Modernizing the Client and Advisor Experience with Colleen Bell

Jack Sharry: Hello everyone and welcome. Thank you for joining us for this week’s edition of WealthTech on Deck. The topic we spent time on for a while now is organic growth. We all know how elusive and fundamentally important organic growth is, and we know it is much easier said than done. To achieve organic growth, it is critical to innovate on many fronts, investment products and solutions for one. Then there are a variety of processes such as marketing and sales processes, operational and technological processes, client advisor user experience processes, and of course the complexity of having all the above work together. Again, all this is much easier to talk about than to put into practice. Today we’re going to speak with someone who is immersed in these issues every single day. Our WealthTech on Deck guest today is Colleen Bell. Colleen is president of Cambridge Investment Research’s Innovation and Experience Division. She works with her Cambridge colleagues in guiding the strategic direction of the firm where she is a member of the office of CEO and also a member of the board of directors and executive council. Her focus is on driving associate engagement and financial professional satisfaction while advancing and discovering new ways to meet ongoing client needs. She also leads Cambridge’s service teams, including products and technology solutions, strategy planning and innovation, service experience, and specialized service teams and of course also part of Cambridge’s executive administration team. So Colleen, that’s a lot. Welcome to WealthTech on Deck. It’s great to have you here. Look forward to the conversation.

Colleen Bell: Thank you for having me, Jack. I’m looking forward to it.

Jack Sharry: Terrific, so let’s start with you describing your role at Cambridge beyond what’s on one’s resume and LinkedIn and so forth. Sounds like you have many critical functions that report to you. Fill us in a little bit if you would, fill our audience in on what you’re focused on, what is really where you spend the bulk of your time. I’m sure you spend it on all of the above, but who do you do it with, who do you do it for? Talk a little bit about where you find yourself focused these days.

Colleen Bell: Absolutely. So as president of Innovation Experience, it’s a role I took on in 2022. And I would say it was a little bit of a pipe dream when I went from having operations and technology to innovation and experience. Because that is where I wanted to drive our teams. I wanted them to be innovative and I wanted them to deliver on new experiences. So I was of the old adage of people will never forget how you made them feel. And that is my job at Cambridge is to make sure that people feel like they are part of something special. Or as we say at Cambridge, something wonderful. And that we are going above and beyond. And innovation really truly is about thinking about how to do the same thing in a different way. And that is truly where I spend most of my time. So we have reinvented our service teams, making sure that our advisors have people that are dedicated to them and their experience. And right now, I would say a bulk of my time is definitely on the product side, working with our technology teams, diving deep into AI right now and how that will really truly transform what we’re doing in the industry and certainly at Cambridge as well.

Jack Sharry: Yes, my guess is that you deal with not only is our industry increasingly complex, which has all sorts of interesting challenges, but also I would suspect by virtue of fact of where I just heard you focus your attention on, you’re dealing with pain points that one encounters. So what are some of the pain points you hear about from advisors, their clients, around the experience, how you get the best financial advice for themselves and their family? What do hear?

Colleen Bell: Yeah, absolutely. So we actually have mapped it all out. Believe it or not, we have a customer experience team. We take the time from the very first time an advisor joins us or a client joins us all the way through to the very stages that they’d be affiliated with us. And we know those little pink sticky notes, those are the pain points that we need to address. I call them friction points because at the end of the day, that’s what prevents our advisors working with our clients effectively or efficiently and/or our teams from a service perspective, working with our advisors efficiently. Every time there’s a little bit of friction, you know, there’s something you have to ask them for. You have to ask them for more information or ask them to sign something or ask them to submit some paperwork, people will be less enthusiastic to do work with you. So from my perspective, anything that we can do to automate that experience, remove the need to provide information, or in my case, remove all paperwork from the industry, which is my goal and has been my goal for over probably five years for anyone that has known me. That really is what we’re looking for. And it is complicated. As you mentioned, the industry is very complex. So we work obviously from an advisory perspective, have many partners without outside custodians. So we can’t just own the experience all on our own. We have to work with others in order to remove those types of friction points. And so that means that I have to get not just my team involved in saying we don’t need paperwork anymore, we just need data points in order to move things forward, work with other companies and custodians in order to do the same. But I think I’ve made a lot of progress. I think the world has changed significantly, will change even more quickly going forward, and keep on working on those things so that it will be refreshing to have a financial professional and a client will want to work with them because they will make their lives easier. That’s our ultimate goal.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, actually, I’m going through a little bit that right now. I’ve been going through some old files and so forth, and I realized I don’t have files anymore. It’s all electronic. So I imagine that’s at the heart of the matter. Do I have that right?

