperwork, this disjointed workflows, you know, you’ve been in the room solving this problem.
So what do you see about the industry right now, and where are we going?
Rich Walker 1:36
Yeah.
1:37
Can we just remove all the risk and regulatory and compliance stuff? No, no, of course not.
This is Money we’re talking about, it matters to people.
1:45
Chip, I want to bring up something that people don’t really think that much about. I think a lot of what firms are focused on is after the fact.
How do I, how do I handle errors? How do I handle the compliance surveillance and the overview and oversight and the workflows of multiple checks and balances?
2:03
So it’s always, hey, we started a process, we started opening the account. Now I’ve got to review it. Now I’ve got to perfect it.
2:09
You know what we’re not talking about? How do you stop the problems all the way at the beginning?
Where is the source of data coming from? And this is really where QUIK! is living.
We are the place where the forms get filled out, the data is being collected and put it into the system to begin. And the better you get it that, the better your downstream systems become.
And so part of the vision of QUIK! is actually to give people back their privacy, give them back their data. And, and I think this goes all the way to the end investor.
2:41
I have been a client, my social shows up on a form, it goes to my advisor, their assistant, the branch office, the Home Office, 18 people have seen my social.
Why, why?
2:53
And so I believe that we can get to a point where technology can manage that information. You can collect it better from the end investor, hide it, mask it and only expose it when necessary, but also validate it upfront so that you’re not doing downstream checks and balances later.
Chip Kispert 3:13
Absolutely, 100% behind you there. For many firms, you’re kind of working in the background, right?
You guys, you guys help folks and you’re kind of the young unsung hero here and you know, as as you’re looking at the industry and where it’s going, yes, we want to protect that.
3:38
But you know, what do you see kind of moving forward. And you know, as you look at things you’re involved with today, you know what, what pops up in your mind that hey, this is going to make everybody’s life easier and more secure.
Rich Walker 3:55
OK, I don’t want to claim AI. OK, I just, I don’t want to claim AI, but…
Chip Kispert 4:01
I’m staying away from it for now.
Rich Walker 4:03
But here’s the opportunity. Artificial intelligence is creating compression of time on a lot of different functions, especially software development, and as that gets better and better, you now have newer opportunities to reinvent yourself.
4:18
So you, you started this conversation by saying there’s so much complexity in the back office, everybody’s doing all these different things, and I thought, man, that’s because there’s 18 different systems inside the tech stack at one firm permutated by how many, how many types of software out there.
I mean, it just becomes untenable.
4:36
And I see a lot of firms now saying, wait a minute, what if, what if we could reinvent ourselves technologically speaking?
And I love seeing some of the new entrants in the marketplace where they’re AI first, because they’re giving people that opportunity to reinvent it the way they see it, the way they want to operate it. Not every feature is necessary for every customer.
4:56
And so even here at QUIK!, one of our initiatives this year is I’ve put out the question, what if we were starting our company today, what would our technology look like?
And I don’t mean the end customer, I mean internal, what are our data structures, what would our workflows, what would our internal systems look like?
5:11
And so we will actually do this because of AI, Chip, we will actually go 100 times faster to rebuild our entire system over again. And I, have the ambition of thinking we could completely reinvent QUIK! from the ground up in the next 6 to 12 months.
Chip Kispert 5:25
Of course you do.
Rich Walker 5:26
So why can’t everybody else in the industry?
Chip Kispert 5:28
Of course, that’s I’m looking at and saying, hey, that’s it’s easy. It’s no, it’s not easy.
No, there’s so much complexity, You know, if if you look at the industry and so many moving parts and I’ll add to that, so many legacy systems that are just huge roadblocks.
Rich Walker 5:46
That that’s what I face, I mean, we’re a 24 year old company. I have systems that are running from 2004. And I’m not saying like, oh wow, they’re broken, they’re actually really good systems, but they now have become monolithic, they become slower in terms of how we can move forward and develop with them.
6:02
Modern architecture design has changed.
So I think a lot of companies have the same opportunity over the next two to five years to completely overhaul their systems and think differently about how they operate so they can actually be more compliant, they can be faster, they can be more secure.
