Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions have become an important component for financial companies at every stage of tracking customer’s journeys from client acquisition to retention. CRM for financial advisors offers financial firms such as commercial banks, loan advisors, stockbrokers, investment advisors, insurance companies, etc. a centralized base to establish, maintain, and strengthen the relationships with their customers.
Just like with every other business, customers are the most important element of financial companies, and maintaining strong and long-lasting relationships is important for the success of any financial firm. Financial advisors and institutions use CRM solutions for client-prospecting activities, outreach campaigns, managing documentation, scheduling meetings, analyzing customer data, maintaining sales pipeline, performing know your customer (KYC) verification, and more.
CRM for financial services is powered by cutting-edge technology to help financial service firms to establish strong customer relationships using structured communications, analyzing data to get key insights on customers and prospects, workflow automation, lead generation and conversion, and increasing the profitability of the company.
Types Of CRM Systems
CRM systems can vary in some aspects and thus be more suitable for one company than another, depending on the needs and focus of the business. There are three types of CRM systems.
Collaborative CRM Systems
The primary feature of a collaborative CRM is to integrate the marketing team, sales reps, and the customer support agents of the organization. Collaborative CRM systems are the best for big financial institutions such as insurance companies, and banks because they deal with a lot of different departments each having separate teams. Usually in bigger organizations, there is a huge gap between different departments like marketing, sales, and customer relations due to different teams, structures, goals, and activities. The customers are the only thing in common between all these departments. Collaborative CRM for financial services provides a way to share information across different departments using real-time data to work together efficiently.
Collaborative CRM systems allow all the departments to access all the updated data of different departments. This ensures a seamless customer interaction as the customer agent has all the data related to the customers who interacted before with the marketing or sales team. This brings clarity and clears confusion between the customer and the organization.
Operational CRM Systems
An operational CRM system smoothes a company’s processes for customer relationships. Operational CRM in banking and financial services offers tools that help to understand the whole customer journey by simplifying it into different stages, from the moment of the first interaction of the customer to the point where the lead becomes your customer. If you are a loan advisor, insurance company, investment advisor, and another financial services provider dealing with significantly longer customer journeys than other businesses, operational CRM systems can be a great option to manage customer relationships.
Operational CRM for financial advisors offers automation features that enable you to bring efficiency to the whole human resource management. It helps to save time on tedious work and allows you to invest your time into more creative aspects of the customer acquisition and retention process.
Analytical CRM Systems
The key feature of analytical CRM systems is to help you analyze the customer data to obtain insights. Businesses in today’s world work with large amounts of data and analytical CRM systems help you to analyze these data and provide you insights that allow you to make better-informed business decisions. Analytical CRM systems offer reports, visualization dashboards, and insights to understand customer behavior as well as all the other relevant data based on your business needs. With the help of this data, you can improve customer experience, increase sales and also improve after-sale services, depending on the needs of the customer.
Analytical CRM for financial services can be quite useful for financial advisors because the finance niche includes a vast range of numerical data such as customer spends, past investments, savings, credit scores and so much more.
Key Features of CRM Solutions for Financial Advisors
Reporting and Analytics
Just like with every other business, data analytics is paramount for financial advisors to make critical data-driven business decisions. CRM for financial services offers numerous reports and insights on customers such as acquisition, behavior, retention, etc. that are used to analyze the performance of the complete customer journey. Analytical CRM solutions also allow you to create your own custom reports using the relevant data based on your business needs.
Activity Tracking
Activity tracking allows you to manage the day-to-day activity of your firm. CRM for finance brokers and advisors allows you to create action items that serve as a to-do list. It allows you to manage all the activities that are planned, in progress or completed. Generally, financial brokers and advisors have a longer customer journey with many contact points between the company and customers. The activity tracking feature allows managers to check if no steps are missed and all the activities are completed on time. It also offers flexibility to add custom steps based on specific requirements from customers or the company’s side. It also makes it easier to delegate specific tasks to agents.
