Financial CRM Software

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a crucial aspect of modern business. As we've defined it elsewhere, CRM is: “A system that stores and organizes the info a business has about its leads and customers. It can also take that info and provide actionable next steps for what do with those leads. It helps businesses that need to improve sales and/or be better organized in how they engage with prospects, leads and current customers."

In the realm of financial advising and other financial services, CRM is even more important. Advisors need to have quick, ready access to all the information about their clients, including previous interactions, so that they can provide the most comprehensive, actionable advice possible.

In an industry that relies on personal relationships between advisors and their clients, CRM software can help businesses grow their client base while still personalizing their interactions with these clients and maintaining positive relationships. That's why CRM systems specifically geared toward financial services are so crucial for today's financial advisors.

This buyer's guide will explain what makes financial CRM software unique, explore some common features of many systems and discuss the specific questions your business should consider before purchasing.

Here are the aspects of financial CRM that we'll discuss:

What Is Financial CRM Software?
Common Features of Financial CRM
What Type of Buyer Are You?
Key Considerations

What Is Financial CRM Software?

On the most basic level, CRM software consolidates all customer information into one database, allowing users across the company to organize, manage and access that information without working cross-purposes. In addition, the software can automate some common practices, monitor performance/productivity and analyze data in order to provide reports that can help you predict trends or refine your practices.

Financial CRM software is an industry-specific type of CRM geared, as the name suggests, toward the financial services industry. This software is specifically geared toward financial advisors. Many top financial CRM software providers are, in fact, general CRM vendors offering a particular subsystem or add-on.

What differentiates CRM for financial advisors from a more generalized CRM system is that the software will not just capture the contact information of customers, but also their broad financial information, their relationship to the firm and their specific interactions with different advisors and other team members across the entire business.

The next section will discuss both general CRM features and those specific to financial CRM.

Common Features of Financial CRM

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Financial services firms can vary widely in size, and this variation will lead them to different requirements in their CRM systems. You will likely find your business falling into one of the following categories:

• Single user. If you're an independent financial advisor, and thus the sole person using the software, you can probably get away with the lowest-tier CRM system, focusing simply on data management and interaction tracking. Any more than that is likely to be overkill.
  
• Small business buyer. These are companies with between two and 100 employees that make under $50 million a year and have no IT department. With a small group of people accessing the CRM, you'll still want to focus on data management and interaction tracking, but activity tracking will be crucial, and client segmentation and workflow automation may also prove helpful.
  
• Midsize business buyer. These are also companies that have between two and 100 employees and make under $50 million a year, but they do have an IT department. In addition to all the features needed by a small business buyer, analytics and reporting will likely prove beneficial, especially since you will have access to an IT department to help make sure these reports are generated properly.

Key Considerations

Other factors to take into consideration when choosing the right financial CRM for your business include:

• Integration with other systems. In the field of financial services, you're probably using a lot of software besides just CRM. While CRM is crucial for maintaining a good relationship with your clients, accounting software, financial reporting software and other systems will allow you to actually manage those clients' funds. In order to best track those activities, you'll want to make sure that the CRM you choose integrates with that other software so that they can all work in harmony rather than bucketing information into separately walled off systems.
  
• Cloud-based software vs. on-premise software. Traditionally, software was licensed through the purchase of physical hardware that a business would have to house on their own premises. This required space for the equipment, as well as IT resources to make sure that it was properly functioning, alongside high setup costs to get the system up and running. Today, though, most software (especially CRM) will be purchased as a cloud-based system that is simply accessed through the internet, with the hardware housed elsewhere by the vendor. This is especially beneficial for smaller businesses that can't afford the high upfront costs or the IT resources required for hardware maintenance, and which may not have the available space for the hardware. However, larger businesses, especially enterprise-level financial advisory firms, may prefer the added speed of on-premise housing.