The 2020 IA25: Lisa Burns

Fidelity Institutional's head of Platform Technology says advisors need to make clients' lives easier during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lisa Burns is head of Platform Technology for Fidelity Institutional and just helped launch a paperless onboarding process for its advisor tech platform Wealthscape. She’s been with Fidelity for about 25 years.

Top Advice

Make sure your advisors and investors understand how to use the digital tools your firm has available.

In today’s environment, tools like eSignature and remote check deposit have gone from being ways to add efficiency to being essential for doing business.

Making life easier for clients during this challenging time helps reinforce the value your firm delivers, and technology is an absolutely critical component of that right now.

Biggest Challenges

We have been very focused on the evolution of our digital tools, and the sudden shift to a new way of working throughout the industry has resulted in an uptick in advisors embracing these tools — and quickly.

To support that, we’re sharing resources like digital toolkit guides and FAQs on best practices, as well as providing consultative support to clients to ensure their success.

Meeting client needs and making it easy to do business with us is always our top priority; so in addition to the technology itself, we’re increasing our focus on helping advisors with adoption and best practices so they can most effectively work in new ways and ease some stress for the investors they work with.

Digital tool adoption is just one example of an area where we’re providing expanded resources and best practices.