Powder Finance, Inc. (Powder), a fintech innovator in developing next generation tools that help financial advisors streamline and grow their businesses, today announced that Powder, a generative artificial intelligence powered tool designed specifically to enhance the sales proposal process, has evolved to a new level of sophistication. The company, which is exhibiting at the Technology Tools for Today (T3) Conference taking place from January 22 – 25, 2024 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel & Resort Las Vegas, will be demonstrating its new capabilities from booth #120. Journalists and financial advisors attending T3 are invited to stroll down the “emerging technology aisle” and see for themselves how Powder is transforming client engagement and client experience for Powder’s early adopters.
“Powder has simplified one of the largest barriers to scaling the client acquisition process, giving us more time and capacity to spend on productive activities,” said Dave Breslin, EVP, Catalytic Wealth & General Catalyst.
“I’m incredibly excited about what Powder is delivering,” said Jon Xu, product builder and investor in Powder. Xu is known in the T3 community and independent investment advisory world as co-founder of a venture-backed Robo-Advisor startup called FutureAdvisor that was ultimately acquired by BlackRock. “We are experiencing a significant generational transfer of wealth, some $80T in assets. The new generation of prospective clients need increasingly more personalized and holistic views of outcomes. This is table stakes. Powder is bringing the best of generative AI to help advisors communicate personalized outcomes to win clients.”
TRANSFORMATIVE USE OF GENAI
Generative artificial intelligence (generative AI, GAI, or GenAI) is artificial intelligence capable of generating text, images, or other media, using generative models. GenAI models learn the patterns and structure of their input training data and then generate new data that has similar characteristics.
Through feedback from the advisors’ usage, Powder incorporates dynamic data gathering capabilities that allow wealth advisors to easily glean pertinent summarized information, conduct analysis and produce beautiful presentation decks in minutes. Powder’s automated AI proposal process increases wealth advisors’ efficiency, enhances value to prospects, and improves client acquisition. Powder’s new applied GenAI functionality includes secure and compliant summarization of current and prospective client meetings, with AI generated tasks and service or proposal details.
In addition to helping advisors obtain new clients, Powder’s capabilities are an important tool in servicing new and existing clients. Powder’s AI capabilities are incorporated into many different parts of an advisor’s workflow. Throughout the lifetime of a client, there are ongoing needs for data gathering, analysis of allocation, risk, creating implementation and financial plans, and more. Powder can serve as a critical tool for all phases of client service.
GENAI “WORKER BEES”
“At its core, Powder is a generative AI sales co-analyst for wealth managers,” said Kanishk Parashar, CEO of Powder. “In the prospecting phase, it is able to efficiently aggregate financial data, build portfolio, tax and estate models, and streamline onboarding. It is designed to wow prospects by helping wealth advisors quickly and thoroughly understand a client’s needs and close the deal. The kind of proposal enhancement enabled by Powder is crucial for financial advisors to do a better job of getting new clients and growing their businesses.”
“The wealth management industry still relies on outdated proposal processes, such as long pitch decks, emailed statements, manual portfolio data entry, and analysis to win over clients,” explained Parashar. “Advisors have become accustomed to an arduous sales process that has little transparency and leaves prospective clients unclear of the value the advisors provide. What’s worse is how that long, manual process feels to the potential client at the other end of the table. With Powder, the tables are turned and advisors are able to swiftly and efficiently generate proposals and demonstrate value to prospects.”
“There are countless wealthtech tools focused on client retention, but there have been no solutions that are focused squarely on improving the prospecting process,” said Parashar. “Powder is the first AI-powered tool to solve those proposal-generating challenges.”
“The functions within Powder are like generative AI ‘worker bees’ that augment a firm’s capabilities to rapidly, efficiently and skillfully generate proposals,” continued Parashar. “All these Powder ‘worker bees’ augment an advisor’s capability to gather and analyze data, present comprehensive information, and create a better proposal, therefore giving them a much higher chance of winning clients.”
After using Powder’s automated process to gather and analyze information, the data can be incorporated into other tools, like Excel and PowerPoint, or Bloomberg for asset allocation, or eMoney to build a financial plan. “Regardless of what systems an advisor is using, the steps to get the data into those systems are still going to be manual and time-consuming – unless they have Powder,” commented Parashar.
FUNCTIONALITY AND SUBSCRIPTION LEVELS
There are four primary steps utilized by Powder to drive a collaborative and efficient proposal with prospective clients:
- Automating laborious data gathering and leveraging Powder’s GenAI automatic statement parsing and direct data feeds
- Demonstrating the wealth advisor’s value to prospective clients by quickly producing a beautiful slide deck with clear analysis of allocation, risk, implementation plan, financial plan, and more
- Accelerating the workflow by integrating Powder with downstream systems and generating paperwork to facilitate client onboarding
- Garnering client insights by utilizing Powder’s AI functions to learn more about potential clients and delivering tailored recommendations
Powder is available on an annual subscription. There are two versions of Powder available to advisors:
Powder’s “Starter” version includes:
- Direct data feeds
- Automatic statement parsing
- Securities classification
- Data download and porting
- Client acquisition insights
Powder’s “Professional” version includes:
- Everything in the Starter package
- Target allocations
- Top drivers of risk
- Tax efficient implementation
- Fee comparison
- Custom capital market assumptions
ABOUT POWDER FINANCE, INC.
Located in the San Francisco Bay area, Powder Finance, Inc. (Powder) is a generative AI innovator whose mission is to develop industry-leading AI-powered tools that help wealth advisors improve client acquisition, grow their businesses, and drive client value. Powder is a powerful AI-powered co-analyst that helps wealth advisors aggregate financial data, build portfolio and tax models to eliminate manual processes, and win clients faster. The technology eliminates the high cost of client acquisition and future-proofs wealth advisory firms with a digital toolset to drive efficiency for all parties.
Co-founder and CEO Kanishk Parashar has a long history of leading teams and product developers to success. Previous roles included software development at eBay and PayPal, management positions at Howcast Media and Nextag, and founder/CEO roles at two additional fintech companies – one was acquired by Fitbit and the other was acquired by Addepar.
Powder applied to and was accepted into the Y Combinator winter 2024 program. This prestigious startup accelerator specializes in providing seed money for new companies, and is one of the best resources for entrepreneurs establishing a new business. For more information visit PowderFI.com.
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