Don’t Get Left Behind – Embrace Technology Today!

/ Kirti Anand Sharma / Connelly Corner / 0 comments

3 Mobile Apps for Financial Advisors to Get Started

Believe it or not, we are in the middle of a revolution that is changing the way we interact, make decisions and do business.

According to eMarketer, by the end of 2014 the global Smartphone audience will reach approximately 1.75 Billion users.

Have you ever wondered who these people are anyway? They are your friends, family, clients, prospects and competitor Financial Advisors.

► Learn what Elite Advisors do that average Advisors don’t do.

And why do Financial Advisors embrace new technology? Being just one tap away from almost anything offers you more opportunities than ever:

• staying up-to-date with stock markets
• streamlining business workflows
• prospecting
• real time interaction with clients
• performing important calculations
• and a lot more in just a fraction of a second.

Your Time is Money. Competition is fast, and prospects want to do business with Advisors who are smart workers.

To keep up with our fast paced world and be where your clients / prospects are, you as a Financial Advisor, must adopt new technology and make the most of it.

Here are a few mobile apps for Financial Advisors to get you started:

Financial Advisors’ Tool #1 – Any.Do:
Productivity through play. Control through balance.

Working without appropriate deadlines and prioritization can be counterproductive for Financial Advisors. Any.Do can help you avoid unwanted delays, be forgetful or unknowingly procrastinate tasks that are essential for your growth.

Some examples how Any.Do can be useful to Financial Advisors:

1. Increase your productivity

For higher productivity, it is recommended you spend 10 minutes at the end of each day to plan your next day’s task list. Use the feature Any.Do Moment as a reminder to plan your next day’s tasks.

2. Stay organized

With Any.Do you can organize your clients and related tasks in different folders. So if you have a Client A, a Prospect B and an Event C, with different sets of tasks to be done for each of them, simply create 3 Folders and assign the tasks relevant to each of them.

3. Increase your efficiency

Let’s say you are organizing an Event C, and you need to create a presentation on a financial concept for which you want to do some research on the internet. Any.Do will let you perform a Google search directly on the task title. You can manually record notes from the search results under this task.

And if you have an assistant helping you with this presentation (or any other task list for that matter!), you can simply share a folder with them. Provided they also use Any.Do, you will receive a notification when they mark their tasks complete.

4. Build better relationships

If you’ve missed a call from a client, Any.Do will show you a notification with options to call now, send a message, dismiss or add to reminder so that you do not forget to call back!

Here’s some more general information about Any.Do :

Pros:

1. It’s Free and available in both Apple and Android App Stores.
2. You can add a task directly from your email by sending a mail to do@Any.Do .
3. It synchronizes with the cloud, so you can access your projects across all your devices. And there’s no need to worry about backup if you ever lose your phone.
4. The App provides an option to integrate with Google Glass as well.
5. Any.Do can convert your voice commands into text in almost any language and auto-suggest makes typing easier.
6. If your task title contains words like “buy” or “call”, Any.Do automatically links it with other apps like Amazon (for Buy related tasks) and Calling app suggestions like Sykpe or Viber (for call related tasks) to help you complete the task

Cons:

1. There is no option to search for a task yet.
2. The integrated search is only available at task level, and not at the subtask or notes level. Further, it only performs the search on the “Task Title”. You cannot do a custom search which restricts you to see the search results only for the phrases entered as the task title.
3. Sharing tasks is only possible if you have your friend’s E-mail address saved in your phone’s contacts. When you share a task, the alarm doesn’t get transferred and the tasks will only show up on your friends’ task list if they are using Any.Do.
4. Synchronizing the tasks from other applications and devices can be slow or problematic. Occasionally, you might have to manually force synchronization. A lot of people using Any.Do have experienced issues synchronizing it with Google Tasks (a feature that is only available in the Android version of this app).
5. There is no option to print the list of your tasks.

Financial Advisors’ Tool #2 – CamCard:
Eliminate your Business Card Clutter!

Getting new appointments is crucial for your business growth. Wasting time sorting stacks of business cards from potential clients is not. CamCard app saves you time and does the business card sorting for you, and quickly.

Some examples how CamCard can be useful for Financial Advisors:

1. Spend your time wisely

Spare yourself from the horror of spending hours at the end of each event to manually record business cards on your laptop or phone. Just use the batch scan mode, take multiple pictures and save information at multiple locations within minutes.

2. Stay organized, always, anywhere

Since the data can be synchronized on multiple devices, you can access client/prospect information from anywhere at any time.

3. Build better relationships

Let’s say you are running late to meet a prospect. If you have their contact in the CamCard app, within seconds you can do a quick search by their name and initiate a call directly from the app to notify them about the delay.

4. Make a better first impression

Leave your boring business cards at home. Install the CamCard App and create an impressive digital business card with augmented reality features to capture the latest details about your portfolio, a headshot, or a video introduction.