Colleen Bell: You absolutely do. I actually was just having a conversation with someone the other day that said they had text documents going back decades. Actually, they said 1951. They had an office that their father had at one point and they are finding documents back to 1951. I said, you truly do not need that information going forward. But there are certain things. But I think we all have more of a digital presence going forward. So you have your data points. And how do we make sure that the people who need it to serve you, so your finance professional as an example, have that, know what it is as it changes so that you can update all the records electronically.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. Now earlier you mentioned that you’re also doing a lot of work around product and I’ll call them solutions depending on how those get packaged up. Talk a little bit about that if you would.

Colleen Bell: Yeah, so overall we’re responsible for making sure our advisors and their specializations, I would say, have the products, have the technology that they need in order to be successful. So those that are working with clients that are focused on retirement plan business as an example, making sure that they have the products, they have the technology that they can serve those small businesses. And then others who are probably more on my side, planning, whether it’s planning for their kids’ college, planning for retirement, planning for the next stage of their life, making sure that they have the financial planning tools and resources available to them in order to do that. And then just, you in general, asset management, right? There are lots of different ways and products that an advisor can serve a client, making sure that we have a lot of choice. Flexibility is one of our core values. So that means multiple platforms that our advisors can work on, which is a challenge from a technology perspective because then you have to build a product that can work across multiple different custodians and clearing firms. But those are the types of things that we work on every day of what is working, what is the demand out there in the industry, and what can we continue to enhance and again remove those friction points or pain points so that it is easy to do business.

Jack Sharry: So you just breezed through that like it’s no big deal and you didn’t really. But the point is that you not only have to have it work for Cambridge, but you also have it with and through other custodians who also then therefore need to work together. So talk about that challenge. That sounds like a pretty ornery one.

Colleen Bell: It is, and this one I’ve been trying to address literally for years. So we had a slogan in 2024, paper no more in 24. I have one paper not alive in 25. Like it’s, I have it ongoing because I know that it’s going to be a pain point for myself until I actually reach that goal of limiting it. But it is, you know, working with our partners and saying, okay, right now you are processed. We talked about before fueling growth. Some of it is dependent on very specific operational processes, that is how an account is opened. That is how someone receives their money when they go to their financial advisor and says, you know, I have a specific cash need. So right now, it’s very dependent on someone making a request to an advisor. The advisor then takes that request, they probably fill out a form, send it to the client, client signs that form, and then gets it over to the various parties that need it. Ideal state is that the client then can just request that information. That’s the data point that I need, that there’s a request from a client. We can give them, they can click to agree that this is exactly what they want to do. We have in our system that they’re authorized to make that request and then it can go to those parties seamlessly. So those are the types of things that you know we can continue to innovate on it. And it’s going to happen process by process quite frankly. You know we have probably 80 % of our business is done through nine different forms that exist today. So if we can automate one of those forms that’s a lot less friction or pain points for advisors and a lot faster way for the clients to receive their money and/or the request going forward too. So that is step by step. We’ll get there Jack.

