Cetera Financial Group announced this week that it has partnered with TIFIN AG to eventually provide Cetera’s 12,000 advisors and the firm’s financial institutions access to artificial intelligence tools to help increase organic growth.
The project starts with customizing and aligning the AI technology to Cetera’s unique needs and internal data sets, something TIFIN has been doing for several years with its many partners and investor firms.
Cetera will begin with a pilot involving a select group of advisors to ensure the solutions are effective and seamlessly integrated within Cetera’s ecosystem, according to a spokesperson.
Depending on the outcome of that pilot and subsequent refinements, wider availability is anticipated later this year.
Once in place, advisors and financial institutions (banks, credit unions and other similar entities affiliated with Cetera that leverage its platform to provide advisory and wealth management services) will gain access to personalized AI-driven client insights and support tailored to their specific growth goals.
“Increasingly, clients are diversifying assets across multiple firms, so it’s especially vital now that financial advisors and institutions have tools and resources designed to maximize complex share-of-wallet strategies,” said Michael Zuna, chief marketing and communications officer at Cetera, in a prepared statement.
“Our collaboration with TIFIN AG introduces a sophisticated solution designed to address share-of-wallet challenges by identifying client behaviors that influence their asset allocation decisions.”
Among the many firms that have worked with and invested in TIFIN are Broadridge, Franklin Templeton, Hamilton Lane, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Morningstar and Motive Partners.
As of Sept. 30, 2024, Cetera had more than $545 billion in assets under administration and $235 billion in assets under management.
Advisor360° Acquires Parrot AI
In a move that is likely to be repeated around the advisor technology industry, the enterprise wealth management platform provider Advisor360° (originally spun out of Commonwealth Financial) has acquired Boston-based Parrot AI.
Parrot AI was part of a growing and increasingly competitive landscape of AI-powered and highly automated note-taking, transcription and communications-producing platforms.
According to a prepared statement, Advisor360° will integrate Parrot’s capabilities into its own platform and also introduce it as a stand-alone version specifically for advisors.
While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Advisor360° acquired Parrot AI’s core technology and intellectual property as part of the transaction and will hire the latter’s 12 full-time employees, including CEO and co-founder Paul Morville.
Wealthtender Rolls Out Testimonial Marketing Studio
The popular find-an-advisor directory website Wealthtender, which is also one of the pioneering online review platforms for advisors, introduced the Testimonial Marketing Studio this week.
It is meant to be used to proactively promote client testimonials in social media posts and through prospect nurturing campaigns, keeping regulatory compliance in mind.
The new tool is available in Wealthtender’s Marketing Pro product for $79 a month, which includes professionally designed video and image templates that can be used in social media content with reviews imported from Wealthtender. There are also editing features to optimize design and compliance elements.
Bloomberg Introduces AI-powered News Summaries
To round out our AI news coverage this week, Bloomberg has launched AI-produced summaries of news stories (a human is producing this specific summary, however).
The AI-Powered News Summaries are automated and do not require user input. They will initially be available on most long-form Bloomberg News stories (including news analysis and feature stories), and the feature is included as part of a Bloomberg Terminal subscription.
According to a spokesperson, Bloomberg uses generative AI technology to create news summaries, which are evaluated by the company’s subject matter experts to continuously refine the large language model’s performance.
The new feature follows the launch of AI-powered Earnings Call Summaries, which were available on the terminal a year ago.