Mariner Wealth and its outspoken CEO and President Marty Bicknell have an established goal of growing to 5,000 advisors by 2027. The firm has been steadily working toward this through inorganic growth via acquisitions and strategic alliances for some time, but doing so through organic growth at scale proves challenging for all RIA firms.
This week, Catchlight, a technology platform that enriches, analyzes, and scores leads for wealth management firms, announced it was working with Mariner, which manages $245 billion in assets across all its affiliates, to help stoke organic growth efforts.
Through the partnership, advisors, marketers and growth teams across Mariner will now have access to lead and client insights generated by Catchlight’s Salesforce application.
Most large RIA firms already have lead generation and referral programs, and Mariner is no exception. That is where Catchlight comes in. It will be used by its organic growth team, which is responsible for driving prospective client opportunities to advisors in Mariner locations across the country. At the same time, Mariner advisors will have access to the data from Catchlight to use as they directly engage the prospects.
Catchlight is meant to help the team identify their best prospects, qualify them based on insights such as estimated investable assets and income, and help drive personalized engagement and convert them into clients.
“Client acquisition costs continue to rise, making marketing efficiency and precision more important than ever. Catchlight’s AI-powered platform helps firms quickly identify high-potential leads and prioritize meaningful engagement while saving time and effort,” said Catchlight CEO and Co-founder Wilbur Swan.
CFA Releases Research on AI in Pension Plans
This week, the CFA Institute Research and Policy Center released a new report that explores how AI and machine-learning technology can address critical issues facing the global pensions industry.
Among the problems studied are major demographic shifts, the underfunding of defined benefit pension plans, inflation, rising inequalities and gaps in financial literacy.
The report, entitled “Pensions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” discusses how technology can help tackle some key issues in pension management and presents ideas on how the integration of new technology can empower pension trustees and beneficiaries to make better-informed decisions.
Interactive Brokers Launches AI Commentary Generator
Custodian and international brokerage Interactive Brokers announced several updates to its platform this week. One of them—though only for its U.S.-based financial advisors—is an AI Commentary Generator.
Available through the IB Advisor Portal, the AI Commentary Generator allows advisors to create custom portfolio performance reports and market commentary. The tool is integrated with PortfolioAnalyst reporting and designed to help advisors with client portfolio performance reporting, market updates and ticker-specific news. As noted in the company’s prepared statement, it can comb through dozens of sources and cite them in seconds, which, if done manually by the advisor, would take hours.
“We have taken a hybrid approach and are leveraging our powerful in-house technology in combination with third-party supplied generative AI models to deliver our AI commentary tool,”
said Steve Sanders, who heads up marketing and product development at Interactive Brokers, via email.
IB made several other enhancements to its web-based Advisor Portal, which provides advisors with access to advanced trading and portfolio management tools. Among the improvements are more streamlined client account management features and new trading. The latest enhancements are to its Portfolio View, allocation, rebalancing and tax loss harvesting tools.