FintekNews is pleased to publish the third in our new series – #FintechSavvy. The series has a two-fold purpose: 1) To feature ADVISORS who are successfully using financial technology in their practices and profiting from it, and 2) To feature FINTECHS who are helping advisors grow their practices with their unique product offerings.
This week, we’d like to introduce you to Nick Richtsmeier, Chief Operating Officer, TrilogyCapital & Chief Innovation Officer at sister firm Trilogy Financial. Established in 1999, Trilogy Financial is a privately held financial planning firm based in Huntington Beach, California with nearly $3 billion in assets under management and 10 offices nationwide. Trilogy is committed to providing innovative perspectives and tailored planning to help clients achieve financial independence wherever their story takes them.
NAME:
Nick RichtsmeierTITLE:
Chief Operating Officer, TrilogyCapital, Chief Innovation Officer, Trilogy FinancialCOMPANY:
Trilogy Financial (our independent RIA is called TrilogyCapital)WEB ADDRESS:
www.trilogyfs.com1) What services does your wealth management firm offer & what is your AUM (if you wish to share the latter)?
We offer comprehensive wealth management and financial planning tools for general middle market and upper middle market clients who wish to align their investment and insurance solutions with their most closely held goals and aspirations. The firm has nearly $3 billion in client assets.
2) What was the personal motivation for you to join (or launch) your firm? Please share some details if you wish, such as the age of the firm, partner info, location/s, investing emphasis, etc.
Trilogy started in 1999 with a passion for bringing a new generation of advisors into the business and servicing a broader range of clients, too often forgotten by the larger financial services industry, with full financial planning services. I have a deep passion for behavioral finance-based coaching, where we help clients reach for their long-term financial objectives with better information, objective financial coaching and a deep empathic understanding of the personal life circumstances that consistently undermine American’s financial success. I joined Trilogy to help humanize the work of financial advice. I’ve invested my energy in exploring the intersection between fintech and finserv, and how AI’s robust services can release financial advisors’ emotional intelligence and allow them to connect with clients more humanly and more productively.
3) What is the average age/gender/financial demos/social composition/geographical location of your client base?
Most of our clients are between the ages of 35 and 65, have investible assets between $100,000 and $2 million and are based near one of our branch offices: Phoenix, Denver, Boston, Orange County, California, San Diego and Los Angeles.
4) What financial technology tools/services do you currently use in your practice?
We use Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, Orion, DocuSign, Riskalyze and eMoney.
5) Do you feel the fintech tools/services you use give you any sort of competiive advantage over other advisors and/or do they help you retain clients or win new business more easily? If so, how?
Yes, absolutely. The more we automate the issues that AI is going to do more effectively than humans (places where technicality, data management, or complex mathematics are involved), the more we liberate our advisors to refocus on the human work of empathy, behavioral coaching and goal refinement.
6) How have your clients reacted to the fintech that your firm uses?
Very positively.
7) Have your clients requested that you add any other financial technology offerings that you are not presently providing? Do you anticipate adding any new fintech offerings in the next year?
Not in any great amount.
8) Finally, how do you think fintech will impact advisors in general, and your practice specifically, in the future?
Fintech will continue to force advisors to refine their value proposition to focus on services that provide empthy and and human connection. As fintechs continue to commodotize and shrink the margins of what historically are considered to be advisor functions, the partnership between fintech and finserv will need to accelerate in order to humanize the the raw edges of fintech and to add value to the ineffeciences of traditional finserv.