The fintech firm CogniCor has launched three new digital assistant modules that use artificial intelligence to help financial advisors and wealth management firms accelerate their productivity.
The modules provide scalable solutions to the "most labor-intensive and time-consuming operational issues" that advisors and other employees at financial firms face and "raise the efficiency and productivity of firms' internal support functions," CogniCor said on Thursday.
The digital assistants were built on the Palo Alto, California firm's CIRA platform, a proprietary system that it said leverages machine learning algorithms to "understand the intent behind user queries and return accurate, appropriate responses or courses of action that directly address users' needs."
"CogniCor's solutions take much of the burden of user support off firms' shoulders and enables them to focus the core missions of their businesses," according to Sindhu Joseph, the company's CEO and founder.
The three newly launched digital assistants are the Forms Assistant, which the company said interprets the user's intent and finds the forms they need, then pre-fills certain fields and guides the user through the rest; the Navigation Assistant, which users tell what they need and which responds with step-by-step navigation instructions in even complex use cases; and the Smart Call-Routing Assistant, which understands the context and intent of a query, then matches the user with the appropriate expert, CogniCor said.
Deploying CogniCor's digital assistants can decrease the frequency of calls from advisors and employees to live call-center staff without affecting the critical mid- and back-office functions they need to drive business, the company added.
Signal Advisors Raises $16M for Advisor Platform
Signal Advisors, a Detroit-based fintech startup that distributes annuities and life insurance, has raised $16 million that it plans to use to build an end-to-end platform for independent advisors, it said.
Series A funding of $10 million was led by General Catalyst, which closed in December. It followed a $6 million seed financing round in July, with participation from Detroit Venture Partners, Ludlow Ventures, General Catalyst, Mercury Fund, Annox Capital, SV Angel and others, Signal Advisors said.
The startup's platform is currently a specialized platform for annuities, but the company intends to use the funding to expand it into a "true end-to-end platform for the independent financial advisor," it said.
"We've seen a lot of capital investment in technologies that promise to replace financial advisors," said Robert Mylod, managing partner of Annox Capital, who recently joined the Signal Advisors board. "But the bigger opportunity, by far, is to build technology that empowers advisors," he said in a statement.
Mylod also serves on the boards of public companies including the discount real estate brokerage Redfin, Booking Holdings, Dropbox and Vroom, Signal Advisors said.
Signal Advisors launched its platform its August 2020 and is led by its co-founders, Patrick Kelly, its CEO; Kevin O'Hara, its chief technology officer; and Jacob Cohen, its president.
Kelly started his career as a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual and transitioned to his independent advisory firm, Kelly Capital Partners. O'Hara is a veteran software architect and technologist, most recently leading software development at Bluewater Technologies and the venture capital-backed software-as-a-service (SaaS) company LevelEleven.
Hearsay Names Matt Newman Chief Customer Officer
Industry veteran Matt Newman has joined Hearsay Systems as its chief customer officer. In the new role at the company, he will be responsible for "further developing and enhancing" the company's customer experience, it said Thursday.
