There have been more exciting artificial intelligence rollouts and announcements for advisors this week.
Among the ones I found consequential was Cetera’s firm-wide collaboration with AI-powered meeting assistant provider Jump. All 12,000 of the firm’s advisors will now have access to the technology (which is often being referred to casually as “note-taking AI”).
Jump provides significant automation to an advisor’s workflow and team support, including meeting preparation, recordings, generating summaries, updating CRM, generating follow-up communications and compliance logging, among other tasks.
At the beginning of February, Jump announced a $20 million Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures, bringing the total capital raised to $24.6 million. Just this week, the firm announced it has become one of Osaic’s official technology vendors.
Jump made its inaugural appearance in this year’s T3 technology survey, capturing a little over 8% market share in the transcription/text capture services category. The platform has been approved for use at other firms as well, including Integrated Partners, Mission Wealth, and Sanctuary Wealth.
While Jump has the market share lead in this year’s T3 survey, it has several competitors, including Zocks and Zeplyn, among others. In March, Zocks announced it had raised a $13.8 million Series A funding round.
The Jump announcement is not Cetera’s first time this year talking about providing advisors (and other partners) access to generative AI. In January, the firm announced it would soon begin a pilot of technology from TIFIN AG with a select group of advisors that would eventually provide personalized AI-driven client insights and support tailored to the specific growth goals of the advisors.
Healthcare Planning Needed
In February, I wrote a column discussing some of the results of Wealthtech provider Orion’s annual Advisor Wealthtech Survey and the firm’s inaugural survey of 1,000 investors (the results were shared during the firm’s Ascent conference). I zeroed in on a finding about healthcare planning: 38% of HNW investors reported they wanted healthcare planning from their advisor, but their current financial advisor did not provide it.
I’ve contended for years that holistic financial planning is incomplete without health planning (guidance on health insurance, long-term care insurance, contingency planning for the lack of it, etc.) and that there should be technology to support it that is fully integrated with financial planning applications. Caribou and its HealthPlanner software, which was recently acquired by Move Health, is a prime example of this technology.
A new healthcare planning platform called HighPeak was announced this week. I’m a bit leery that it was backed by the giant insurance carrier Prudential but it is good to see this category expand.
While I have not had a chance to look at the technology or interview its CEO, Sharon Rodriguez, HighPeak is being targeted and marketed to financial advisors, insurers and benefits managers. According to the firm, it was designed to forecast future healthcare and long-term care costs. I can agree with its prescribed mission of solving “one of retirement’s most pressing and unpredictable challenges: rising medical expenses.”
Advisors Can Be Part of Stopping Elder Fraud
I first wrote about the Carefull application and platform four years ago when it launched and announced its seed funding round.
Fast forward, and this week, the national RIA Integrated Partners announced a new strategic partnership with Carefull.
Simply put, the technology was created to help protect the daily finances and identities of older adults and their families.
Once set up, it monitors checking, savings and credit card accounts for more than 30 data points that may be “red flags” that older adults have fallen victim to elder financial abuse. These include late or missed payments, changes in spending behavior or other unusual banking activity, like recurring cash transfers or charitable contributions that have not been properly vetted.
During setup, the seniors involved select family members and caregivers to be in their “circle of care” to receive notifications if any suspected issues are detected by the application.
Carefull has previously announced partnerships with national insurance carrier Nationwide and Cetera Financial Group.
The Tech Revolution in Retirement Planning
I’m also very excited about an upcoming panel session I’ll be moderating on the technology track of our annual Wealth Management EDGE conference, this year being held June 10-12 at The Boca Raton Resort in Boca Raton, Fla.
I’ll be joined by three founders: Sheryl O’Connor of IncomeConductor, Christine Simone of Move Health (which acquired her startup Caribou), and Lauren Clough, founder of bQuest. The topics will be wide-ranging but focused on much of what I’ve discussed in this column, the need for incorporating healthcare costs, long-term care into retirement and retirement income planning, elder fraud monitoring and prevention, and caregiver search and monitoring. I’ve met them all and known two of them for years, and they are passionate about what they do and about better equipping advisors for fully holistic planning.