Somewhere in there is a graveyard full of dead lead production and prospecting equipment for consultants.
Nevertheless, there is always a demand for such equipment; And where there is demand and money available, entrepreneurs will be born.
Most recently, of interest was the highly sophisticated penetration prospecting and relationship intelligence platform Aidentified, which has since added additional data sets to its offering.
On Thursday, IndiFin, another provider, announced a promising new feature called the Investor Experience Platform that could, for the time being, give itself an edge in the advisory lead gen and prospecting business: advisor ratings and reviews.
Referring to the success of ratings and reviews on home rental startups, Akshay Singh, Founder, IndiFin, said, “What we have seen is that you see people living in strangers’ homes, riding in strangers’ cars. Can inspire—if bad actors are kept out.” Like AirBnB and Vrbo and ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft.
“The most important thing we do is enable financial advisors to collect feedback from existing clients, and this is the most important difference from what we’ve done in the past,” he said.
Singh noted that the platform, which has been in beta for some time, allows its developers to serve themselves well like client consultants by analyzing client survey data, which is part of the platform’s signup process. There are currently over 100 advisors with reviews on the platform and hundreds more in the pipeline.
Singh said, “The other important part of the feedback is that we are able to use the data from the review section and feed it to the consumer and get a primary perspective of what clients think about advisors – a first. never been done.”
The startup also announced a $2.2 million seed round led by VC firm Leo Capital and investments from several other giants in the financial services industry.
For years, advisor testimonials were verbatim, but with the implementation in May 2021 of the SEC’s so-called advertising rule, financial advisors gained new marketing options that allowed them to solicit customer reviews and recommendations.
The new Investor Experience platform provides a place to live for such reviews and recommendations.
It was created to make it easy for consultants to quickly and easily create their own profiles, which, in turn, reflect their businesses and any expertise.
Using Platform Advisors can request, respond, maintain and share reviews from existing clients in a minute and compliant manner.
While Indyfin first launched in February 2020, its efforts have focused on finding pre-qualified leads for advisors and charging fees only after becoming a client (which remains the case).
Since the advertising rules came into force, IndiFin has been scrutinized by experienced investment advisory attorneys familiar with the SEC and state regulations. The new platform has been designed with relevant provisions to make it easier for advisors to remain compliant.
According to Singh, a key aspect of IndiFin is that not every financial advisor can connect to the platform. Advisors will be required to go through a vetting process and, once accepted, share their client contact information with IndiFin.
Clients are then contacted and asked to conduct a “feedback survey” on behalf of their advisor, which includes 25 data points from each client, depending on the number of advisory services they use. .
The survey ranges from individual questions that include how far they are from their profession, from retirement to household income threshold, and then questions focused on advisors.
Those latter questions include topics such as how the advisor formulates their advice around a client’s profession and the areas of focus of the advisor that the client finds most helpful, as well as specific areas and ratings for the advisor as a whole. .
When asked how reviews are curated and whether negative reviews can be removed, Singh did not hesitate to respond.
“We will not review unless there is hate speech, or if something is not right,” he said.
Each review currently lists the advisor’s location, overall rating, AUM, number of families serving, mentors and how long they have been on the platform.
According to Singh, advisors are charged a 25-basis point fee after reaching a client through the platform, following a similar methodology to custodian referral programs.
The Indefin team consists of 15 employees, most of whom are headquartered in Dallas, but have a few developers in India. Bootstrapped to this seed capital, Singh said he wants to put resources toward new hires, development and marketing.