Chip Kispert 6:19
I agree with you. And it was interesting because you referenced a couple, you know, the new entrants into the marketplace and the ambition there is unbelievable, right?
Rich Walker 6:34
The money behind it.
Chip Kispert 6:36
Didn’t think about that.
But I find it interesting because many of these firms are coming in, love their ideas, love their interest, all that, sometimes I, do they do they know the business well enough to truly fit in?
Rich Walker 6:56
Yeah, that, that’s a hard part, too.
I haven’t been here for 24 years because I don’t know the business, I’ve learned this business the hard way and we’ve worked with plenty of people who’ve brand new to the industry hree years in, two years in, they just don’t know how to communicate.
7:12
One of the things that you have to learn is that this is a relationship business more than any other industry I’ve ever been in.
Chip Kispert 7:18
I can echo that.
Rich Walker 7:19
Yeah, yeah, it takes time. It takes time.
7:22
But I, look, I can also turn this back to the customer because I think the customer has a duty in selecting software to help educate the vendors and partners they’re working with because it’s impossible for me.
7:35
Look, I’m going to admit something. I was on a call a week ago and somebody said, hey, Rich, are you guys fully prepared for the new Reg SP changing coming up in two months?
I’m like, what change? What do you mean?
Oh, great, yes, we are. Thankfully we are. But I, I can’t keep ahead of everything. It’s impossible because I’m so focused on innovating.
7:55
So I want customers and I love my customers. They do this with us. I love it when they partner with us, and I want, I want to encourage that because, yeah, this might be a new entrant into the market, but these guys are smart, they’re doing things nobody else is doing. so help them succeed, why not?
Chip Kispert 8:08
And I, I 100% agree with you, and, you know, it’s fascinating in, in the role kind of we sit in where we see providers and we see wealth firms and even their customers that communication isn’t the greatest.
Like I, I’m giving updates on functionality and the like to the, to the wealth firms. And, and it’s just interesting how the information flows.
8:38
The other piece that I look at is, you know, going traditionally, we’ve almost gone from the home office out and we haven’t been going from the customer back.
Rich Walker 8:56
I, my gosh, I don’t think I’ve heard that articulated that way and it’s, you’re 100% right.
9:02
And this goes back to 2003, 2004 when we were launching our first products and I was saying to a broker dealer, we’re going to save your advisor so much time and how they handle paperwork.
They’re like, we don’t care. That’s their job.
Like what do you mean you don’t care? They’re the ones making money for you guys, like you need to give them time back.
And I’ve seen that shift Chip, the industry has come around.
9:23
They’re now saying, yes, how do we give the advisors more capability, more, more, more frictionless work? How do we make it easier for everybody? I love it. I, I, I love seeing this transformation, but it’s still not everybody. We need to see more of it.
Chip Kispert 9:38
It’s not everybody and you know, the cost of, of fintech gets in the way. It’s, it’s not cheap. It’s not cheap to do these things.
Rich Walker 9:49
Oh, can I, can I get on my high horse for a second?
Chip Kispert 9:52
Please?
Rich Walker 9:54
I have a friend who’s really, really well connected in Silicon Valley and he said to this a year and a half ago, he said SAS is dead. AI is going to kill SAS, but what he actually turned around and said it’s not the SAS, it’s the pricing model.
Chip Kispert 10:05
Yes.
Rich Walker 10:06
How do you justify $150.00 a month per user for some product? I, I mean, look, even my own products that cost certain numbers that are seat based, user based, I can’t say, hey, this feature is worth $2.00 and this one’s worth 5, nobody can do that.
So how does anybody pay for subscriptions? I think it needs to be usage or outcome based.
Chip Kispert 10:27
You and I have had this conversation over the last couple years quite a bit, quite a bit.
I’m right there with you. I, I think that, you know, the, the pricing model it, it’s just kind of assumptive at a seat license. But you know, you have some folks that use a lot and you have some folks that use it maybe once a month, is that fair? Is that equitable?
Rich Walker 10:51
Well, look, there’s a caveat to this.