Jack Sharry: I have every faith and confidence you’ll get there. totally get it. So you’ve mentioned a few things. Again, in passing as if no big deal. It’s a big deal. But you’re talking about not only the typical kind of brokerage, you’ve talked about advisory, you’ve talked about retirement plans. And all of that needs to work together because people own all that stuff. They have 401ks and IRAs and brokerage accounts and advisory type solutions. Talk about that challenge because that’s no small thing either is just all of that that wasn’t too long ago that that stuff just didn’t talk to each other but you’re it sounds like you’re well on your way to getting that all work to work together

Colleen Bell: Yeah, I think that is one thing about Cambridge where we have had, again, flexibility for a very long time, but then you have to bring the experience together. So a client wants to know that, yes, they have an insurance product or annuity, but they also have an advisory account, or they may have, to your point, a 529 for a saving that would be a commission or brokerage account. Having the ability for them to see all that information in one location and having one advisor that can serve all those needs is really, really important. So I think that’s where we can consolidate the performance reviews and just having all the data go into one location so that they have confidence that what they see on their statement really does consolidate that experience for them. But it could be different ways that they actually go about opening those accounts and the way that they can make changes to them going forward. But each one of them, I have found over the 19 years that I’ve been here with Cambridge is very important for a very specific, unique need. So the more that we can serve those unique needs for each of those clients, think the better off our advisors will be and obviously the clients as well.

Jack Sharry: Talk a little bit, if you would. I mean, there’s so much in what you just said. I don’t mean to, in any way, I don’t want to minimize, I want to sort of put a spotlight on the fact that there’s a lot going on from lots of different custodians in different areas where the money is housed and I’m thinking retirement plans and all the rest, just all of it. It’s just, there’s a lot going on there. And where do you see that going? I mean, it seems like there’s a lot to be pulled together, a lot of ways to have it show up in a statement. And then also there’s lots of ways that as an industry we need to get toward, okay, how do we maximize, optimize all that we have? So talk about your progress on that front of pulling it all together so you can frankly give better advice on how to manage all those different assets that are held in all those different places.

Colleen Bell: Sure, I think the foundation of all that would be the financial planning. So if you take the time, advisors take the time to really understand what that plan is, where all the assets exist today, they will be able to give much better, more comprehensive advice to their clients. And then know that in five years you may need to open a trust account for that client. And in 10 years, that’s when you will take money out of the retirement account and it will go into the savings and have a plan all along the way. And I think you can do that with a lot of financial planning software. So that’s probably the best way that a client can see that information. They can have the dashboard of where they are, but also what their goals are and how they’re on track to meet those goals are very, very important as well. So having that exposure to the clients is great, but then also there’s a way they can have a monthly statement that does show that consolidated information. I personally am one that doesn’t like to look at my statements, especially in the volatility that we’ve had over the last few months. I got a call from my mother-in-law and she asked me what should I be doing right now? I said, don’t open your statement right now. Don’t look online. Just wait. Don’t make any decisions in a rash environment or a volatile environment. But there are certainly ways that we can provide that information to them all in one location, regardless of where the assets are actually held, which does give clients a lot of comfort that they can see everything in one place.

Jack Sharry: I do think there’s probably a little bit of solace to be had from the fact that I’m a firm believer in set it and forget it and don’t look at it, especially in volatile times. You’re going to do the wrong thing. Just inevitably, it just seemed in my experience over many, many years. But where do see all this leading? As we have consolidated statements, as all this is being pulled together, as you have assets held in different places, and were bought for different reasons at different times. How do you see that coming together? Because it seems to me over time, the financial planning exercise is not just a one and done, but it’s really something that really evolves over time, particularly as people move to retirement and then lots of changes that occur. So talk a little bit about where you see all this leading.

