01.29.25
BISA Portfolio Podcast — How Research Insights Can Inspire Success
by: BISA Staff
In this episode of the BISA Portfolio Podcast, Kevin Mummau and Kevin McCarthy from the BISA Research Committee talk with Scott Smith of Cerulli about how to effectively use BISA's Insights & Analytics Advantage monthly reports for success. Listen here or wherever you access podcasts.
The conversation highlights the growing willingness of investors to pay for financial advice and emphasizes the importance of data-driven decision-making in areas like risk management, compliance, and understanding customer preferences. Listeners will gain actionable strategies for incorporating these monthly reports into their business practices to enhance their competitive edge in our industry.
Access BISA's Insights & Analytics Advantage Reports today.
Episode Transcript
Kevin Mummau
Hello everyone, and welcome to the BISA Portfolio Podcast. I'm Kevin Mummau, chair of the BISA Research Committee. I'm joined today by Kevin McCarthy, another valuable member of this committee. In this podcast episode, we're discussing how research and insights and analytics have driven the success of our companies and in our day to day work. These monthly reports provide BISA members with a timely analysis of the issues that matter most within the asset management and the wealth management industries. Thanks for joining me today, Kevin and Scott, please take a moment to introduce yourselves.
Kevin McCarthy
Good afternoon. My name is Kevin McCarthy with Synovus Securities. I'm also a long time BISA board member, and as Kevin mentioned, I'm also on the Research Committee. Pleasure to be with you today.
Scott Smith
Hi everyone. I'm Scott Smith. I've been with Cerulli for nearly 20 years, covering everything from national sales strategy to robo advisors. I'm currently the director of advice relationships, leading Cerulli's research of affluent investors and the advice platforms advisors are using to serve them.
Kevin Mummau
Thank you both. And before discussing our own experiences leveraging the research, I'll give some background on how the BISA Research Committee's role is within our association, and how we decided to providing the Insights and Analytics Advantage reports to our members. The Insights and Analytics Advantage opportunity came to us after working with Cerulli on the Best Practices for Banks and Credit Unions to Improve Retention Throughout Advisors' Life Cycles research that we did approximately a year ago. A continuing conversation with Cerulli came to the agreement and partnerships to provide this great monthly research to each of you. Each month is centered on a theme. For example, a recent report explored the statistics of men and women and how they interact with financial advice and investing. One of the stats that stood out to me was how the 2020 to 2023 willingness to pay for financial advice had grown tremendously, both by men and women, from 58% to 63% and 52% to 61% respectively. As a BISA member, you will receive, and you do receive, these reports to your inbox over email, and you can also find them on the BISA site in the thought leadership section. Kevin and Scott, why don't you help us out a little bit here on how this information is put together for us?
Scott Smith
Thanks, Kevin. Research is based on hundreds of interviews we conduct annually with industry stakeholders, everything from national sales out to advisors in the field. In addition to these surveys of more than 2000 financial advisors and 6000 affluent investors every year, the trends we see developing over time are so important, like the one you just mentioned. Investors' increasing willingness to pay for financial advice. Many people in the industry assume that increasing access to data and tools would lower an investor's interest in paid advice. But in fact, we've actually seen the opposite. With so much data available, investors have increasingly found that they don't even know where to start, and bringing in a trusted advisor is a great first step. As a research professional, I often don't get to see the impact of our research, so I always enjoy hearing case studies about how analytical research has been applied to everyday realities. I imagine readers of the Insights and Analytics Advantage reports would find it valuable to hear how you both apply research analytics after receiving them. Do you have any best practice examples from your own work for how you've incorporated research findings?
