Cetera Financial Group is planning to launch Decipher, a new facial recognition software solution to help Cetera-affiliated financial advisers gain deeper insights into client emotions and behaviour patterns regarding financial goals, decisions and concerns.
The Decipher solution provides clients as well as family members and loved ones who have a voice or role in financial planning considerations with a unique interactive experience to help them better understand their priorities and concerns about their financial well-being. Decipher enables Cetera’s affiliated advisers to develop more robust financial plans to help individuals and families achieve their financial objectives. Decipher will be securely accessible through any computer or tablet device with a built in web camera, and supports the best interest advice model Cetera is building to be compliant with the US Department of Labor (DOL) fiduciary rule.
As the next resource provided through Cetera’s Advice Architect Ecosystem of integrated platforms and tools following last month’s launch of technology-enabled investment solutions offering My Advice Architect™, Decipher represents another significant step toward the company’s strategic vision of delivering clients and advisers a truly advice-centric experience by unlocking powerful insights into clients’ emotional responses to a variety of real-life scenarios. Decipher will be introduced through a pilot program conducted this summer, with the solution’s rollout across the Cetera network anticipated to occur over the course of the third and fourth quarters of 2017.
Robert Moore, Chief Executive Officer of Cetera Financial Group, says: “Our new facial recognition software solution represents a major step forward for the financial advice industry, and supports one of the key objectives of the DOL fiduciary rule: assisting advisers to act in their clients’ best interests. As experienced advisers know, client decisions about personal finances have always been significantly influenced by emotions that clients and their loved ones may not be fully aware of, and which are frequently left unsaid. With our Decipher offering, financial advisers have an unprecedented opportunity to deliver an advice-centric experience that takes into account the emotional and behavioural nuances that help drive clients’ important financial decisions from the very beginning of the engagement. Decipher will not only provide our advisers with a powerful level of insight into their clients’ needs, but will enable them to translate those insights into actionable steps that directly support the achievement of clients’ financial goals.”
Decipher will allow advisers to enhance the advice-centric experience they provide by connecting clients’ emotions about money to the financial strategies advisers recommend from the outset of the relationship. Additionally, as a flexible-use tool, Decipher can also be deployed by advisers to identify potentially new client relationships based on enhanced quality and substance of initial interactions.
The Decipher experience begins with the client or prospect watching a short, personalised video comprised of different real-life scenarios. The solution’s facial recognition technology and cloud-based artificial intelligence measure the emotional response of the person to the video and provide robust, actionable information on what clients feel, want and need in order to make sound financial decisions that support their goals. This information is delivered to both the client/prospect and the financial advisor in separate reports that transform client insights into a more thorough understanding of their needs and priorities. This enhanced understanding of clients’ attitudes and responses regarding financial goals and concerns is expected to provide advisers with enhanced opportunities to expand their client base by reaching prospects in new and more meaningful ways while also deepening engagement with existing clients.
Moore says: “By streamlining the initial discovery process and facilitating a more emotionally-connected rapport between clients and advisers from day one, we are differentiating Cetera-affiliated advisers from the rest of the industry, while positioning our advisers for success through the delivery of a deeper and higher quality level of guidance to their clients.”
Adam Antoniades, President of Cetera Financial Group, says: ““This technology is one of a series of new tools Cetera is rolling out to crystallise the intangible yet enormous value that our advisers and institutions provide to their clients each and every day. We’re passionate in our belief that the future of this industry is based on an advice-centric approach oriented around the goal of understanding: Understanding clients, their needs and hopes, and how to effectively guide them along the road toward the successful achievement of their objectives. With Decipher, Cetera advisers will be empowered to start and manage every client relationship with a deeper level of insight into each client’s needs, wants and behavioural patterns than has ever before been possible in this industry.”
