Financial Services Cloud (FSC) has now become the world’s #1 CRM for the financial services industry. Since the onset of the pandemic, there’s been a significant increase in demand for FSC, as companies look to enhance their digital offerings and improve business processes.
In this post, we’ll take an in-depth look at what Financial Services Cloud is and the positive impact it can have on financial services companies.
Originally launched in August 2015, Financial Services Cloud differs from Sales and Service Cloud in a number of ways and was designed specifically for the Financial Services Industry.
Built on the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, Financial Services Cloud includes an enhanced set of features created specifically for client engagement and designed with the needs of advisors in mind.
What’s really helpful is FSC comes out-of-the-box with all the core Sales Cloud features, plus new custom fields and objects modelling financial accounts, assets, liabilities, and goals for both individual clients and across entire households.
Who is Financial Service Cloud for?
From insurance to retail banking to wealth management, FSC provides a 360-degree view of clients’ financial profiles and puts your customer at the centre of every interaction. Getting a holistic view of customers is a huge advantage for financial advisors, brokers and agents alike. This means they can better serve their clients across multiple channels and devices.
With FSC, agents and brokers can get detailed insights into a client’s family wealth ecosystem, which can be extremely beneficial in growing their book of business across multiple networks. Richer contexts help agents and brokers understand their customers and FSC’s productivity tools help them work faster and smarter.
Being a collaborative-based system, FSC allows agents and teams to work together seamlessly. By connecting to other platforms, using Mulesoft or APIs, allows data to be collected, edited and updated in a multitude of places and in real-time.
Lastly, FSC uses Einstein for analysing data, presenting predictions and weighing out risk assessments. This again, helps advisors make informed decisions.
To learn more you can follow the Financial Services Basics Trailmix here.
What are the benefits of Financial Services Cloud?
Below we highlight some of the key benefits companies within the financial services industry can expect from using FSC.
- No more siloed systems - all your client’s financial information in one place. Advisors can focus on building relationships rather than chasing data.
- Real-time access to updated information - Agents & Brokers can work on the most up-to-date data.
- Access the same data on mobile devices - (data is easily managed so controlling security, etc. is made easy)
- Client Relationship Map - Bringing customers networks to life, showing much-needed context to Advisors.
- Drag-and-drop feature in Lightning App Builder - Admins can use this feature to provide advisors with the most relevant information, tailored to the way they work.
- Open APIs - Achieve seamless integrations.
- Easily collaborate with team members
So why should you choose it over the standard Sales Cloud?
The main question mulling over most financial firms is - Will I go with FSC or stick with Sales Cloud and customise it ourselves?
Sales Cloud has been around since the dawn of Salesforce and it is, of course, an amazing product. However, when we take a look at using Sales Cloud to meet the needs for financial services, it is clear that a heavy amount of customisation is required. This customisation is not impossible and with a good partner, can be done well.
However, when we look at the pro’s and con’s of heavy customisation, it is clear that it can lead to longer implementation times, higher costs, prone to bugs and issues and can mean unnecessary additional ongoing maintenance for admins and developers. In short, by adding the FSC managed package, less customisation is required. Many features in FSC are created to meet the needs of firms in the financial sector. FSC has a lot of industry-specific components and features that are available out-of-the-box and it can create an easier transition as firms grow and adapt to current climates.
Check out this Data Sheet to get a full view of the features and functionality.
For example, looking at features like Advisor Analytics in FSC, it has many pre-defined reports and dashboards that can help Advisors make informed decisions faster. These reports and dashboards can of course be customised further if required. Likewise, the Financial Accounts object comes with pre-defined record types for various types of financial accounts.
3 Key features to note why you should choose FSC over Sales cloud:
- The Household Data Model - Particularly important for wealth management firms. This model allows advisors to see all of the clients financially related connections in one place
- Action Plans are specifically great for meeting deadlines. Used to automate some repeatable tasks
- Advisor Analytics - To help advisors make informed decisions.
Sub-Verticals
Wealth & Asset Management Use Case
From a wealth management perspective, FSC provides deep functionality and insights into clients households, wallet share, portfolio optimization, life events tracking, financial goals and accounts. This type of easily accessible information enables the adviser to extend their insight to future generations and improve trust and loyalty with the family.
This ability to view and capture information across client networks, households, etc. in real-time is crucial. This is all made possible by FSC strong relationship intelligence and ‘Next Best Action recommendations, which are, of course, powered by Salesforce Einstein.
According to a salesforce report - 67% of modern investors said they prefer financial advisors who offer mobile apps and the latest interactive tools, and 68% said they trust their financial advisor’s judgement when he/she is regularly accessible when needed.
“Wealth management firms say their number one growth strategy is to make advisors more productive” [Salesforce]
Some of the key benefits to Wealth Management Firms include:
- Greater insights with Advisor analytics
- The ability to deliver personalised advice across all channels
- Collaboration - access with almost any device with internet or API enabled product
- Custom objects - Making it easy to track all financial information for clients and track goals.
