Speaker 1: Alicia, thank you so much for doing this.

Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Jamie.

Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about, digital transformation and where institutions and investors are along their route to sort of full digitalization, should we say. How are institutions finding out more about what their clients and investors want?

Speaker 2: Data is king right now. If there's much more that you can understand about a consumer, how they're interacting with you, with your brand, with your employees, with financial advisors, that's really setting the stage for how do you want to continue engagement with with our clients. And it's not just about thinking about wealth management. We need to think more broadly. There's, you know, our clients are walking around with a computer in their phone with their mobile devices, and they're interacting with brands in lots of different ways. So how from a wealth management perspective, can we take a look at some of those experiences, some of those that might reduce friction, give customers more accountability, and give them more empowerment in managing their everyday finances? Those are the areas where firms are now paying more attention. How do I personalize those experiences? How do I make sure that my customer is getting the best out of every engagement that they have with us, the brand, as well as with their advisors?

Speaker 1: And really, what's driving the sort of product innovation? Is it client demand? They want to see more, you know, offers on the table or is it or is it digitalization itself? It's like there are so many more things we can do now. We're able to offer more.

Speaker 2: It's a it's a little bit of both. For me, the most important piece is what am I hearing from my customer base? What what are the expectations? And as we look at the changing face of the investor changing face of the consumer, what is the expectation going to be for them, not just today, but in five, ten years? You also then have a younger workforce coming into play, and they want to do more exciting things. They want to understand emerging technologies, they want to understand how they can continuously improve. And that dynamic of the two together. Understanding where your investors and your consumers are, understanding where your employees want to be just to be continue to be engaged. And that coming together is really what's driving a lot of the strategies across the industry.

Speaker 1: James, absolute pleasure to meet you.

Speaker 2: Nice to meet you too. Great to be here.

Speaker 1: James, let's talk a little bit about today and look into the future. You guys have brought Reg up front and center in terms of product development. And the technology you have is is right at the forefront. What are you most excited about in terms of product offering to your clients, and what are the real trends that you're seeing today?

Speaker 2: I think overall, you know, what we're really excited about at Broadridge is some of our new technology that helps us connect different elements of the value chain together. So, you know, typically what we've seen over the last ten years has been firms really focused, focused tech firms really focused on delivering a very efficient value added point solution. But that point solution doesn't always work very well within the broader ecosystem of wealth management. And that's where, you know, we've made some recent investments and have some new tech coming to market that really helps both on the user interface side of things as well as on the service side of things. Hold these things together and integrate these applications in meaningful ways. That's going to unlock productivity for advisors. And you know, what's really, important about that is when these these tasks are so burdensome for advisors, to undertake today, switching between applications. Right. Kind of swiveling the chair around and looking at all the different things that they have to do. Yeah. It, it it discourages them from actually going out and doing these things more frequently. And so, you know, like let you take the example of a financial plan. If your financial planning software is really integrated with your proposal generation software, which is really integrated with your reporting software and your ability to execute and rebalance on that plan. Well, then maybe, you know, I might offer a number of plans to my clients based on their specific objectives for certain, you know, elements of their portfolio rather than just a single financial plan. So I think we're really excited about how bringing the technology together can unlock that productivity and increase advisor adoption and usage of the technology. There are already great technology that's out there today.

Speaker 1: Hey, Donna, thank you for doing this.

Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Jamie.

Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about digital transformation and where institutions and investors are along the along their route to sort of full digitalization, shall we say. So let's talk about the tools that are at the fingertips of savers now with digitalization. Is it there's more of a product offering between investments that they're open to? Is it different asset classes? Is now real estate an option for people who maybe can't afford to buy a house but can get exposure to it?

Speaker 2: Investors can do some of their own investing through a robo advisor type toolset where they're picking their own investments through a model portfolio. It's all automated. They can manage it themselves, quite frankly, and then they can see how their portfolios growing over the X period of time where now an advisor can offer that type of capability. But also in relation to also providing advice on more complex situations, more complex investment decisions and actually helping them with that whole lifecycle management as they go through their life cycle.

Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about that lifecycle for a second. How personal is this relationship now getting? I mean, what do they want to know about me?

Speaker 2: Quite frankly, they want to know everything about you. An advisor really is around that relationship, not only with you, but your your partner or your family. And it's about a deep understanding of that relationship. They want to ensure that they're helping you make the right decisions. And in order to do that, using tools like financial planning tools, sending out digital marketing, being able to see what interests you have, all helped them make that educated decision and help with you with your decisions moving forward and using financial planning tools, sending out information and getting feedback from you in a digitized manner allows the advisors to easily process that information either themselves or using A.I. tools. So then they know and can understand how best to engage with you and build that relationship, build your confidence and ensure that you're getting ready for a good retirement in the future.

Speaker 1: So what are the big trends you're seeing now? Let's talk about the future of of wealth.

Speaker 2: Big trends are the ability to provide tools, investments to the affluent investor that typically in the past, the high net worth or mass affluent was only only had access to. And then when we look at A.I. and the ability to process large amounts of information, the ability to provide personalization, how an investor wants to be contacted, how you want to be discussed on your portfolios, etc. That's really becoming key to an advisor on how they service you.