Kevin Mummau
Yeah, working with multiple programs as a TPM, we interact with programs and institutions that are extremely diverse in their focus and approaches to the business, but one of the common traits I find are a thirst for information. What is working within the industry? What are others doing? And I find that our partners are utilizing this information, and the program managers fill out a void that they are constantly fighting for shelf space within the financial institution versus the core offerings and all the traditional banking services that are utilized. And utilization of this data has been very valuable to work with their executive management teams and their boards, etc, to gain credibility to their conversation and why it's important to bring wealth management to all the members of the credit unions and clients of the bank. One of the areas that I found most valuable: I mentioned earlier the November issue of the value of supporting and charging for financial plans, I saw where a number of programs were able to support their positioning of a) either actually charging for financial plans and having more value perceived by the end user and/or at least marketing to the value that they're bringing when they're giving it away.
Kevin McCarthy
I agree with Kevin. I think there's a tremendous amount of information that can be gathered from these reports. One of the data points we use is how advisors are pricing their advisory accounts. Sometimes advisors feel the need to heavily discount their fees based on a perceived competitive landscape. Great information on how our advisors are pricing the advisor fee. I also really enjoy looking at the breakdown of the percentages of where their pricing to come up with that average at certain asset thresholds as well. More than anything else, it allows us to have discussions with our advisors on charging appropriately for your services, and, more importantly, how you earn that revenue for the advice you're providing for those clients as well.
Scott Smith
Yeah, those are great points, gentlemen. We find in all of our research that advisors are really more worried about the price that they're offering clients, than clients are worried about the place they're being charged. And usually they're very happy with whatever pricing scheme they're in. So if we want to hone in on another aspect of our industry, institutions have been leveraging data to improve their risk management compliance processes? Do you have any tips there you might be able to share?
Kevin Mummau
Yeah, on this side, I don't have a lot, but I do know data is something that is extremely important on this side. And where I'm seeing it used a bit more, and I think we're going to see grow tremendously, is the use of AI and processing and the review or the efficiency of the compliance side that we have to do on each and every transaction.
Kevin McCarthy
I just look at the trends in the industry to make sure you're not an outlier. It's not necessarily going to change what you're doing, but you always want to make sure you're somewhat in line with what the industry is doing. The regulatory landscape continues to move very rapidly. And I would also encourage everybody on this podcast as well to attend our Eegulatory and Compliance Summit. Great opportunity, great content, to hear about what's going on in the industry, trends in that very important area. Opportunity to meet a lot of different people, and we also from that, will have regular compliance round tables as well, where you can continue to get updated information.
Scott Smith
Yeah, that's a great recommendation, Kevin. Having those one on one conversations, or, like you said, the group conversations, where you're actually dealing with your peers and working through these problems on a face-to-face basis, is such a differentiator when it comes to all this taking a bigger picture view. I know both of you have served in many roles in the financial industry, from customer service to compliance. How can financial institutions use data to better understand their customers needs and preferences? Do you have any
Kevin Mummau
Yes, definitely. Data and benchmarking is something that's always been near and dear to me to help you set your goals and build your plans. But I will say at the same time, I want to preface that that sometimes benchmarking in our industry can restrict you from your true potential. The area of growth, the potential for growth within our industry is just multiples of what we are doing. And looking at the bigger picture view, I think it is very, very important to not only set your goals, build your goals, and then, once you know what your goals are, now, go dig into what are others doing. What's working for everybody else? To set your action plan to build your success. That's what I see as a real value of these reports and the monthly information that we're getting, again, not only to help you analyze what you are doing, but spread your thought process to what you're missing.
Kevin McCarthy
Totally agree with Kevin, and think there's just so many different things we can get from these reports. For example, I think it's good to look at platforms and products within the advisory space and get a trend for where the industry is going. A good example of that is on one of the reports, direct indexing. It's been around for a long period of time, many years, but still has a relatively low penetration today. So if you look at one of the reports that we'll show you, though, and I think it's for the coming year, 69% of firms are looking to add that program. So good information to look where the puck's going as well. And you know, for firms that have that, know that if you have a little bit of a scarcity in terms of product, that's going away too. So really good information that continues to come out of these reports.