Workflow Automation
Workflow automation allows you to streamline the customer relationship management processes from initiation to completion. In most financial advisors and broking firms, these customer relationship management workflows can be quite complex, which may include a lengthy process to get a client from start to finish. CRM solutions for financial advisors allow you to streamline your workflow with an option to customize each step based on certain needs and requirements.
The CRM systems can automatically create a customer’s profile, add necessary tags that can be used for audience segmentation, create a list of pre-determined tasks as well as automatically schedule calls based on the agent’s availability. With the help of CRM, you can automate the process of task tracking, service monitor, or client segmentation. This gives you the possibility to outline your services and customize the services for individual clients.
Financial services CRM also allows you to track the action items of all the customers and automatically notify the agent about a scheduled call, important reminders, due dates, etc.
In-Built Calling and Outreaching
Financial advisors generally have to contact the customers several times, whether it’s about selling a service or providing it. Many CRM solutions for financial advisors offer in-built calling and outreaching features to avoid unnecessary time wastage by managing and operating separate software to contact the customers. The CRM system allows you to email or call your customers directly and also has a call recording and history feature and maintains all the records of the contact with the customers.
Integration with 3rd Party Products
Financial advisors use various software to operate and facilitate the services offered by the firm. CRM Systems require all the data that are stored within these softwares in order to work with maximum efficiency. CRM for finance brokers and advisors allows you to integrate the data with 3rd party products and software that can save a huge amount of time on lengthy work such as manually updating information in the CRM system.
Best CRM Softwares for Financial Services in 2021
Salesforce
Salesforce is a leading CRM solution for financial advisors that helps you create a personalized experience for your customers. It integrates the sales, marketing, and customer care channels to increase the performance of an organization. It allows agents to call customers directly and also tracks their performance.
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a CRM solution that provides financial service companies with a centralized solution to manage customer relationships and align their data, tasks, and teams accordingly. It is one of the leading collaborative CRM solutions for any size and type of business.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 allows 3rd party applications that solve specific business’ customer relationship management needs. The 3rd party applications are custom-designed for different departments such as sales, marketing, customer service, etc. The applications can also be designed to serve certain types, structures, and requirements of any business including financial service companies.
DebtPayPro
DebyPayPro is a financial service CRM especially used for debt settlement including student loan consolidation and credit repair. It also offers services like debt collection, debt splitting, and distribution of payment flow. It also helps your employees to collaborate efficiently. But in some aspects, it can still prove to be quite limited.
Redtail Technology CRM
Redtail Technology CRM is another great CRM solution for financial advisors that offer features like portfolio management, financial planning, and risk tool assessment. The unique “seminar building” feature allows you to improve customer’s experience effectively. You can also use your mobile device to operate Redtail technology CRM using the Android and iOS mobile app.
Junxure
Junxure is a financial service CRM that includes security features to protect and store your financial data safely. It collaborates with many tech providers and portfolio management firms like SCHWAB OpenView Gateway and Wealthscape. Junxure analyzes the data to create actionable reports and presents it to the client. You can also customize your email templates, workflows, and advanced search criteria. Junxure is one of the leading analytical CRM solutions for financial advisors.
Choosing the Right CRM Solution for Financial Services
A financial CRM helps you to maximize customer experience throughout the client’s journey. Financial service CRM offers exclusive features that are most suitable for financial advisors, banking, investment and brokerage firms, etc. And it allows you to manage the client relationships effectively using the right data and insights required to understand customer behavior.
Every CRM for financial service offers basic features like contact management, omnichannel communication, scheduling, activity tracking, and analytics. But, each CRM solution has its own benefits and unique features that might be suitable for your financial firm.
Before choosing your CRM system, you should consider your business needs, the types of services you offer, the length of the customer’s journey, and the size of your firm. You may also look into specific features such as the client’s data that you may need, analytics and reporting features for data-driven decisions, task delegation, and monitoring, etc.
We at OMI will be happy to consult your financial services business on choosing CRM to fit your requirements. CRM specialists at OMI have vast experience implementing, customizing, and administering Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM systems for banks, loan advisors, insurance companies, stockbrokers, and other financial organizations, as well as creating custom solutions and integrations for CRM. Reach out to us for a consultation.