Kabir Sethi of Merrill Lynch.
Advisors can leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies to offer greater portfolio personalization to their clients as more investors look to have their portfolios reflect their environmental, social and corporate governance values, according to industry executives who spoke at the Finovate Fall Digital online conference Friday.
ESG is "becoming increasingly important," Kabir Sethi, head of digital wealth management at Merrill Lynch, said during the session "Surviving and Thriving in the Era of Hyper-personalization: Next Generation Strategies for Acquiring New Customers and Building Brand Loyalty."
Merrill Lynch is working hard to find the best ways to use technology to uncover the needs of its clients in that area through data mining, he said. The goal is to be able to have the right conversations with clients at the right time when it comes to ESG solutions, he said, adding: "It's become a massive area of focus for us" and will only grow increasingly important in 2021.
As for technology adoption overall, it "got off to a slow start," but Merrill Lynch is "seeing a lot of traction now" among advisors, particularly when it comes to data mining, he noted. "We're seeing adoption. We're seeing more and more advisors understand that there is real power in being able to have" conversations with their clients made possible by technology, he said.
Meanwhile, as is the case when a consumer is buying any product, "you want to know what the ingredients are — you want to know if it links to your values," Sara Tresch, senior vice president of digital transformation and user experience at Charles Schwab, said of investment portfolios.
