![]() Prior to joining CheckFree Corporation, Mr. Johnson worked for the Federal Reserve Bank and Bank One.įor TTV Capital, Mark is currently on the Board of Directors of Cardlytics, DefenseStorm, Onward, Micronotes, Monit, Payrailz, SmartAsset, and Springbot.Live Connections can help advisors convert prospects into leads, says SmartAsset CEO Michael Carvin. Similar past attempts by consumer personal finance companies have struggled to gain traction. NerdWallet’s Ask an Advisor and Investopedia’s Advisor Insights have both closed down. “I’ve long been skeptical of these services… and in fact really haven’t seen much in results from them for years and years,” says XY Planning Network co-founder and Financial Planning contributor Michael Kitces, who cautioned advisors against using third-party websites for business development in 2016. While these services are improving - Kitces’ recent study on client acquisition costs named SmartAsset, FeeOnlyNetwork and Zoe Financial as “capital-smart” ways to find new business - an issue remains with the quality of new leads, he says. Zoe Financial, a competing matchmaking service, attempts to address this issue by having advisors pay for a referral only when the prospect hires them, says CEO Andres Garcia-Amaya. The quality of a lead is also in the eye of the beholder, Garcia-Amaya says. “Every lead that fills out a form ingand says ‘find me a financial advisor’ is qualified. ![]() They might not hire the advisor, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hire someone else,” Garcia-Amaya says. Of course, the sales and screening process takes time, Kitces says. While some large RIAs have dedicated business development staff through weed through every prospect, most advisors don’t have those resources. “You might get 10 or 20-plus leads just to get one client. And advisors really do not like sifting through leads,” Kitces says in an email. “Our data suggests that at least as a category, these providers are providing real marketing value and. But at best, it’s grindy to separate the wheat from the chaff.”Ĭarvin agrees that busy advisors don’t want to sift through too many leads, no matter how affordable they are. While there are large RIAs on SmartAdvisor, he says small firms can also make it work. “One-person shops can be incredibly successful if they are hungry, want to grow and have a repeatable process,” Carvin says. The average investor looking for advice on SmartAdvisor is 57 years old with investable assets of $890,000, making them prime potential clients for most advisors, Carvin says. Three-quarters of them do not currently have an advisor, and 70% are either retired or less than 10 years away from retirement. Since launching SmartAdvisor in 2018, the platform has helped transfer $9.7 billion in assets to advisors, Carvin says. Amount raised:12 million Series B.So far, the company has raised over 20 million in total. “We’re good at identifying people who are already in the market for advice and then helping them with that process,” Carvin says. Who invests: The funding round was led by IA Capital Group with participation from TTV Capital, Contour.
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