By Vasyl Soloshchuk/ Insart

Site: getwela.com
Founded: 2008
Value proposition: Provider of a digital assistant for RIAs utilizing artificial intelligence and messaging to deliver advanced user experience
The executive team: Matt Reiner, Cofounder and CEO (www.mattreiner.com) Mitch Reiner, Cofounder Wes Moss, Cofounder Eddie Goepp, COO Hesom Parhizkar, CTO

Today, big buzzwords such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are appearing in wealth management increasingly often. Wela is one of the companies that are delivering AI in a brand-new way. While competitors promise to boost their strategies exclusively with AI, Wela empowered their communication module to make the user experience unique. For details about the implementation, I talked with Matt Reiner (CEO) and Hesom Parhizkar (CTO), who know all the ins and outs of Wela.

Matt grew up in a financial advisory family, with his dad and brother in traditional wealth management. With his brother, Mitch, they started Wela about nine years ago. Four years later, they started the technology division of it, which soon evolved into an enterprise solution. Their differentiator is a communications platform called Benjamin that enables RIAs to have improved external communication beyond the client portal via text messaging. Before that, ten years ago, he joined Capital Investment Advisors, another wealth-management company, as a partner.

Hesom also has a considerable wealth-management track record. He has been in the technology industry for almost 20 years, the last 10 of which he has been building FinTech solutions. In particular, he spent nine years at eVestment, where he went all the way from software developer to VP of Technology. He joined Wela approximately two and a half years ago and is now focused on implementing innovation into the existing platform.

In our interview, we discussed Wela and Benjamin in detail, along with the company’s upcoming releases, and talked a lot about the prospects of AI and messaging in WealthTech practices.

An AI efficiency tool that talks human language

The basic idea underlying Benjamin is to help create more profitable advisors while integrating with different tools. These include calendars, messaging services, emails, Google services, and eMoney, as well as financial planning tools, CRM, custodians, etc. The platform should contain everything to ensure smooth workflow and, at the same time, easy, intuitive management of each aspect.

Matt: “Making more profitable advisors means being more efficient with communication and process management, and that’s what Benjamin helps with. Streamlining the whole process, from getting the paperwork to and back from the client, getting it to the custodian, following up with the client, creating transparency—that’s a niche process within a financial advisor relationship that Benjamin helps to solve.”

Wela screenshot

Studies have shown that people respond to text messaging 90% more than emails. And with millennials these days wanting to stay up to date with everything that’s going on, it makes push notification and chatbots powerful tools for client interaction.

Hesom: “Instead of sending a big email or a blog article, we could send a message via Facebook. ‘Do you agree with this, yes or no?’ You can have a conversation. This is very powerful.”

Wela screenshot

Wela is focused on AI within the natural language processing area to help them understand the intentions of different messages, spur conversations, and reduce questions going to the end advisor. It also includes sentiment analysis to help advisors understand how upset or happy their client is so that they can interact with them in the appropriate way. This enables clients to get more answers out of Benjamin, as opposed to having to call the office or advisors.

Hesom: “If, right now, an advisor could do 100 households and has an operation’s assistant, can we get them to 200 households without having to hire anyone? That’s the [reason] why they should use Benjamin.”

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