Here are the sessions I am looking forward to over the next three days at the ABA Wealth Management Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. I’ll be back here next week with observations and potential implications on the intersection of leadership, advice an technology. Let me know if you’re going!
1) Financial Services in a Mobile World
Jon Bluth, Senior Vice President of Product Management, SunGard
Eileen VanScoy, Executive Vice President of Product Management, SunGard
The mobile landscape is rapidly evolving, and the financial services industry is striving to keep pace. Similar to the Internet’s early days, fragmentation, security concerns, legacy infrastructure, monetizing solutions and ROI considerations present challenges and opportunities that must be analyzed and addressed to fully capitalize on the sweeping changes brought about by an increasingly mobile world. This presentation looks at financial firms’ emerging and actual opportunities and risks in deploying mobile technology, and discusses various approaches they can take to cost-effectively and responsibly leverage its many benefits to their business and their clients.
2) Leveraging Operational Benchmarks To Achieve Sustainable, Profitable Growth
Michael Kostoff, Partner, WISE Gateway LLC
In these difficult economic times, it is clear that wealth management executives must “do more with less”–they must drive increased revenue growth while simultaneously reducing costs. This presentation will outline how managers can leverage operational performance benchmarking to accomplish this goal, and deliver profitable growth that is sustainable in any kind of economy. Strategies for improving staff productivity, ensuring support structure cost efficiencies and enhancing sales performance will be discussed.
3) Family Wealth Management
Pat Armstrong, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Family Dynamics, Wells Fargo
Arne Boudewyn, Senior Vice President and Senior Director, Family Dynamics, Wells Fargo
This breakout is designed to explore strategies for engaging high net worth families in conversations about the qualitative, non-financial dimensions of wealth, sometimes referred to as the human, intellectual or social capital. Drawing on research and best practices in the area of family dynamics, the presenters will focus their discussion on challenges and opportunities facing wealth advisors as they work with various family profiles on a range of business and estate planning concerns. The presenters will illustrate how to surface and leverage family motivators through an interactive discussion with participants, highlighting conversation starters that can enhance the planning process.
4) Luncheon with Speaker
The Art of Vision
Erik Wahl
Your best sustainable edge in business is your ability to visibly differentiate yourself from your competition. The Art of Vision is an entertaining and highly practical program that uncovers new ways to make your organization more creative and ultimately more profitable. It is no longer enough to have good customer service and a good product. The truly great companies have altered the landscape to create a unique experience for the customer. Whether its sales, service or leadership principles; professionals at all levels can achieve superior performance by creatively differentiating themselves from the competition.
5) Expert Teams Produce Extraordinary Results
Stephen Doty, Investment Executive, Northeast Division, U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management
David R. McCune, Region Director, Wells Fargo Wealth Management Group
HNW client demands are clear – they want to be served by a team of professionals. Clients seek a team of advisors with specific roles and complementary skills and talents, aligned and committed to a common purpose of putting the client first, and who consistently exhibit levels of creativity and collaboration that produce extraordinary results. But how do we get teams to perform at this level? How do we integrate uniquely qualified individuals to think and act as a team? This interactive session will explore the philosophies that make the team approach successful and share actual experiences of a winning team.
6) General Session
Making it Personal – Relationships and Wealth Management
Joseph Michelli, PhD,
Author and Organizational Consultant
Delivering financial performance for your clients is not enough. Learn the tools that will engage, retain, build loyalty, and grow referrals.
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7) Client Acquisition in a Wired World
Kathleen Pritchard, Director, Head of Program Marketing and Customer Insights, Legg Mason
In today’s competitive business landscape, financial professionals who fail to leverage the power of the Internet to acquire new clients are doing themselves a serious disservice. By cultivating an online presence that showcases your specific expertise and service offering, you not only create opportunities to meet qualified prospects, but also build credibility and rapport that increases your chance of winning their business. Key topics include best practices for websites and email campaigns; building a network of contacts to facilitate referrals, both as an individual and a professional; using online search tools to identify potential clients, understand their individual needs/interests and use that information in initial meetings to open more new relationships; managing your online reputation; delivering a consistent message that reflects your value proposition; recognizing compliance concerns; and more. Also featured is a discussion on how financial professionals can enhance their client acquisition efforts by using popular online “social networking” services like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