When I sign up a user, I had a cost of acquisition, and I have a cost of onboarding and a cost of ongoing service. So if they only use it one time a month and they pay for $1.00 per usage, I’m never going to make money, so it’s not feasible, there has to be a balance of sorts, but when you do it at scale, it works.
11:10
So anyway, I just encourage more companies to think about outcome based or usage, consumption-based pricing because it makes, I think it’s more fair for everybody.
Chip Kispert 11:19
I’m 100% behind that, and you know, you, you and I have talked about it, we try to build it into our, the models we work with our customers on for sure, for sure.
11:30
And I loved your comment, by the way, about broker dealers and RIAs now kind of seeing the light of actually enabling more productivity from their advisors.
11:45
Last week, we hosted the RIA Roundtable, and that conversation was front and center, absolutely front and center because they all want to grow, they want organic growth.
Well, when you’re spending, you know, 22 hours per week on administrative and back office tasks, that doesn’t leave you a ton of time to be able to do that relationship building, that prospecting. and and so this is a super important line of thinking.
Rich Walker 12:22
It is, it is a fun fact story. My mom’s advisor uses QUIK! She gets our forms,
Chip Kispert 12:32
Love it! Love it!
Rich Walker 12:33
She’s getting she’s getting more of his value and time, not paperwork.
Chip Kispert 12:38
And you got to love that. You got to love that.
12:42
You guys have been in the business for a long time. You and I have known each other for a long time. What let let’s get a little bit technical from the standpoint.
12:53
Walk me through at a high level, what happens when a firm puts QUIK! to work in your, in your, in your, in your eyes? What does the, what does it look like for the advisor, the OPS team, even the client?
Rich Walker 13:07
Sure, I look, I’m going to admit something. Probably more than 90% of the users of QUIK! don’t necessarily know it’s QUIK!.
Chip Kispert 13:14
Right!
Rich Walker 13:16
It’s white labeled.
13:17
I, I mean, really our sweet spot in this industry is bespoke systems where I mean, take take Edelman financial engines, for example, they’re one of our clients. They needed a bespoke system on Salesforce to drive how they want to do their work.
And so they need a solution like QUIK! that can plug in and enable how they see their world and how they see things flow.
13:37
So it’s actually kind of hard to say how does it all impact because there’s so many different ways it does impact and so many different flavors.
I’m constantly surprised when I see a customer’s implementation of what they did. I’m like, what? You did? Wow, it’s really incredible.
13:51
So you have a lot of different experiences out there, in fact, but for the most part what you hear is, oh my gosh, my data is actually flowing from one place to another quick as that bridge of papers, a dead end, right? Forms are a dead end.
14:05
So if you can make that data all the way flow from beginning all the way to end through signature and back into the transactional system. So we’re seeing customers completely streamline their process.
They go from hours to moments to real time transactions, or days and weeks that used to be down to real time transactions.
14:22
We see more retention of customers and advisors at these firms.
I was talking to one of the firms. I’ll leave them nameless, and I said, are you guys actually losing customers when an account can’t get opened in time?
They’re like, are you kidding? Yeah, we get advisors screaming and yelling at us because we didn’t open the account in time and why? Rejections, errors, bad forms.
14:43
I mean, that’s honestly that’s what it is. It’s not, oh, you weren’t licensed. They know they’re not licensed, so they don’t sell that product. It’s because the forms didn’t work.
And so when they get QUIK! in there, we reduce that tremendously.
14:56
There’s a lot of other facets that go into this, as you know, the data collection part with CRMS, the compliance part on the back end, There’s so many other pieces.
I really think of QUIK! as this one little part of the puzzle, a fundamental part, but it, it, it’s, This is why it’s white labeled. Like nobody cares what actual form they’re filling out, they care that it works.
Chip Kispert 15:15
I also think you guys bring data hygiene to the conversation, right? You help these, these advisors gather information more directly, you know, the systems they’re using are going directly to the customer and where the customer’s filling things out.
15:32
And just the, the, the ecosystem framework of you know, you’re over, you know, almost 50,000 forms and you know, you’re 1.2 million fields, all that, and then the accuracy of it, right.
