Fidelity Adds Digital Service Tools to Advisor Tech Platform

News May 27, 2020 at 02:47 PM
Share & Print

(Photo: Shutterstock)

Fidelity Investments has added multiple tools to its advisor technology platform that will make it much easier for advisors to navigate, anytime, anywhere.

The enhancements are especially useful in today's remote working environment, which finds many advisors working from home, communicating with their home office, colleagues and clients online, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fidelity says there's been a significant increase in digital tool adoption during the current crisis, including more than double the number of eSignature money movements and a 45% increase in new account eSignature adoption between February and April. 

Fidelity has also seen high call volumes from advisors in recent months as it helps "advisors navigate a challenging time," said Joe Kurtzer, head of client experience for Fidelity Institutional, in a statement.

The latest enhancements to the Wealthscape platform are:

  • A Virtual Assistant to answer everyday questions about the platform while working on it
  • An enhanced Platform Search function
  • Smart Walkthroughs that allow advisors to learn platform features by walking them through key tasks while using them

These new features "make it even easier for advisors to navigate our platform so they can spend more time engaging with the clients and delivering higher levels of value," said Lisa Burns, head of platform technology at Fidelity Institutional, in a statement.

Some will naturally evolve on their own as more advisors use them more frequently. The Virtual Assistant and enhanced Platform Search, for example, will become smarter as individual advisors ask more questions. Through artificial intelligence they will be able to predict the information an advisor might need based on their past activity on the platform. 

"The suite of tools will help to inform how each of them gets smarter," Burns tells ThinkAdvisor. She added that none of the new features replace speaking with a service person, if that's what an advisor would prefer.

The new features augment existing digital capability such as paperless account onboarding, deeper integrations with tools from outside firms like Tamarac, Riskalyze and Wealthbox, which Fidelity announced earlier this year. 

Fidelity expects to add additional digital tools to enhance the Wealthscape client offerings service later this year, including a new online feature, currently in pilot, that allows for quick and easy interaction with the platform's tech support team.

Next month it expects to launch a new front-end order entry tool for alternative investment subscriptions, redemptions and capital commitments.

Fidelity will also begin to roll out a refreshed Wealthscape and Wealthscape Investor platform and mobile experiences more features to deliver a simplified design and customer-focused workflow plus more features and functionality.

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Related Stories

Resource Center