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January 31, 2019 at 11:00 AM
Before joining Morgan Stanley in 2016, Naureen Hassan was the executive vice president leading Investor Services segments and platforms at Charles Schwab and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. She also led the team that developed Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, served as COO of Schwab Bank and had leadership roles in Schwab Advisor Services. Prior to the roughly 12 years she was with Schwab, Hassan spent about five years at McKinsey.
“We are redefining the future of wealth management by setting a new standard for client excellence,” she explained. “This winning approach is defined by the combination of people and technology, using the power of technology to support human advisors.”
According to Hassan, technology complements advisors’ strengths “by giving them the ability to automate mundane and administrative tasks, and the ability to scale interactions with clients anytime, anywhere with an enhanced and personalized experience.” She adds: “With over $2 trillion in client assets and our world-class advisors, Morgan Stanley is uniquely positioned to lead the industry and help ensure clients achieve their life goals.”
What is your tech focus? My team’s focus areas span the gamut of digital solutions – from social media, CRM to mobile and AI. Our goal is to invest in the latest technology to help financial advisors better serve their clients and ultimately grow their business.
What technology are you bullish on in the short term? In the short-term, I am most bullish on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Early on, we made it a point to invest heavily in AI through an initiative called “Next Best Action,” which enables client engagement at scale.
Our machine learning engine analyzes all client data for the advisor, and pairs it with pre-written messages that advisors can then personalize for their clients. The platform, which launched in mid-2018, has been a major success for our advisors.
How about longer term? In the longer term, I think AI/natural language processing has the most potential to help our Advisors. The financial services industry is so complex with different rules and regulations by state, and our clients’ lives are even more complex with issues such as elder care, trusts, and estate planning.
Right now, AI is good at crunching mountains of structured data and turning it into insights, but it hasn’t shown that it can process the complex and unstructured data as effective as how our human advisors currently do. It will be very interesting if and when AI can process unstructured data, reason and answer complex questions.