You guys are really helping with data hygiene, which when we go into a lot of firms, it’s not very good.
Rich Walker 15:54
I appreciate you saying that Chip, because there’s a couple points to that.
One is a lot of people don’t realize the purpose of their data until they have a use for it. And a forum is a great use of it. so they say, oh, I should put it in the right place in the CRM or the data system and vice versa, getting it off into their other systems.
They want to call APIs and open accounts directly at Fidelity or Schwab. How do you do that if your data is not structured?
16:15
So yes, we give them that data architecture, but there’s something else I want to point out. QUIK! is actually sitting at the forefront of both enterprise standardization, meaning how do you standardize your process and your experience, and risk and compliance? Because the form is your one of your biggest risk of how data is flowing.
And it’s also one of the highest leverage points for compliance.
16:38
And so we’re sitting in the middle of that giving this really finite data structure, which by the way is over 3.7 million fields now.
Chip Kispert 16:45
Sorry, sorry,
Rich Walker 16:46
I didn’t know this before.
Chip Kispert 16:47
I got old data.
Rich Walker 16:48
No, I also, I didn’t know this until a month ago. I was like, Oh my gosh, it’s grown again. I didn’t even count it for a couple of years.
16:55
Yeah. So it’s a fascinating thing because we’re really helping customers have a governance infrastructure by controlling their forms. And how many workflows depend on form.
Chip Kispert17:07
Most of them. Most of them.
Rich Walker 17:09
A lot. I mean, businesses run off this stuff.
Chip Kispert 17:11
All right, I’m going to shift to it to a question that I don’t normally ask, but you’re so thoughtful and forward-looking that I’m going to ask at any.
17:21
So let’s go back five years, right?
Rich Walker 17:25
Yeah.
Chip Kispert 17:25
So that puts us in 2020-2021 coming out of COVID. What didn’t you see coming that is most changed how you think about QUIK! and the clients you serve?
Rich Walker 17:40
Honestly, it’s AI, it’s generative AI.
I started playing around with the real AI tools that we see today in early 22. And this is before ChatGPT launched and I started seeing these things, and Chip I have had the imagination and vision of how to completely reinvent quick for 15 years.
I know how to go paperless, I know how to go formless and it’s not achievable. It’s so, so hard to achieve. The resource expense that the time it takes the design and build it.
18:10
Here comes A.I And I’m going to admit something secretly, my hobby, like some people golf, some people work in their garden, my hobby for the last nine months has been spend my late nights and weekends building AI projects.
Chip Kispert 18:22
Right there with ya.
Rich Walker 18:23
And so I’m, yeah, look, I, I’ve achieved something that I don’t know if anybody else is really achieving.
I have achieved autonomous software development.
18:31
I have built this framework with over 70 agents that work together to take in a specification, a plan, help you build that plan, and then like a factory deploy that as software, high grade enterprise compliance, SOC, 2 compliant, GDPR, et cetera.
18:48
Really high-quality code that can go into a production system. We’re already using it at QUIK!.
It’s remarkable. We can do a project in 10 days that used to take four people 3 1/2 months to do. So that to me is where you can completely do things new.
So it’s enabling us to reinvent QUIK! to go from just managing forms and giving you data to actually creating software on the fly from the basis of a form.
19:15
The question people have asked me for 20 years is, Rich, can you give me TurboTax? I’m like, sure, give me 3000 developers and only 100 forms, but I have 40,000 plus forms to deal with and I don’t have 3,000 developers my gosh.
19:27
So what do we do? Well, AI has enabled us to actually do this Chip.
We’re at a point now where our new product Form Stream is going to give customers instead of APDF, instead of an HTML, it’s going to give them a Jason, meaning that the rich data stream that describes the form and you render it however you want. You want to give it to a voice AI agent and have it talk to you. Great, no problem.
19:49
I, I can’t be more excited, honestly, because this is transformative for QUIK!, but it’s going to be transformative for how people build software and put forms into their workflow and then risk governance, compliance control, apply all that to what their actual business requires.
Chip Kispert 20:06
Workflows that kind of self-correct too.