Colleen Bell: I think we’ve got the financial planning aspect of it down, of the traditional assets. Maybe that’s what I would say first and foremost. So we know that we can see the annuities, the 401ks, the retirement plans, the 529s as I’ve mentioned multiple times. Where it’s going though is that we can see the non-traditional assets. And I think that is where we’re looking at what does a digital wallet look for for the next generation. And it may be that we, you know, we have different tranches of clients or some that want to see the non-traditional assets such as crypto currency in their portfolio as well. And some that will be like, don’t ever talk to me about that ever. Like I don’t want to even explore it one way or the other. So just having the optionality to include that as an option will be very important mainly for I think the next generation. I’ve heard and read a lot of different reports that I think over 40 % of next generation, to be undefined, I don’t have the exact quote, have some sort of crypto or digital asset. So if that’s where they have some of their money, how do we make sure that that is a part of what their plan is going forward? And as they acquire, I would say, the assets from the current generation, which is happening right now, we know that that wealth transfer is happening, they can start to see the benefit of having an advisor that sees that full picture as well and can manage it all.

Jack Sharry: So where do you see it all leading? It sounds like you’re on that way if you’re talking about crypto and Bitcoin and all the rest. And then I’ve assumed also another consideration would be alternatives and all that goes along with that. How do you see things playing out over time? What does your crystal ball hold in terms of what our industry looks like over the next five, ten years?

Colleen Bell: Yeah, I think it will definitely change. It’ll look different than it is today. But I do believe that the advisors who are in the business today, as they start to have their succession plans executed, will have fewer advisors. It’s just, it is what it is. I think that as an industry, we have to accept that the number of advisors joining our industry, which is unfortunate, we just have less of them over time. And so the current advisors who are going to be in this for the next decade or two, they will have to work with more clients than the current advisors do today. I anticipate that a current advisor will probably have three to five times the number of clients that a current advisor has in the future. So what does that mean? That means that our technology has to be sharp. It has to make them efficient. Their growth aspect is me making them the most efficient advisor that they possibly can be and not having to do a lot of the work that maybe their admin does today. And that goes into what I mentioned where I spend a lot of my time, which is AI. Artificial intelligence will completely transform the way that our advisors interact with the home office, but also how they interact with the clients as well. So I think that is where we’ve put a lot of our efforts and focus of not just probably five years, even two to three years. What I’ve seen from an AI perspective, it’s changing so quickly. What we thought was possible six months ago, it’s mind blowing what is possible, thinking about what is in the next two months, what we can possibly do and what they can get done. So I think that we have to stay on top of it and make sure we’re transforming very quickly in order to stay ahead of that curve.

Jack Sharry: So as you know, Colleen, no podcast would be complete without the discussion of AI. So I’m glad you brought that up. Talk a little bit about, you mentioned stuff you’re seeing that’s coming quickly now, happening now. Talk a little bit about that. I’m always curious what you see that’s in full sway, what’s happening currently. And then where you see it going down the road and not far out, because I think things are gonna just accelerate, they’re not gonna slow down for sure. So talk a little bit about some of the things you’re seeing and some of the impacts that it has, and then also kind of what’s the next step. We won’t go beyond that. That’s crazy time. So…

Colleen Bell: Yea so I would say what we have seen, I will just say over the last year. So we started having AI roundtables with our advisors in February of last year. And I would be at a table saying, this is what AI is available. It would be somewhat of a bland conversation, I would say, for the most part. And I saw a tipping point, I would say in June and July of last year, where advisors were very excited and coming to me. And that discussion was fourfold of people that were having the conversation, people who had tried it out, and it really was the generative AI. And how do we have savings from meeting notes? How do we have AI listen to what we’re talking about and create the follow-up with our clients and send the email to the client and making sure that the next time I met them, that that meeting was effective and took into account everything that we talked about the last time. So that’s just documentation, really. At the end of the day, that’s just us becoming more efficient at documentation. And what I see mostly is informational, which is more of the Gen-AI. Get all the information, distill it into something that is useful for someone to use, which is what ChatGPT and other Gen-AI does. Where it is going and where I see the huge benefit to financial services is the agentic AI. And that is where you go from receiving information or taking information to taking action. So those agents, AI agents is what you hear, are actually taking action rather than just taking the information and giving it to you. They can then take that next step and send the email out to someone and/or enter the information automatically from what they see on the screen. And that’s what we’re starting to experience right now because you can see the AI thinking. You go onto the screen, it sees what’s on the screen and it can take all your policy procedures that you have outlined, distill them into what action then they should take on that screen so that it can essentially replace a lot of the manual, non-value added work that our teams do today. So then I can have my teams focus on more of the benefits and the proactive work with our advisors going forward.

