SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - February 19, 2015) - Hearsay Social, the leading technology provider for the financial services industry, today unveiled the 'Predictive Social Suite' for financial advisors and insurance agents. Currently, over 3 million advisors and agents globally increasingly face the onslaught of "robo-advice" websites and disruptive consumer technologies that threaten their ability to stay relevant and connected to clients, especially Millennials. Hearsay Social provides the Predictive Social Suite to enable these relationship managers to identify multi-channel client buying signals and share the right information at the right time, increasing the quality and quantity of client relationships while maintaining compliance with policy and regulations.
"The changing face of the consumer means advisors will need to operate differently," said Eileen McDonnell, Chairman, President & CEO of Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company. "Hearsay Social's Predictive Social Suite is precisely the set of technologies advisors need to stay relevant and productive with today's digital and socially savvy clients."
At the forefront of the new Predictive Social Suite is Hearsay Sites, a responsive, mobile-first website solution for advisors and agents. With Hearsay Sites, advisors and agents now have the ability to easily post tailored content to their websites in real-time from the same unified Hearsay Social dashboard they currently use to manage social media engagement. The goal is to provide intelligent web analytics that notify advisors of website visitors and of which products or services are likely of interest based on how a client engages with content on the site. In addition, Hearsay Sites comes with built-in search engine optimization (SEO) and profile management integrated with enterprise compliance.
"The 100,000+ advisors already enabled by Hearsay Social's flagship social media solution informed us that social is essential, but the social channel alone is not enough to keep pace with today's multi-channel customer," said Clara Shih, CEO and founder of Hearsay Social. "We will continue to double-down on our core social offering while expanding to offer a complete suite of technologies to help relationship managers compete and win against the onslaught of disruptive technologies."
As social, mobile, and web become ubiquitous, consumers increasingly rely on these digital engagement channels to discover and make buying decisions regarding financial products and services. Over 40% of high-net worth individuals under the age of 40 cite social media as important for accessing information on financial products or services [Source]. Meanwhile, according to Corporate Insight, the top 11 robo-advice websites have amassed nearly $20 billion in assets as of early December, growing 65% in the six months preceding. More than ever, today's financial relationship managers need new technology to engage, serve, and keep pace with their multi-channel customers.
"In order to deliver a seamless and integrated client experience, financial firms must continue to find ways to use the latest technologies to enhance relationships," said John Taft, CEO of RBC Wealth Management U.S. "It's about enabling our financial advisors to reach clients where they're at -- which is in the digital space."
The Predictive Social Suite for advisors and agents, which features the new Hearsay Sites application, includes the following key benefits:
> Predictive insights to know when to reach out: Financial professionals don't have the time or domain expertise to run web analytics. With the Predictive Social Suite, advisors get multi-channel client signal alerts that identify when clients are sharing buying signals so that advisors don't have to weed through analytics or social feeds for the best opportunities. For example, an advisor might get alerted if a client is researching estate planning on his/her site, and the advisor may also see a Social Signal indicating that this prospect is expecting a child. These cross-channel insights enable advisors to reach out in a timely manner with highly targeted messages.
> Easily shareable, personalized and engaging content: With Hearsay Sites, advisors and agents do not need expertise in digital marketing, search engine optimization, or responsive mobile website design in order to incorporate all of these important best practices. With a few clicks, advisors can select suggested posts from the Hearsay Social Content Library or compose their own original content and publish to their individual websites and social networks, building their personal brand online. Hearsay Sites allows advisors and agents to stay top of mind and demonstrate thought leadership with the same simple publishing process they use for social media.
> Unparalleled brand reach and consistency: Hearsay Sites makes it easy for firms to give advisors access to the latest mobile-optimized templates, logos, and approved design elements to ensure they are effectively representing the brand while adhering to company standards. Firms can rest assured they will have brand consistency throughout the web across their regional advisor sites and that employees and advisors will be brand ambassadors rather than brand detractors.
> Time savings through a unified dashboard: With the Predictive Social Suite, advisors can manage their individual, tailored Hearsay Sites from within the Hearsay Social dashboard, providing a unified, familiar and intuitive interface to manage all of their digital touchpoints with clients. Plus, advisors never have to worry about design or complex management of their Hearsay Sites, so they can spend less time being webmasters and more time being client-facing relationship managers. In addition to SEO, Hearsay Sites also helps advisors get found across the web through agent locator tools and the management of directory listings.
> Single, scalable enterprise platform: Hearsay Sites is built on top of the Hearsay Enterprise Platform, providing a single "control center" for administrators and compliance professionals to view and manage advisor activity across social, mobile, and web channels. Compliance professionals benefit from having a centralized, streamlined supervision and review workflow, while administrators can take advantage of their existing user hierarchies and enterprise integrations already connected into the Hearsay Enterprise Platform.
"As a longtime Hearsay Social customer, Thrivent Financial is enthusiastic about the launch of Hearsay Sites," said Knut Olson, Senior Vice President - Mission Advancement, Thrivent Financial. "Our financial representatives and compliance teams alike love that the Hearsay Enterprise Platform is specifically built for our industry to help our advisors and our members connect and engage across all forms of communications in today's digital era."
Read more about Hearsay Social and today's announcement on our blog.
For additional resources on enabling the digitally savvy advisor, watch Clara Shih's keynote presentation from the 2014 LIMRA Annual Conference, download the Advisor of the Future executive report, read the article, "Will Financial Advisors Become Obsolete" (FA Magazine, January 2015), and join the conversation on Twitter @hearsaysocial #predictivesocial.
About Hearsay Social
Hearsay Social provides the Predictive Social Suite for financial advisors and insurance agents across the world's largest financial institutions, including 7 of the top 10 global financial services companies and leading firms such as New York Life, Raymond James, Vanguard and Penn Mutual. Hearsay Social powers over 100,000 financial relationship managers worldwide, allowing them to engage today's social, mobile customer through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and mobile-first websites. Advisors receive unique client insights through multi-channel signals, and the predictive Content Library makes it easy to share the right content at the right time. Built-in enterprise integration and governance powers compliance and supervision for global firms, seamlessly addressing industry regulations and enforcing policy.
Hearsay Social, a SIFMA strategic partner, LIMRA Elite Strategic partner, GAMA partner, and Efma Associate Partner, has raised $51M from Sequoia Capital, NEA, and private investors and is headquartered in Silicon Valley with dedicated local presences in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Austin, Toronto, London, Paris, Munich and Hong Kong.
Hearsay Social Blog: http://hearsaysocial.com/blog
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/hearsaysocial
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/company/hearsay-social
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