Beacon Flash: Charitable Giving and a Personalized Client Experience – A Conversation with Niharika Shah, TIFIN Wealth

Welcome back. It’s time for the beacon flash. The only show to shine a light on the future of enterprise wealth management. Brought to you by Beacon strategies, LLC.

Streaming live from our studios here at the University of California Irvine’s Field Flight Innovation Center with our host Chip Kispert and his guest, entrepreneurial marketing leader who spent decades building brand and marketing organizations and financial services and high growth consumer environments.

Meet the EVP and Chief Growth Officer at Tiffin Wealth, Niharikah Shah.

Chip:

Niharika, welcome my friend. I am so happy to have you on the Beacon Flash Podcast.

Niharika:

I’m delighted to be here and thank you for having me, Chip.

Chip:

Well, you know you and I have have gotten to know each other over the last year and quite frankly, I it’s it’s been really, really fun for me because one of the things that you’ve kind of opened my eyes to are the evolving ways that advisors and customers look at communicating. And I think that’s really, really neat and that Tiffin Wealth is doing yeoman’s work in that area.

Indeed and I think in the industry today, there is a lot of thought and effort put into addressing the needs of the wired investor right who expect frictionless, seamless, personalized experiences. And so beyond communications, it’s also goes to how advisors and their firms help them support that deeper level of engagement with the end prospect or the end client. And I think this this area is ripe for its low hanging fruit in terms of using data, AI and machine learning, etc. To empower the adviser to prospects and clients to lean in.

Niharika:

That’s a great way to talk about I think, leaning in leaning into that conversation making it more interesting.

Chip:

You know, last week, we had a roundtable our new age of marketing roundtables our first one and I was so thrilled because I realized, oh my gosh, what an underserved group of people and they, the conversations were fabulous, and they ranged all over the place which is really neat. But I’m kind of curious, what are one or two projects right now that you’re particularly interested in?

Niharika:

You know, because I think communication is a very, very hot area. Yeah. So I think you know, to highlight two areas, one which you recently attended one of the roundtables we hosted this hour around this area of charitable giving, and we see this as a as a trend across the industry, driven by clients and investors and prospects wanting to do more within money in terms of advancing the social causes that are near and dear to their heart. It may be faith based it may be economic equity may be diversity, climate change, etc. And so, what I’m very excited about at Tiffin is we have brought four potentially disruptive platform around charitable giving to the wealth management place, addressing the frictions that currently stand between people and the way that they want to channel their money, you know, to the causes that they believe in their inherent minimums. I think of workflows are complicated.

I think also today’s solutions don’t get beyond the patriarch or matriarch of the family. Right. So as we think about the wealth transfer, generational wealth transfer, it can be the ability for the advisor to go beyond the patriarch matric and and engage the entire family is very valuable. So we recently, I shouldn’t say recently, it’s been a year now that we’ve launched Tiffin give and I’m very excited about that project for two reasons. One is because I do you think it’s a valuable addition to a firm’s portfolio in addressing the needs of their prospects and clients? But secondly, I think it ties to our overall mission of creating more financial wellbeing for more people than just beyond the prospects and the clients is interesting.

Chip:

I was having a conversation yesterday morning with one of our customers who is probably one more progressive thinkers in the industry. They are a hybrid Ria. And one of the things we’re talking about is really weaving in charitable giving, and how, you know, it adds so much to the relationship and beyond. And you just talked about us, I think the incendiaries interesting point and one that we’ve been making constantly, is being also able to touch the next generation, right? Because we see so, you know, we see so many assets that when they go to beneficiaries, they go to other advisors, right? So how can these advisors have worked really, really hard on gathering these assets? Then be able to continue that and continue the work that they’re doing with a family? And I think your point, your point on charitable giving, really two things one, you guys are providing a framework for that, that that really makes life easier, right? And then it enables the conversations with the future generations.

Niharika:

Indeed. And if you think about, you know what we’re talking about here in terms of the friction, they one of the frictions exist is because E advisors are afraid to sometimes ask because they see these as assets leaving their practice. And I would just say, look, it’s going to happen no matter what, right? So you might as well be at the center of it. And it is, you know, what your clients want, so being able to service them in that respect. And incidentally, if there’s any cause for concern in terms of growth, we know that advisors there was a recent study by fidelity, charitable, that said that advisors that have added charitable giving to their practice have experienced three times the growth when compared to other practices as well as 1.3. So that’s 30% more assets flowing in which is a remarkable indicator of the deepening of that relationship. So I think that is a win win and a value proposition to both sort of advisors as well as the firm’s to incorporate this the second friction and going back to the assets tooling out. We we recognize that and so we offer advisors, the ability to collect a sub advisory fee should they choose on the DAF assets that live within different give as well. So you know, it’s interesting. We chose a conversation had a month ago at our investment rounds, and we got into a deep discussion on disbursement and how our industry does a fabulous job of gathering assets. But the disbursement side of it isn’t as elegant let’s put it that way or doesn’t have the time and I think you’re, you know, this is a step in that direction of really making that more more of a positive within the industry.

