New Cetera Tool Will Use Facial Recognition to Measure Client Emotions

Moore stressed the importance of developing relationships that “aren’t driven by the lowest common denominator of regulatory requirements.”

Advisors need to build relationships with clients that “transcend that and take the whole conversation to a higher and better level” while keeping the clients’ best interests at the core of their service.

“This to me is a much more affirmative way of demonstrating that commitment than just promulgating more policies and questionnaires,” he added.

Advisors try to make clients and prospects as comfortable as possible during meetings, Moore noted, but “fundamentally they’re going through a questionnaire process and there is almost an interview feel. We all know that has an impact on people’s responses.”

A lot of valuable communication is nonverbal, too, so advisors “are trying to reconcile the things they’re hearing from a client with what their facial expressions are saying. This allows that to be done in a much more thoughtful and considerate way.”

“We’re passionate in our belief that the future of this industry is based on an advice-centric approach oriented around the goal of understanding: Understanding clients, their needs and hopes, and how to effectively guide them along the road toward the successful achievement of their objectives,” Adam Antoniades, President of Cetera Financial Group, said in a statement.

The Decipher tool is part of the Advice Architect Ecosystem offering Cetera rolled out in May. It will be in testing this summer and is expected to be rolled on in the second half of this year.

Last month, Cetera released My Advice Architect, which it developed with Envestnet to bring Cetera’s three investment programs together on one platform. That tool is being rolled out first to Cetera Financial Institutions, which serves banks and credit unions with wealth management programs.

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