- The needs-and-referrals component makes it easier for advisors to nurture and convert clients
- Robust marketing automation capabilities (social updates, key lifetime prompts)
- The Relationship builder and map (see below)
Insights & 360 View
One of the main benefits for Wealth Management firms is the ability to get full insights into their clients. There are many parts of FSC that help advisors do this, however, two features that are extremely important for this are Tracking Leads & Referrals and the Client Relationship Map.
-Leads & Referrals
In the Financial industry, it is very important for Advisors to keep track of leads and referrals. FSC includes many referral components to help advisors (and bankers) keep track of all their referrals. These referrals go through multiple stages from start to conversion and follow a Path. This path is similar to an opportunity. An opportunity and account is automatically created when a conversion happens.
Here is a basic layout of this path from Salesforce.
Combined with the relationship builder and map, advisors can get a full perspective of a client’s complete financial world as well as their full history tracking.
-Client Relationship Map
This is specifically designed with advisors in mind. Utilising the Client relationship map, advisors can get a detailed view of the customer’s personal network. Advisors can view each client’s primary household, (eg spouse, children) and other households (parents). With this map, advisors can also see lawyers, accountants, trusts and anyone else who contributes to a customer’s financial world.
Here is an example (from Salesforce) of ‘Rachel Adams’ in the Client Relationship Map. The map shows her relationship tree. It shows her primary household, Symonds household (her & her father) as well as related accounts and contacts. FSC provides a framework for accessing customer data in a richer context, and this is how. 
-Better Productivity with Advisor Analytics
It is no secret that analytics (reports & dashboards) empowers advisors to work more efficiently. When Advisors can make informed decisions they can better serve their customers. Some of the reports that come as part of the FSC package include; Financial Accounts with Household report, Relationship Management dashboard and Opportunities with Financial Accounts report. There are a lot of other reports which you can read more about here.
Combine Advisor Analytics, with Einstien AI predictions, a 360-degree view of your customer and easy collaboration/communication and it’s hard not to see serious improvements in the productivity of your advisors.
For more information on Financial Services Cloud and Wealth management, make sure to check out our post ‘How To Retain Assets After The Wealth Has Been Transferred To Younger Generations’ by our Sales Director, Lee Clark. You can also listen to the new episode of our podcast the Perspective with Lee Clark on Financial Services.
Insurance
Salesforce has stated “customer experience is the key battleground for insurance brands. Even in our very first State of the Connected Customer report, 68% of consumers said technological advancements would positively impact their relationships with insurance companies. Now, 53% of customers expect offers to always be personalised – up from 49% in 2019."
When it comes to the Insurance sector, insurers will know that every policyholder is unique and has different requirements and circumstances. FSC can help insurance companies cater to these individual needs. Utilising out-of-the-box dashboards and components, insurers can better understand their customers and immediately improve processes around quote production, policy renewals, risk modelling and claims management coverage.
A lot of insurance companies lack an overall view of their customers which results in a negative customer experience. Not only will customers be dissatisfied but outdated systems and frustrated customers can lead to high agent and support rep turnover. This can really affect overall productivity within an organization and mean additional occurring costs. By utilising the native data model with policy processes and customer profiles, insurance companies can empower support reps and agents with smart and easy collaboration tools.
Some of the benefits to Insurance companies include:
- Onboarding activity workflows
- Complete transactional journey
- ‘Next Best offer’ feature
- Predictive analytics
- Increased productivity among support reps
Banking
Banking and lending institutions are constantly competing against each other on customer experience levels, communication methods and accessibility across multiple devices. FSC makes it easier than ever to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction levels, as well as track and visualises customer relationships, prioritise referrals and streamline coordination with key stakeholders.
FSC also helps retail banks realise value faster. With out-of-the-box functionality such as a banking data model, financial account objects and rollups, cross-line-of-business referral management, and tools for needs assessments and task orchestration, agents can stay on top of customer needs and provide proactive service options whenever it is needed.
Leveraging Financial Services Cloud Einstein, agents and advisors have access to real-time predictions which proactively recommends the next best actions, and provides real-time answers to customer inquiries across any channel.
Some benefits for banking and lending firms utilising FSC:
- Make Next-level customer service standard
- Adapt to regulatory changes- in terms of lending, mortgages etc.
- Keep up and meet regulatory requirements and demands for commercial banking
- Automation and tracking for Commercial banking
- Increased system flexibility and speed to market
Example - Spar-Nord
Spar Nord wanted to move with the future of technology while continuing to be a ‘personal bank’. To find the perfect balance between digital and physical channels, they have utilised Salesforce Financial services cloud and their customer’s data to bring them personal and relevant interactions with their customers.
Some of their results included:
- 50% increase in targets for agents
- 360-degree view of customers and workers - productivity is now prioritised
- Happy staff who are empowered by FSC’s functionality
- QuickText has allowed them to answer questions in as little as two clicks
- Integrations with back-end infrastructure allow them to see a customer’s complete history
- Digitalising slow manual processes - Setting up meetings with customers is quicker & more efficient.
Installation.
Finally, FSC is installed as a managed package and is available on Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited editions. One to note: FSC requires Lightning Experience to operate, so Orgs that are still running Classic will not have accessibility. To learn more about installation, check this guide.
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