Chip:

So I do want to transition and ask you a question. And it’s a pretty big question. Right? And it really comes down to how do you think well firms are doing when it comes to communicating with their customers needs?

Niharika:

Yeah. So I think and this is tied to what we just talked about in terms of charitable giving, I think the template and we often talk about this, but I think it’s time to take it seriously, especially as we think about the next generation. Is there an expectation is that the experience that they’re going to receive, whether it’s an inbound email, whether it’s I’m talking face to face with an advisor we’re looking at my portfolio is going to be highly personalized. And that is our thesis, which is Sunday, that personalization is very fragmented. It does not result in the complete holistic persona of who that individual is their needs, their fears, the same values. We ignored them as an industry, right going back to the causes. They have passions, as well as what their their inclinations might be in how and where they want to invest their money. It all goes back to getting people to lean in and engage so I think whether it’s in the context of charitable giving, or communications, this idea of knowing who that individual is that complete picture and then tailoring the communication or the recommendations is I think the next frontier for us to collectively address as the industry. And guess what, and I always talk about this okay, this is a nice to have, or is it a must have 35% of Amazon’s revenue today is driven by their personalized recommendation engines. Just imagine what if we could bring that same level of incremental step up growth opportunity to the wealth management industry? And that’s what we’re we’re that’s what we’re doing it Tiffin right identifying that incremental Delta growth opportunities that are highly personalized and result in you know, whatever the outcomes might be better conversion, or AUM, more customer delight, right, eventually leading to retention. So where’s win? So I think that’s one part. The second part of it is specifically related to communications there is an over emphasis from a marketing perspective, put on the left side of the conversion signal, which is top of funnel. And you’ve heard me say this before kid that I think marketing has a branding problem. And which is ironic because when we think about growth, we should actually be thinking about the role of marketing of advisor engagement, client engagement, prospect customer lifecycle, because the inherited opportunities people’s lives evolve. people’s goals evolve. people’s needs evolve, people’s investable assets evolve. And for us to be able to use the same level of discipline that we use on the prospecting side, to even serve as clients and when no business eventually is, I think an excellent opportunity for the industry.

Chip:

Let’s to take this a step farther, right. So that’s where the industry is. You see opportunity, what trends do you see occurring within the industry, you know, probably more specifically to the marketing side, but I’m curious because you have a broad perspective, and I’d love to hear what you think.

Niharika:

Yeah, I think the overarching trend and I think this is just how FinTech has evolved. Is they used to be even 10 to 15 years ago, the option of build versus buy, right, that was the debate. Now you’ve got something really interesting in the middle, which is rent, which is essentially your software as a subscription services, right. So I think that is in that context.

I think there are a few trends that are very, very interesting one harkens back to what we just spoke about in terms of personalization, but the idea of leveraging what other industries more in the E commerce consumer world have used like aI like data science, etc, to do that personalization at scale. But the second most important thing is I think that is an acknowledgment that the intelligence right the data insights, there’s latency between doing receiving that intelligence and acting on it, or there is just not that pathway. So I think the ability to have real time intelligence at every point in that client’s journey, and then providing an actionable sort of pathway for both the advisor and the client, to then engage and take a take and make progress is another trend that we’re seeing in the industry. Now, how does that apply? In specific use cases? One of course could be charitable giving, right you’ve you’ve got let’s say I’ll draw High Net Worth investor or an investor that is, you know, just starting out the Henry’s of the world, if you will, you can create that engagement by truly understanding who that individual is, and then identifying so we use conversational AI as an example to create a mission statement. That mission statement is very, very powerful in then driving recommendations are the kinds of charities and foundations that the investor might be able to redirect their resources to. The second is alignment of what lives in the depth with your overall preferences. So oftentimes, we see that you’re investing in, you believe in clean energy, but your investment accounts could potentially hold cold, right? That’s a dissonance. So we need to solve for that. Now I’m switching one of the sort of instances that I have seen in the past. The second use case that we see is the emergence of using the advisor client retail experience to wealth at work. That is a tremendous opportunity within the workplace and I think it’s a fiduciary of gold. From a plan sponsor standpoint to ensure financial well being of participants in a 401 K plan or for three weeks.

And so the sensibility of deeper engagement there and then providing pathways to ensure that financial wellbeing is a win win. For advisors with a wealth business that live also, you know, within a workplace plan, and I think there is a tremendous opportunity there instead of looking at wealth at work. So we’re seeing that as as an emerging trend. And I think the final the third trend, I shouldn’t say final but this idea of going back to the build versus buy, I think firms, especially enterprise firms are looking at best of breed and looking for one, maybe three partners that they can build out the seamless frictionless digital lead experiences with so open architecture, epi assocation, if you will, of our office solutions to help firms assemble what is a unique experience that they want to provide for their advisors and their clients is another trend that we’re definitely seeing and exposing out in a much more detailed, interactive, personalized way. That advisor client relationship, right. So client portals used to be a thing that we all talked about 1015 years ago, but I think that’s up for another resurgence in terms of what information is actually available there and how can we get people to take more action?

