42. Building Stronger Client Relationships Through Behavioral Finance, with Jerry Szatko of Unitifi
Dec 14, 2023
Three Crowns Marketing
Communication is key in advisor-client relationships.
“How do you communicate with clients effectively without understanding their behavior and personality?” Jerry Szatko, CEO of Unitifi, asks.
Jerry and Unitifi, a wealth management technology, believe in behavioral finance as a tool to help advisors better communicate with clients.
Jerry joins us to discuss how Unitifi identifies personality attributes and behaviors in clients and prospects, then provides advisors with tips on how to use those insights to strengthen relationships.
Episode 41 of “On the Circuit” was recorded at the Nebraska FPA Wealth Management Conference in October 2023 in Omaha.
“On the Circuit” is a podcast where conversation sparks innovation, hosted by Johnny Sandquist from Three Crowns Marketing. Season 2 finds Johnny recording live conversations with guests at industry conferences like Fearless Investing Summit and Nebraska FPA Wealth Management Conference (Johnny loves a good industry conference). In these jam-packed episodes, guests share advice, insights and dreams for the future of the industry.
Want to learn more about how Three Crowns can help you elevate your digital presence? Check out the links below to get started:
Communication is key in advisor-client relationships.
“How do you communicate with clients effectively without understanding their behavior and personality?” Jerry Szatko, CEO of Unitifi, asks.
Jerry and Unitifi, a wealth management technology, believe in behavioral finance as a tool to help advisors better communicate with clients.
Jerry joins us to discuss how Unitifi identifies personality attributes and behaviors in clients and prospects, then provides advisors with tips on how to use those insights to strengthen relationships.
Episode 41 of “On the Circuit” was recorded at the Nebraska FPA Wealth Management Conference in October 2023 in Omaha.
“On the Circuit” is a podcast where conversation sparks innovation, hosted by Johnny Sandquist from Three Crowns Marketing. Season 2 finds Johnny recording live conversations with guests at industry conferences like Fearless Investing Summit and Nebraska FPA Wealth Management Conference (Johnny loves a good industry conference). In these jam-packed episodes, guests share advice, insights and dreams for the future of the industry.
Want to learn more about how Three Crowns can help you elevate your digital presence? Check out the links below to get started:
Hey everybody, welcome to On the Circuit. We are live at the Nebraska FBA Wealth Management Conference 2023 here in our hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, and my first guest today is Jerry Zatko, the founder and CEO of Unitify. Jerry, thank you for chatting with me Great being here.
Speaker 2:
Really appreciate it, johnny, and it's great to be at the event that is affecting not only so many professionals but professionals in Omaha, nebraska, which there are so many we were talking prior that there's so many really good entities that come out of this part of the world, that it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:
Omaha is the secret, real financial center of the United States, especially for wealth management. Absolutely, and you're the oracle here, right, exactly, yeah, how can you not? How can you not love it? Okay, so, jerry, unitify is a wealth tech platform. Behavioral finance is really the direction that you guys are building. So I'm just going to start us off real simple question. I'm sure you've answered this thousands of times now what exactly do you do and why should advisors care about it?
Speaker 2:
The biggest thing is that any advisor that cares about the relationship and solidifying the relationships that you already have or bringing on new clientele more effectively would care about what we do. Because what we do is we have a behavioral finance software platform that allows the professionals to let the client tell them how they want to be treated and how they react when a risk is applied to their financial situation. So different from other personality type of entity, which would be the Myers-Briggs, the Kobe Connative, the Gallup platform that tells you who you are as a person talking over the fence to the neighbor in the backyard, what kind of personality behavior have, but how we deal with our finances and how we behave and our personality changes when financial concerns are there. So we let the client tell the financial professional how they react when risk is applied to their financial situation, either conservative to aggressive, and then we go the vertical how they like to be treated more on the logical side, how they make their decisions, or on the passionate side. So we let the client tell us, as the professionals, how they want to be treated and then you can solidify the clients you already have, increase assets under management more effectively or bring on new clients more efficiently. So if you're and it all starts with, each professional gets a QR code. So somebody says, hey, we should work together. You meet them at the lake or you're at the PTA or Bible study or whatever you say, yeah, here, scan this QR code, We'll see if we'd be a good fit. So now, before they even come in, they take an assessment that takes between two to seven minutes to complete super quick, and it's highly accurate. So you will know if they're a client that fits your portfolio.
Speaker 2:
So if you deal with clients that are more on the logical and more aggressive side of the fence and you get a client that comes in and is more passionate and more conservative, you can say, wow, boy, I know we're not going to work well together, but somebody else in the firm does works really well. So you take that client, you bring them into that other person and beforehand you say, hey, let's revenue share 80, 20, maybe this first year I'm bringing them to you and then after that you get 100%. Now you solidify that client relationship within the firm, you capture the assets more effectively and you let the client know that you really care about them.