Rich Walker 20:09
Yeah, yeah.
It’s an incredible world. This is the most exciting time in tech I’ve I’ve lived through.
Chip Kispert 20:17
I I’ll be honest, my wife has told me you can’t talk about AI anymore, because of all the things like, you know, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting, you know, kind of that daily summary of my day.
I’m getting information on all the wealth techs in the industry. I’m getting that those summaries I’m building, you know, for us, we’re building out, you know, frameworks where we can better understand all the different wealth techs out there as well as wealth firms.
I mean it, it’s somebody’s vision is the only limitation.
Rich Walker 20:54
Yeah. And their ability to make breakthroughs with this stuff and think through it and ask questions,
it is so fascinating.
I could go on and on about this and I shouldn’t. Well, I’m gonna respect your wife.
Chip Kispert 21:06
All right. We’re in the finale here of, of the show.
I always love to ask this question. Rich, who are, you know, two or three people or firms that they’re doing work right now that you admire and why are they worth watching?
Rich Walker 21:26
I appreciate that question.
So one of the first that comes to mind is Robih Ramadi. He’s the CEO and Co-founder of Avantos. If you haven’t seen Avantos yet, go take a look. Unbelievable.
21:38
Now look in full disclosure, they’re a partner. They’re providing QUIK! to their customers. But they have one massive investment and big, big customers, Guardian, Vanguard, Mercer, it’s, it’s incredible.
So these aren’t just new entrants. Like, hey, we got this idea. These are industry veterans who knew how to attack the problem and they’re doing it in innovative ways.
22:00
A second person I’ve actually mentioned is Allan Thygesen, the CEO of DocuSign. And, and I have so much admiration for what he’s doing because I think he came into a company that was known for one thing, a commodity thing called Signature.
And I think he actually bet his career on transforming them into workflow and AI and being an entire platform. and they’re achieving it.
22:23
And no, people don’t realize it. They don’t realize how much they’ve grown and how, how expensive their products are.
And you’re going to see more and more DocuSign based solutions for wealth management coming very soon as a result of this. I’m part of it, by the way.
Hey, we’re QUIK! we have to be. Hey we’re, we’re plumbing.
22:42
And I’m going to mention somebody I think you know well, Geoff Moore of Valmark. I don’t get enough time to spend with Geoff. I get to talk to him a couple times a year, but I absolutely admire him for putting himself out there, being very progressive.
He’s the CIO, like he is naturally a defensive role typically, and he is so good about being out there in the forefront of what’s going on in this industry, so I love Geoff.
Chip Kispert 23:05
He, he’s fabulous. And yeah, like you said, I think two of the folks that when I, when I’m learning, right? Learning. I talked to you and I talked to Geoff.
Rich Walker 23:18
Nice. So I didn’t realize.
Chip Kispert 23:20
Yeah. Yep. Yep. All right.
What we like to do is wrap up each show by giving you 60 to 90 seconds for the BPN Insight Flash. So Rich, I’m going to hand it over to you. You can, this is unscripted anywhere you want to go.
Rich Walker 23:41
Wow, OK, that’s tough.
Look, I mentioned Form Stream. I’m going to talk a little bit more about Form Stream because I think it’s actually very transformative, and I don’t think people will fully get this. So here’s what happens.
23:54
A form’s purpose is to collect data. It’s a data collection device, right? And, and it’s so simple to build, but what is actually a form?
It’s content, title, instruction, section, header, section, instructions, fields, field layouts. So what we did is we deconstructed the form into all those components.
And so now what Form Stream does is tell you here’s the order of information, here’s what it means, here’s how it operates.
24:18
And you get to decide, do you want to show Section 1 and then Section 2? Do you want to hide Section 3 because you don’t have a joint owner?
You get to make all these business decisions in tech super-fast, real time. And it works across any form in the world.
24:32
So now imagine what this means Chip, have you heard anybody say, could we just have a standard new account form across the whole industry? I’m going to give you that. I’m going to.
Chip Kispert 24:43
Good! We need it.
Rich Walker 24:45
And it will always marry back to all the forms that actually can populate.
Oh, you want Fidelity? Great, no problem.