Chip:

You must have gotten notes from Blake because we talked about that last week. It was amazing because that you know when we talk to our customers, our enterprise customers that hasn’t been a hot button, so to speak with them. But when you talk to the marketing people and who are talking to the customer in terms of doing surveys and what have you, it is very hot, but so I find that that’s a very interesting one. You talked about these trends. You talked about weaving together, you know, some new ideas here AI and getting more traction within our space. I think it’s been a long time coming. Let’s put it that way. And the Harka one of the things that we see is the demographic of the wealth industry, you know, it’s typically late 50s for advisors, we see relatively new advisors, you know, they’re not a ton going into what I’ll call more the advisory farm system kind of that concept, right that growth. So how are you looking at these key areas of communication with the client utilizing data? How are you trying to get, you know, these more mature advisors to adopt change how they’ve always done things, you know, when they relied on a quarterly statement, maybe a newsletter, right?

Niharika:

Yeah, and I think a few things to unpack there. First is I do think the adoption of technology or digital transformation, however you call it. So assess the stock with the cultural ethos of the firm. So I think if you buy into the value, and maybe like most of us don’t understand how it’s done. That’s all right. And that’s the power of technology. It’s like, you know, the BMW engineering, which is you don’t see it.

So I think that’s the first part. The second part is that especially advisors that are part of a larger firm, it is incumbent on the leaders within that firm, to lay the foundation and with the right training with the right value proposition, etc. To help these advisors adopt and finally I would say, look, the, your clients are going to push you in that direction. So if you’re in the business for the next three, five years, sure but if you’re looking to future proof the business, maybe it’s a transitional strategy, whether it is looking to build out your practice with other younger advisors with the other new next generation of, you know, prospects and clients. I would highly say that we would we think there’s a solution here for every kind of advisor.

Chip:

It’s interesting that you just said that because we look at relevance being a big key here. And if you look at how investors, investor customers look to the world, they’re becoming more and more sophisticated. They expect data in real time, almost at this point in time. So you really strike a chord with me want to kind of move to a fun question, a little bit more of a less serious but a fun one. When you look at the industry today, right? What are some of the firms that you see out there? That you know, are are pushing the envelope a little bit? They’re, they’re doing some really neat things in the industry, beyond Tiffin Wealth, of course.

Niharika:

I think I would point out to one and the way that I like to answer this question is fintechs either operate in the automation space you know, there’s a lot of tech in FinTech or and or they operate in the intelligence space, which is using AI and data science where the true if I had to put that on a two by two I would be in the top right is the sweet spot right where you’re automating, but also making things more effective with with intelligence. So with that being said, then the been plying that to friction and solving at scale, right where you’ve got duality in the value proposition. So one of the companies that I’ve recently become very acquainted with is for you. And I do believe that even though this they’re more automation focused and less intelligence focus right now, but I think that’s just a matter of time. What they’ve been able to do is solve the friction of thought leadership emanating from asset managers and being seamlessly distributed with compliance approvals and so on, and readily available at the fingertips of advisor desktops, right? It used to be that it was a cumbersome process, lots of workflow latency in that content. being available. And so I think they had solved in a very meaningful way of an industry friction point, quite impressed with their journey, what they’re doing and the progress that they’ve made in the in the short few years that they’ve been around.

Chip:

Interesting. Interesting. I look forward to learning, checking them out and learning more. Alright, so I love to ask this question of all of our guests. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, typically I’ll wake up about four o’clock in the morning and be concerned about things that are for our customers or what have you, you know, when you think about our industry, when you think about and you look at kind of the both the enterprise and the adviser side of the business, the wealth business, what keeps you up at night? What, what’s a concern for you?

Niharika:

Look, I think it’s also the way that I look at things, the things that keep you up at night and the things that get you out of bed in the morning, and I tend to look at things that get that get you out of bed in the morning. So I’ll phrase it in that context. I think it is really the opportunity to use technology, but it’s data science AI machine learning, etc, in a meaningful way. That helps the advisor that helps the end prospect and the client. As an industry. I think if we want to do more for more, doing it at scale, with the right use cases and the right sort of cultural ethos, the top down support is where I think we need to go. So I think from a challenge standpoint, it’s getting the right advocacy within organizations to help advisors sort of build out the next generation of client personalization

Chip:

Yeah, that was a wonderful answer. Do you mind if I steal that get out of bed? I love that line. Man. That one’s fabulous. That is a fabulous turn of a phrase. Niharika, thank you for joining us on the Beacon Flash Podcast. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. Anytime you want to come back. You’re welcome.

Niharika:

I’d be happy to. Thank you.