Scott Smith
Yeah, that's a great point, Kevin. And that idea of personalization is so important in the industry that's really differentiated for clients where they just don't want an off-the-rack portfolio. If you can show them their recommended portfolio and why it has a tweak or two in it, just for them, it really can connect with them on a personal basis. So if you want to turn specifically to the Insights and Analytics Advantage reports, how do you suggest BISA members add these insights into their toolkits to make better data-driven decisions?
Kevin Mummau
When you first look at each one and working with diverse programs, what you're reading may not seem at first relevant to what you're doing, but I think they utilize in that area is something to as a thought provoker. Are you being holistic? Are you missing something that others are doing? Do you know what's going on in the industry? I think that can be very helpful for that. But when it is a subject that's relevant to what you're presenting and doing, it's a great back test to what your results are and what you are seeing within the industry, and then utilizing it to what you're missing in your delivery of anywhere, and then working with your advisors. Kevin McCarthy, I think you make some super points here on utilizing this information to build credibility to how you're managing your team and your insights to them that it's not just you. It really does help to increase your penetration, your services when you're working with executive management, and also then with your advisors when you have a team like Cerulli and Associates behind you as credibility.
Kevin McCarthy
I'd encourage everybody to review these reports every month. I think this is one of the best and most consistent value adds that BISA brings to its members. I like to look at the reports overall and just see how Synovus fits into that. We all set a strategy, and we want to stay on that strategy throughout the year, but this will allow us to make a few tweaks in our overall strategy and adapt to some of the things, some of the trends within the industry as well. So I think this is a great value. I would encourage everybody please look at this regularly. Great data, great information, and glad we're partnered with Cerulli.
Scott Smith
Yeah, thanks for those examples, gentlemen. The one thing that I take away from my reports on a year-to-year basis is the, especially younger investors', interest in using one provider for both their banking and investment needs. You know, people really want to simplify their lives and not have to worry about remembering when their money is in five different platforms. If you can build your platform up to offer that wealth manager experience people looking for, in addition to company blank banking activities, it's a real, great value proposition to deliver to investors across age and wealth tiers. So I would encourage everyone to consider that moving forward.
Kevin Mummau
200% Scott, and we don't want to get bought into our perceptions and not look at what's really going out in the industry. So thank you for all your help to bring all that information to us. Thank you both for joining me in this great conversation today. Again, I want to remind all the BISA members that you can access these reports on a monthly basis through your emails or on the site through the analytics area. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with your network and make sure you are subscribed via your favorite podcast app. Have a great day, everyone. And here's to superb 2025.
About Kevin Mummau
Mummau is the managing director at CUSO Financial Services, L.P. (CFS) and Sorrento Pacific Financial, LLC (SPF), members FINRA and registered investment adviser. CFS provides investment and financial planning services to credit union members. As a senior executive at CFS/SPF, Mummau has over 35 years of broad experience in the brokerage industry. His diverse background covers many facets of the securities industry including, trading, supervision, operations, compliance, retail and branch management. Most notably, five years as the corporate OSJ and regional manager for a major independent broker dealer, responsible for supervising the production of 80 – 100 branch offices.
About Kevin McCarthy
McCarthy leads Geogia, South Carolina and the Premier Investment Group for Synovus Securities. Prior to that role, he was senior vice president and head of business development for SunTrust Private Wealth Management and SunTrust Investments. In that capacity, McCarthy led the growth, practice management and partnership initiatives within the broad wealth organization. McCarthy has decades of experience, having served in various leadership roles at prior firms including Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch.
About Scott Smith
With more than 25 years of financial services industry experience, Smith leads Cerulli’s research efforts focused on investor behavior and advisory relationships. In his time at Cerulli, he has authored more than 30 in-depth reports on topics ranging from wholesale distribution to digital advice platforms. His research helps Cerulli’s clients understand how to optimize their platforms given the evolving demand for financial advice.