Speaker 2:
I think it was Nick Murray that said, or he's coined it here recently, but it might even went back to Benjamin Franklin nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. This shows the clients that you really, really care about the relationship. And I think it was Schwab that did a study here recently that said and Morningstar solidified that that the reasons people leave financial professionals it's over 56% leave because of the relationship. They don't feel heard, they don't feel communicated with, they don't feel that that relationship is a key. So it's not performance, Absolutely, it's relationship. That's why they should care.
Speaker 1:
It's so interesting the industry has changed so quickly. You know, I started working with advisors in 2009, and since that point to watch, where a lot of the firms focused their time, much more investment focused even back then, to now this massive shift we've had to, where whole life planning, or holistic planning, as people will say, and the advent of not the advent, but the introduction to really the mainstream of BFI into advising work, has just, I think, radically changed. I think the growth of the independent channels have a huge part of that, like RIAs are really powering this move. And so you know we see behavioral finance catching attention throughout the industry. Another hometown company here from Omaha, orion Advisor Tech. They've got Daniel Crosby as their chief behavioral officer and we're seeing that crop up more and more throughout this industry. And so was that really the genesis of your idea for Unifi? You were experiencing that, seeing that with advisors where man relationships just need the fine tuning.
Speaker 2:
So let's figure out how to build that 100%, 100%, yes, and we were. It's funny to say that because we were at Orion several years before Daniel Crosby was there and I've spoken with him several times now, and what they're doing and what we're doing is different. Because what we do is we provide tips for the financial professional on how to deal with their clients based on forming personality attributes that we recognize, from conservative to aggressive, protector, observer, liberator, energizer the four and then the different there's 40 different behaviors that boil up into make that person. So how you behave allows you to understand who you are as a person. So we let the financial professionals know the top 10 attributes that we recognize, ones that we strongly identify with. Then you can base on behavior and personality. We give tips for each financial professional to deal with their clients more effectively and then, in turn, utilize their skills as the professional to allocate more appropriately based on that.
Speaker 2:
So even mutual funds can build from client up in the industry and that's what Ryan's started to understand the holistic approach of building the funds from the client up as opposed to the organization down, and then even in industry that deals with the financial situation. Insurance is a great one too right now. Is it, like you'd said, the holistic approach. Well, when there's rate hikes and things that are going on now, how do you communicate effectively with that individual? Same thing in the banking industry when boy CDs are starting to take off and really understanding and some of the conservative clients are wanting to move some allocation into that, well, how do you communicate with them effectively without understanding their behavior and personality? We make it easier, it's the easy button we're trying to understand.
Speaker 1:
So you mentioned insurance and banking. I often focus these conversations so heavily on wealth management because that's where our focus is. You guys seeing similar trajectory in those kind of complementary parts of finance with focus on behavioral financing?
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. It's not only taking off in the wealth management side, but also in anybody that deals with a paycheck and how to allocate that. So anybody that deals with a client and their financial resources benefits from behavioral finance.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely Okay. So, jerry, we're at the FBA conference, obviously, and I'm curious to get your take, I think, on just the importance of being part of a community like this for financial advisors. What are, in your mind, the key benefits that advisors get from, for instance, being a member of their local FBA? How does it help them professionally and personally?
Speaker 2:
I think it's monumental. I think anybody that's trying to understand the industry, grow who they are as a person and as a professional, being part of an organization like the Financial Planning Association in local and then national, can only benefit. There's no hindrance, drawback. What's the negative? The negative is that if you don't do it, you're missing out. And because these types of entities they help you professionally, they help you with the latest trends that are coming out, they help you with the latest tax law. I mean everything that you can benefit from being part of an organization that you're trying to do. If you're really concerned about the financial services industry is in organizations just like this, and especially this one here in Omaha here today. The speakers are fantastic and the ability to network with other entities around and understand who's out there and the forward-thinking individuals are all on this type of platform and it helps to be here physically and not have to do it via Zoom like we had in the last few years and stuff like that so much better.
Speaker 1:
And again all comes back to relationships, just like what we're talking about with advisors and clients. Okay, so before we wrap, jerry, what's the best place to find you guys online? Where should listeners go?
Speaker 2:
So wwwunatifycom we're right there. That is a place to reach out, talk to us, talk to me specifically, as the founder, ceo and president of the organization, as well as the other individuals that we have that are very influential in the business and helping you get the best out of who you are as a financial professional, and even the listeners that are investors the one to know themselves better and how to make sure. Because, even if you're investing on your own, if you don't really understand how you behave when risk, you can't invest on your own if you don't have any more money.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
So you got to protect yourself from some of those bias behaviors that you have, so that you're more effective in winning, and that's what we're all about, love it All right, Jerry.
Speaker 1:
Thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it Likewise, Take care. Thanks for listening to today's episode. We recorded this live during the Nebraska FBA 2023 Wealth Management Conference at the University of Creighton College of Business. If you want to stay updated with everything happening in the wealth management industry, make sure you hit subscribe. Follow us for more episodes, both from this event and many others. We'll see you next time.