24:51
But guess what, we can now do that for change of address, change of beneficiary, withdrawal requests, I mean, it’s just standardizing the business now.
Chip Kispert 24:59
Nobody, you know, it’s funny when we go out and and work with firms like I am right there with you. Everybody’s focused on the onboarding and now so the transitions.
25:10
But I’m like, how about your maintenance? How about your, you know, again, yeah, the change of beneficiaries, change the address. I mean, we can go down the list. Nobody takes that into account. And oh my gosh, that’s probably the lion’s share of work.
Rich Walker 25:26
It is, it is. I should quantify the transaction volume of that alone, but I haven’t.
Chip Kispert 25:32
I, I would love to see that balance. I’ll, I’ll be honest, I think that would be fascinating.
Rich Walker 25:36
I honestly think it’s more than 50% of the transactions at QUIK! because more than 50% are single documents, not combined documents and combined as opening accounts.
25:46
So yeah, I, like I said, I’m super excited about Form Stream because it’s going to make software easier to use, faster to build and deploy. It means everybody can have their own workflows the way they want and the forms can change any day, who cares.
They just change. And now your workflow changes dynamically.
Chip Kispert 26:01
That’s true. That’s true.
Rich, I want to thank you for being on the show. For anyone who wants to learn more about QUIK! or connect with you or you know, dig into Form Stream, where should they go?
Rich Walker 26:13
Hey, I’m the QUIK! forms CEO on LinkedIn, so that should be pretty fast to find.
quikforms.com is where you’ll find me.
I do have my own podcast called The Customer Wins, which I’ve had Chip on there, and I love to talk to people and help them understand customer experience better.
So lots of ways to find a connect with me. I I hope to talk to you soon.
Chip Kispert 26:30
Rich, Thanks again. Have a great day.
Rich Walker 26:33
You too,
Chip Kispert 26:34
RJ, love talking to Rich Walker, he is absolutely fabulous. I love what he’s doing at QUIK! and just beyond that, he’s just a great human being.
RJ Malyk 26:43
Good guy. Yeah. And easy to talk to. I mean, that was a great conversation. I just was hanging out and listening, it was a lot of good stuff.
26:52
Well, the one thing that, you know, there were a couple things that in listening to him. I was surprised,
I was surprised at how surprised he was how his clients were using his product. That like struck me and then when he said his hobby is AI now, which makes sense.
And then of course, the last one was, Chip, you can’t talk about AI with your wife. That stood out to me too.
So absolutely that was good. That was good.
Chip Kispert 27:24
I like I like your comments there.
I took a couple things away from the conversation and I’m actually linking to them somewhat. But you know, in chatting with him, he talked about how wealth firms lose clients that have a bad paperwork experience.
27:47
And, you know, really impressed upon me the fact that hey, really, operations is also a growth strategy, and smooth client experience makes for a lot.
28:00
I really also loved how when he was talking about the five year and looking forward, he really wasn’t back 2020-21, didn’t think AI was that fresh on the horizon. And it’s been a game changer for them, I mean, they’re coding, you know, they’re agents. It’s really, really fascinating.
28:23
And then, you know, he’s been in the business 24 years, the amount of knowledge that he has and add to that his success, it’s not a coincidence. You know, he’s dug it out of the dirt for a lot of years.
And you know, they are uber successful right now.
And you know, I love also how, you know, his company’s a bit understated, quite friendly.
RJ Malyk 28:51
Interesting. That’s very interesting.
Chip Kispert 28:53
So all right, as we wrap up, I just want to thank Rich Walker again. It was a great episode for me, a lovely conversation.
29:05
Before I leave, I want to quote Ted Lasso, “Be curious, not judgmental.”
This is Chip Kisbert, wishing you well until our next edition of the BPN Insights Podcast.
RJ Malyk 29:18
Thank you for checking out the BPN Insights Podcast, which is brought to you by Beacon Strategies, LLC. For more information, visit beaconstrategiesllc.com.
Until our next VPN Insights podcast.
For Chip Kisbert and everyone at Beacon Strategies, I’m RJ Malyk.