PLANADVISER - March/April 2020 - 22

winners' circle
Wilt: Webinars, recorded webinars, Brainshark [products],
video, are all good tools now. Short, bite-size videos are great
tools. Screen-sharing technologies and outbound email
campaigns make a big difference.
Mott: Morgan Stanley at Work's Financial Wellness program
launched last May. The platform consists of a digital portal
experience with an assessment tool to help measure an
employee's financial fitness. We analyze the data through
the assessment and provide participants with options for
engaging with an adviser, a virtual adviser, or through [our]
Access Investing.
Also, in the summer of 2018, Morgan Stanley launched Next
Best Actions [NBA]. It allows us to send out, on a continuing
basis, ideas from the retirement side of
the company for participants. It's automatic;
I just push a button. It doesn't
take me, like it used to, an hour or two
to email to all of our clients information
that may affect them or how they think
about the market.
PA: What makes for quality, techbased
communications?
Griffin: The key to communication ...
we're in the South-there are a lot of
eye-to-eye meetings that are necessary.
One thing we've been working on with
customers is what the frequency of
meetings should be. And if we're going
to alternate a physical meeting with a
virtual meeting, we use technology to
accomplish that.
There are a lot of tools, right now,
Getting it ahead of time is a big deal for clients. Often,
advisers show up with the review, and it's the first time
the client is seeing it. Especially upmarket, we've learned
that our clients want to see things ahead of time. You'd be
surprised how many of them have spent a good deal of time
on it before we get there. We walk away from the review, we
draft minutes, and then we have one or two follow-up items,
and it makes it really efficient.
PA: What can't change with technology?
As I reflect on
technology and
its influence, one
almost too easy
to model a loan
and subsequently
have a loan
issued.
available to plan advisers to work more
remotely among your teams and with
your customers: technology such as Zoom and different
videoconferencing technology. We find that tools such
as GoToMeeting and UberConference have been easy for
collecting people on a call or in the same webinar where we
can see each other and share information. Microsoft Teams
is another great tool that helps from a management perspective
and is a way for your team to collaborate on projects
and interact. The technology, if you want to work remotely,
is out there and will be more popular as time goes on.
Wilt: For the last six years, I've done all of my reviews on
an iPad. As opposed to having books printed, bound and
shipped, we go to committee meetings, and if there are five
committee members, I go with five iPads and pass them out.
Loaded on the iPads, we may have one document, if it's a
standard review, or we might have three or four documents.
The report PDF is sent out to the client ahead of time. We
bring it and go through the document on the iPad. Then they
don't have all of those books that they don't know if they can
throw away or not.
Griffin: The parts of an adviser being " low-tech " will always
be the personal touch. Technology has allowed us to become
more efficient, and advisers can now serve over 100 plans
and reach thousands of participants,
using technology. At the end of the
day, we're in a relationship business.
Building a bond with clients over time
and taking a genuine interest in their
lives makes our business fun and leads
to long-term clients. That won't change.
area of concern is
loans. The industry
has made it
Wilt: I would say, that personal service
to plan sponsors and to participants.
Regarding plan sponsors, my book is
very local, so I continue to deliver quarterly
reviews in person. However, we
are seeing a trend toward using tools
such as Zoom and others to deliver
reviews remotely. When a plan sponsor
needs help, we're still picking up the
phone or scheduling in-person meetings
to deliver fiduciary advice.
For plan participants, we believe
in face to face, not interface. Through
CAPTRUST Participant Wellness and
Advice, we continue to deliver in-person
group meetings and one-on-one meetings for employees.
This is done on-site or through our participant call center.
Plan participants will always need personal interaction for
the advice they need and deserve.
Mott: Technology helps us with setting up the appointments.
But, being from the South, relationships and face-toface
meetings are more important than Zoom. We get out
front and see our people. We travel. We travel more now
than we ever have before.
The tech far surpasses anything we've had before, but,
up until now, with the response to the coronavirus, we
would never use Zoom or any other technology to communicate
with our clients for our quarterly meetings.
With Zoom, for instance, the slight movements, body
language, the look on a client's face, smiles, you just can't
pick those up. It's important to have the ability to see what's
important to them and what is not important, based on
their body language. You miss that with Zoom, and it's a big
deal for us. -Judy Faust Hartnett
22 | planadviser.com March-April 2020
http://www.planadviser.com
PLANADVISER - March/April 2020

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