AI + CRM + Financial Advisors: Part II
There are only two ways this works.
*FinMate AI is a sponsor of this newsletter, but I’m not putting their logo up here because, well, you’ll see:
Happy Saturday!
AI may be the most exciting topic in AdvisorTech.
Here’s some proof:
Of all the advisortech demos I did while running ProAdvisorSuite, the FinMate AI one has 10X the views of the next best one:
Of all my posts on Substack, similar story. More even than the 100 Most Powerful People in Financial Advice, and that one was super popular!
So I’m going to see if I can strike lightning twice and make the sequel even better than the original.
Here goes:
Only 2 types of AI notetakers will survive
First, let’s start by reviewing the landscape:
Shout-out to Ben Olsen of Beemo Automation for making a map:
Today, I’m going to focus on the ones exclusively for advisors. Here’s a list ranked by LinkedIn follower count of course - the only metric that matters! not :)
*there are others I’m sure, some embedded within larger enterprise solutions
Actually, this might be a more useful list:
So who’s burning the most VC money? 💸
🏆Jump I think gets the prize for this - LinkedIn Ads, conferences, employees… I think in many ways they’re leading the pack here. Probably also in market share - though I don’t have any solid numbers on that.
Ok, so what’s there to know…
#1
I think long-term, the CRM will have an AI notetaker built in and it will be integral to the data-gathering process as I discussed in my previous post.
Hopefully, Advyzon and Wealthbox will lead the way in this and build it right into the platform, but if not, there will be new CRMs that come onto the scene that have AI at the core.
Spaces is the main one here that comes to mind, although they have a long way to go.
But in my chats with some of these founders, they don’t want to take the time it takes to build a CRM, well because you can throw an AI notetaker together in a couple weeks and take it to market.
Yes, but that also means the moat is incredibly small which is why there are so many all at once!
It will take a while I think before the CRMs have this built in.
There are tools like Vega Minds, YourStake that are a “light CRM” of sorts. They are using their AI notetaker to gather data and building out client and household records with it. I don’t think this will take the market by storm though.
The real CRMs have quite a foothold and a giant moat.
Which leads me to the 2nd kind of AI Notetaker that will succeed.
#2
The AI notetakers that are actually good at taking notes!!! Novel, I know.
There are some notetakers I’ve seen that are pretty bad at it - they can’t tell who is the advisor and who is the client, and well… those summaries can be quite confusing. And you don’t want your ops team taking action on notes that are inaccurate.
And that leads me to the main things to look for here:
1️⃣ Accuracy!!!
Yes, it needs to do a near-perfect job at identifying speakers, getting the words spoken right, identifying the action items.
XYPN did a comparison in mid-2024 and here was their accuracy winner:
I’d love to see another accuracy test done comparing all the solutions I listed, we’ll have to see if anyone takes that on.
2️⃣ Meeting type templates
Very closely related to accuracy is the ability to use templates for meeting types.
Advisors have a pretty standard set of meetings:
Introductory Call
Discovery Call
Plan Presentation
Annual Review
I think the best AI notetakers will have customizable templates around these meeting types and possibly the ability to make custom meeting types as well. And editing these templates needs to be natively built into the tech - not a Google doc they send you to edit!
If your meetings follow a pretty standard flow, using a template that understands that also helps with accuracy of the action items.
Now, it’s time to re-visit the unicorn:
No, not that unicorn, this one!!
I wrote a post about the AdvisorTech unicorns and what it takes to be one.
An AdvisorTech unicorn solves a simple problem in a specific way.
And doesn’t get distracted trying to do lots of other things.
The 2nd type of AI notetaker I think will succeed is the one that is the best at taking accurate notes, and generating accurate action items.
🥇The Best-In-Class AI Notetaker.
This is the AI Notetaker you should use until the CRMs have it built in.
If anyone knows of any other research besides what XYPN did on which of these are the most accurate, please let me know!
This is also Chapter 26 in my book: “The Ultimate AdvisorTech Stack for 2025” to be released Feb. 20th.
Until next time,
Joe