People will see all the information as soon as you share your digital business card with them via email or sms. When other CamCard users scan your digital card, they will see it all, too.

It’s simple, fast and impressive! Additionally, creating a digital card can be useful in the following scenarios:

1. When you forget to carry your cards at networking events.
2. If you run out of business cards during the event.
3. When it’s too late to notice that your favorite pack of business cards is out of date!

Here’s some more general information about CamCard:

Pros:

1. It has Free versions for Android, iOS, Windows and Blackberry.
2. Just take a photo of the card and within a second, the app will scan it, detect the text orientation, rotate the card in the correct position and optimize the captured image by cropping or improving the brightness. After you approve the final image, it will create a new contact and pre-populate all the information from the card.
3. Batch mode allows you to conveniently scan multiple cards at once and then upload them all as separate contacts.
4. In addition to creating a new contact in your smartphone, the information can also be saved at other locations like email accounts, Skype, WhatsApp, LinkedIn.
5. You can also add a backside image, notes and reminders to a card.
6. From the Card Holder view, you can export all cards to vCard or Excel files.

Cons:

1. The Optical Character Recognition (OCR ) sometimes struggles with special characters.
2. It’s not flawless at determining which information to populate in which field of the digital contact file. For example, in one of the cards I scanned with a slightly creative layout, it struggled to understand the company name and the person’s designation. However, the app displays scanned card image on the top. So even if the OCR fails, you can tap on the field, see what’s mentioned on the card and manually make the edits.
3. The free version only allows you to scan 52 cards.

Financial Advisors Tool #3 – The Birthday Assistant:
Never forget a birthday!

Developing strong client relationships is paramount to your success as a Financial Advisor. While, there are multiple ways to do that, remembering clients’ birthdays is one of the most effective gestures to bolster care and loyalty.

Some examples of how The Birthday Assistant can be useful for Financial Advisors:

1. Never forget a client’s birthday again

With hundreds of clients under management, it’s not possible to rely on memory or paperwork to remember birthdays.

You can either add your clients on Facebook and simply import all the birthdays using this app or, if you haven’t added clients on your Facebook, then just manually create the records and you are good to go.

2. Build better relationships with clients

Remembering a birthday is one thing. How you leverage the opportunity to establish a personal connection, is entirely a different game.

When you see a reminder or an upcoming birthday, you can either choose to deliver your wishes by posting on their Facebook wall, sending a text message, giving a call or you can choose to put in some extra effort like arranging for fresh flower delivery with a handwritten note, calling and inviting them for a lunch treat, dropping by their house with some cookies and cake.

If you are an Advisor, who is genuinely committed to making his/her clients feel special on their birthdays and strengthen the relationship, then The Birthday Assistant App can make this super easy by memorizing all important Birthdays for you and reminding you to take action on time.

Here’s some more general information about the Birthday Assistant App

Pros:

1. It’s  Free J.
2. Just login with your Facebook and The Birthday Assistant will automatically import all of your friends’ birthdays.
3. You can set multiple alarms for primary and secondary reminders. By default, the alarm is set for all friends, but you can disable it for selected friends.
4. You can do a search by name to find out a friend’s birthday details.

Cons:

1. It’s only available for Android smart phones.
2. The in-app advertisements obstruct the view which can be annoying. I couldn’t find an option to close them or turn them off.
3. While loading Birthday’s from Facebook, if a contact has not made this information public, the app will simply skip it and move on to the next one.
4. You will have to manually record birthdays for clients who are not your Facebook friends.

Technology is evolving. Modern clients and millennial competitors have already embraced these advancements. Have you?

Make the most of your smartphones and tablets at hand. Start with these 3 apps. And keep on going –  the list doesn’t end here.

Here are a couple of posts to give you more app ideas that you can use:

• Top 10 Custom Mobile Apps for Financial Advisors in 2014 by Leesa John at Boston Technology
• FPPad Bits and Bytes for July 3 by Bill Winterberg where he has shared Bob Veres’s recap of technology tools and apps for Financial Professionals mentioned at the FPA NexGen gathering.

Always remember: To win the race, you’ve gotta be in the race.

If you want to be competitive in our fast paced world and stay ahead in the industry, you simply can’t afford not to use technology as a Financial Advisor. Start today!

And don’t forget to come back and tell us what mobile apps have helped you to become a more successful Financial Advisor.

Disclaimer – The reviews are based on author’s personal experience with the products. It’s not intended to promote or market the applications mentioned.

Tags any.dobirthday assistantbuild better relationshipsBuilding and maintaining relationshipsbusiness cardcamcardembrace technologyfinancial advisorsget an appointmentincrease efficiencyincrease productivitymake a better first impressionmaximize your efficiencymobile apps for financial advisorsstay organized