RBC Wealth Management personalizes and transforms the client experience with CRM Analytics

RBC Wealth Management—U.S. helps individuals and families achieve their financial needs, wants, and wishes with advice and wealth management solutions. The firm embarked on an unusual digital transformation, putting data at the center of its strategy, and delivering a purpose-built experience that maximizes analytics and insights for its employees and clients.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, the firm has two organizations: The Private Client Group, with more than 2,100 advisors in 42 states, and Clearing & Custody Services, with 300 independent broker dealers nationwide.

While the company consistently received high industry ratings for its culture and service, its technology rankings were lagging. They were even losing potential advisors because of it. “It was a clear sign we needed to do something. Technology is one thing you can control. If you have the money, the time, and the brain power, it’s something you can and should improve,” said Greg Beltzer head of technology for RBC Wealth Management—U.S.

This insight became a catalyst for their digital transformation. “We wanted to have everything in place that our advisors, our independent broker dealers, and their clients need to manage their finances,” Beltzer said. “We wanted them to be more efficient and make technology as frictionless as possible for the end user.”

But it was no small undertaking. Like most financial services companies, their technology stack was a mix of legacy and new systems and applications across business, operational, and compliance groups, along with strict regulations and oversight requirements. 

That’s when the division went in an innovative direction: instead of keeping technology across all its teams, they moved it under one group, with Beltzer leading the charge. Transforming to this unique model, they removed the data silos across teams and could deliver a consistent, real-time user experience for everyone across products, services, and functions to access the same customer records and empower them with data analytics and actionable insights.

Beltzer pointed out that senior executive buy-in was critical to embark this ambitious data transformation journey. “Helping our leadership understand the importance of curating and managing this data for the greater good, you’ve got to have executive alignment or you're going to go uphill all the way.”

Beltzer then worked with his team to develop the tech stack, putting fintechs like Informatica and Docupace at the forefront of strategy. With Salesforce Financial Services Cloud as the CRM foundation, embedded dashboards from CRM Analytics (formerly Tableau CRM) were layered on top to surface AI-driven insights to the advisors in the context of their existing CRM workflow. The team also used other Salesforce technologies like MuleSoft and Slack to help drive the business forward in its digital transformation.

Salesforce’s built-in connectors enabled them to tie together the end-user experience, bridging data gaps between legacy systems and multiple platforms, from more than 26 data sources and creating 270 CRM Analytics data flows. Beltzer said that building a data pipeline into Salesforce and CRM Analytics with just a few clicks was a huge time saver. The technology team could then focus on building the dashboard, creating a better experience and more opportunities for actionable insights.

With a 360° view of its customers and a single source of truth, all groups across RBC Wealth Management—U.S. could view the same record, whether they're doing trades, servicing an account, ensuring regulatory compliance, and more. As Beltzer put it, “That’s what allowed us to change the game. We had real-time insights that could empower anyone, anywhere in their organization, and to help their customers like they never had before,” Beltzer said.

With updated client records and analytics, it was easier than ever for advisors to take action on that data. “We made it super seamless to make those insights actionable for their clients in that moment,” Beltzer pointed out. Advisors, for example, could have a discussion with a client and then trigger a marketing campaign from the dashboard based on the Einstein Next Best Action, or use a roll up analytics dashboards for a broader view of the overall market the next minute.

Real-time data and analytics were also invaluable if a client called unexpectedly. Advisors would have up-to-date balances and could surface actionable insights to make suggestions for clients, like setting up online access or adding another beneficiary to an IRA. Beltzer said, “We made insights contextual and personalized so they can take action, and that's where both the advisor and client win.”

One of the most popular and useful dashboards among advisors turned out to be a last-minute addition: a client’s financial services life events. Advisors could view client birthdays, anniversaries, and other life milestones. “It’s a great example of how data can empower a user in ways that you can't predict,” Beltzer said. He added that it’s also why user feedback is critical when evaluating current and future data analytics functionality.

For managing compliance and regulatory requirements, the company is starting to use Tableau’s AI capabilities to uncover potential fraudulent trends, unusual money movement activities, and other activities that can raise red flags and mitigate risks. 

RBC Wealth Management—U.S. doesn’t have an end date for digital transformation. Beltzer’s team is planning the next stages of Salesforce and CRM Analytics—from expanding functionality to new integrations, and increased automations. “We’re thinking about a lot of ideas on how to make the client experience more seamless, how to make staff more efficient, and remove manual procedures we have today,” Beltzer said.

He added, “We’ve had some early wins and it’s really helpful momentum, but we’ve set expectations that this is a journey we're going to continue and rise to that challenge. It's fun when you're able to solve something that took someone an hour to put together and produce it within seconds or minutes. It's a pretty cool feeling.”