What is the future of AI and voice in financial services, and why does this technology matter? Amit Dogra is the Chief Experience Officer at Sanctuary Wealth, which reached $10bn in AUA (assets under advisement) within 15 months after its 2018 founding. Sanctuary is a partner owned firm that brings together an elite group of wealth advisors under the banner of partnered independence.
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Amit and Emily Binder talked about Sanctuary's unveiling of their Alexa Skills and what it means for their business. Voice is symbolic of more than just embracing new technology.
Topics and timestamps:
03:15 Sanctuary Wealth’s focus on anti-Wall Street and anti-big bank culture, more intimate and partner-oriented: #PartneredIndependence - here’s a video from CEO Jim Dickson about partnered independence
03:45 What does a Chief Experience Officer (CXO) do? He focuses on culture, growth, and innovation.
03:50 How does a Wall Street M.O. cause client experience to suffer? It’s results-driven instead of client-centric.
Amit Dogra unveils Sanctuary Wealth’s Alexa Skills at Oasis 2019
04:15 Creating fictitious bank accounts to hit numbers (you know who) - and the corporate culture that drove this
05:15 Amazon as the ultra customer-centric company
06:30 Sanctuary Wealth’s Alexa Skill announcement in fall 2019 at Oasis: What is Amit’s team doing with voice, and why was this initiative important? Who benefits?
07:28 The audience for their Alexa Skill is both B2B and B2C: there’s corporate and internal use and also advisor to end client
09:45 If I’m a Sanctuary advisor, how do I use the Alexa Skill? Functions include internal phone/directory, corporate contact information, and archives of the monthly all-hands call (“Alexa, play Sanctuary Wealth corporate update”).
11:15 Looking at Echo devices for video calling features, Amit is excited about the Echo Show for multimodal (they deployed on the Echo Show 5, passing up the Dot because the video feature was key)
12:15 Emily: Echo Dot was successful as an affordable entry level smart speaker. Great for habit formation. But today screenless Dots or Google Home Minis aren’t as popular as multimodal voice assistant devices because people want a screen for visuals.
13:10 Results so far: adoption and useful feedback
Sanctuary Wealth unveiled personalized Alexa devices for their advisors (tweet)
14:50 New habit formation
15:30 “Advisors are leaving wirehouses and the banking industry because they’re tired of the past. But we have to give them a reason to stay with us. Doing things differently by embracing tech is key.” - Amit
16:15 You have to spell out and educate with voice at first
16:30 Voice hits the limbic system (this emotional processing center happens to also be where we store music and memory) - and we all know that money is emotional
17:35 What does Amit see happening with AI and technology in financial services and the RIA space in the next two years?
18:13 You can’t imagine the business will be static. AI will be embraced but not as quickly in financial services as other industries.
We want to be the early adopter because this is a copycat industry. -Amit Dogra
19:10 AI can change the financial services game like analytics changed baseball - as far as interaction with clients and doing business in a better way
20:10 Bonus question: What is Amit’s opinion on Jeff Bezos as a CEO?
23:00 The best podcast Amit has heard lately: Everything is Alive hosted by Ian Chillag
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