Jack Sharry: And what’s the adoption on what you’re just describing? How is that coming along in terms of advisor embracing the stuff?

Colleen Bell: Well so, from an adoption perspective, I think the last time I heard, we had 400 to 500 of our almost 4,000 advisors that had signed up for more of that informational meeting, note-taking AI, and they love it. I mean, they’re saving 10 hours a week in some of the work that they’re doing there. We are just starting to experiment with this agentic AI. So I will tell you in maybe three or four months how that is going, but I’m very excited and optimistic about it.

Jack Sharry: And how are you using it internally? So it’s one thing for the advisor. I imagine there’s some processes internally that you’re utilizing this kind of capability.

Colleen Bell: Absolutely. Again, it’s the repetitive work. So anything that we can automate, you can take information and take the next step. Those are the types of things that we have done. We’ve done that actually even before AI was a huge topic of conversation, more through the robotic process automation. RPA is what we have called it. So taking anything that if I’m going to go to a spreadsheet and then take that information and enter it and do something else, we have automated a lot of those things going forward. It’s just making it less onerous of having to step by step program, what that needs to do is where we’ll see a big change with agentic AI. But I think overall our advisors, we’ll have early adopters, which is we’ve already had them. And then this year, even on our conversations, the people who were kind of sitting back and saying, maybe I need to try that out. The other advisors are convincing them that they need to start to do this, because I think at the end of the day, AI is never going to replace what us, we as humans, our advisors do. It’s those advisors that don’t adopt it though, they will be left behind because they’re not taking the next step to become efficient and effective, which will affect their growth in long run.

Jack Sharry: So we’ve covered a lot of ground. What haven’t I asked you that you might want to share? Is there anything left over? think we’ve covered just about everything least I had on my agenda. But anything you’d like to share with the audience?

Colleen Bell: Yeah, I mean, I think we talked a lot about technology. Obviously, that’s a passion of mine. But I think maybe going back to where we started, it’s also about the human interactions, the things that are important to the advisors and letting them know that you really truly do care about them as people. You care about their growth. You care about their success and just the little things in life that really truly make a difference in these interactions and relationships as well.

Jack Sharry: So what do you do about that in terms of your, in your role where you’re really impacting lots of different parts of the organization? How do you impact that? That’s, in my mind, that’s the most important. It’s that human interaction. So what do you do about that?

Colleen Bell: It’s a hot topic because I’ve seen the book all over the place. I actually saw him speak, Will Guidara, recently, the author of Unreasonable Hospitality. And it is such an awesome book because you do realize it’s the little things that you can do for people that don’t actually cost a lot of money. Sending them an ornament for someone after they have passed away so they can always have them to remember them by. Or recognizing the milestone that they have with something that is important to them. Getting the dog leash for someone you heard that just had a new dog and they’re having trouble getting them potty trained. Those are the little things that make a difference and they build the relationships as we go forward. So it’s having the mentality and the mindset and the empowerment probably more than anything for our teams to take those actions that we’ve really instilled in our team.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, I recently moved to a new advisor team and just the concierge level of service is remarkable. And for me, my least favorite thing is what I call administrivia. I just am not good with that. Fortunately, my wife is better than I, so at least one of us is on top of it. But it’s the administrivia that, frankly, that one of the members of the team is really good at and stays on top of and sort of anticipates things. It’s that. It’s just so we don’t make mistakes or we are on top of what we need to be on top of. And, personally, find that that level of attention to details is critical.

Colleen Bell: Yeah, and it is the follow-up. It’s the proactive approach. So if I can have my team from a staffing perspective, they do less of the day-to-day, I’m going to enter this information. They go into the proactive, I recognize, Jack, that you haven’t filled this out, or I need this information. Can I contact your wife to get this information? And those are the little things that we can do in order to make sure that we’re making your lives easier.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, I think it makes all the difference. So time to wrap up. A couple more questions for you. Any key takeaways you want to share with our audience in terms of, you’ve covered a lot, but any key areas you want to make sure our audience knows about?

Colleen Bell: Yeah, I think just staying ahead. So I think that’s the one thing that we need to do from an innovation perspective. The financial industry overall has always been a little behind. So any little things that we can do to make sure that we’re taking a few steps to stay ahead of where we’re going and keeping up with, I would say, the fintech, keeping up with what we see overall, what’s happening from a technology perspective is going to have a huge impact. So those that are afraid of technology or maybe a little reticent to start to try it out, just try it. Experiment and see what happens because I think that people will be excited about the results.

Jack Sharry: Yep, yep, that’s great. One last question, always my favorite. What do you do outside of work when others might say, she does what? Anything that you do outside of work that you’re passionate about, excited about, people might find to be interesting or surprising?

Colleen Bell: Sure, so I’m actually a pretty boring person. I really am. I’ve got three kids at home.

Jack Sharry: That’ll keep you busy.

Colleen Bell: Yeah. I travel an awful lot. So I spend a lot of time traveling and/or at other events. But I think it actually won’t be surprise to my team members. But I read avidly. I’m on the, I probably order a book from Amazon a week, sometimes two or three. So I do believe that good leaders are readers and readers are leaders. As someone just told me recently, because I overwhelmed them with my book lists, but I think that is how we, you know, it’s multiple different things. It’s not just about business. It’s about multiple ways that people interact and, you know, history as an example is another thing you can learn from. So just taking it all in and trying to apply that to life is what I certainly am passionate about.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. Any favorites recent or current favorites that you’d recommend?

Colleen Bell: Yeah, I’ve already talked about Unreasonable Hospitality. This one book, which is why agentic AI is on top of mind, there is a book that I’m reading right now on that as well. And it is… The Coming Wave was another one that I was reading about AI that is probably the most disturbing book that I have read recently, only because it’s more the geopolitical aspect of what will happen with it. But just kind of know what you’re walking into. I try to learn what it is and prepare our teams and our advisors for that going forward.

Jack Sharry: So I’m gonna make a couple of suggestions if I may, just based on what I just heard of stuff that you might enjoy. Are you familiar with David Brooks? He’s a New York Times columnist.

Colleen Bell: Yes, I am. Yes.

Jack Sharry: I’m actually looking it up because I can never get the title right. How to Know a Person?

Colleen Bell: Oh, I have not read that.

Jack Sharry: I highly recommend it. It’s The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. I highly recommend it.

Colleen Bell: I would love that.

Jack Sharry: I’m a big fan of that. Then another, are you familiar with Frances Frei?

Colleen Bell: Yes.

Jack Sharry: Harvard Business School professor. She’s got a couple of books, but also for our audience, I’ve promoted this before, I’ll promote it again. She’s got a great podcast and she has a great TED Talk, which is if you’re going to want to check out Francis Frei, you may want to check out the TED Talk because it’s 20 minutes of good stuff and talks a lot about trust and how to win trust in our business. That’s pretty important.

Colleen Bell: Those are great recommendations. Thank you.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, a couple back at you. So this has been great, Colleen. Thanks so much. I really enjoyed our conversation. You are clearly on top of your game. Congratulations for all the good work you’re doing at Cambridge. And as to our audience, thank you for tuning in as you do. If you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we’re doing here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check us out on our dedicated website, wealthtechondeck.com. All of our episodes, including Colleen’s, an upcoming episode down the road here. You can find it there along with blogs and curated content from many of the folks around the industry. Colleen, thanks. This was really enjoyable. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you very much.

Colleen Bell: Thank you, Jack.