Their numbers are small, but more and more advisers are starting to see value in recording video commentary for use on their websites, as well as in communications with clients.
Simplifying video use for advisers is a new wrinkle in the business of Eric Clarke, president of Orion Advisor Services LLC, which provides an outsourced back-office support system and portfolio management platform to registered investment advisers and broker-dealers.
Even though most advisers still see video as a tool for the future, Mr. Clarke, whom I've known for a few years, always has been interested in applying new technology. He believes that advisers looking for innovative and more-effective ways to communicate with clients should consider using the medium now.
“The idea is that [advisers] can use this as a new touch point with clients, who might in turn share it with friends or potential prospects,” he said.
Orion, along with its partner companies, has spent $85,000 equipping a studio and now produces videos in conjunction with advisers for use in quarterly and other client reports. Through an agreement with Wistia Inc., a provider of business video-sharing and collaboration tools, the videos may be accessed by links and tags that Orion embeds in the advisers' printed or e-mailed materials.
These links, used by scanning “quick response” codes, are another example of his firm's being just a bit ahead of the crowd.
The square QR code boxes, which were developed in Japan in the early 1990s, are popping up all over the place. They are a type of next-generation bar code, holding significantly more data.
Many smart-phone models now come equipped with a QR code-reading program, which activates the device's camera. The user — in this case, the adviser's client — simply points the camera at a code box embedded in a report, and streaming video commentary directly related to the report begins playing.
That's how it works when everything is working. But as with most technology, there are a few catches. For one, since not all phones have QR readers, users must download and set up a code reader themselves. Second, there is no universal QR code standard yet, meaning that readers have to support many proprietary types of codes.
Lora Cecere, an industry analyst and partner at the Altimeter Group, has studied QR codes and said their widespread adoption is a ways off.
“There will be no actionable standards for five years,” she wrote in an e-mail, adding that she is seeing “lots of potential and experimentation, but most [companies] find that the lack of standards, adoption of smart phones, and the education process make QR codes an experiment.”
But as potentially significant as the codes may become, it's the use of video that holds immediate promise for advisers — at least in the RIA community, where there are fewer compliance restraints on its use than in the broker-dealer world.
Bob Jergovic, president of CLS Investments LLC, began using the Orion system in October to produce a weekly market update. His firm, a third-party investment manager, manages more than $6.3 billion in assets for more than 1,500 financial advisers.
“We floated it to some of our largest clients in September, and the response we got from them was overwhelming. They told us to give them more and on a regular basis,” Mr. Jergovic said.
“When we put a link on a statement where they can see my face or an individual adviser's face, it puts what we are writing about in perspective; it's just a much more powerful message,” he added.
To spread the video word, Orion will host a best-practices teleconference call in February for advisers who can't come to its offices and see the studio in person.
“We'll give them some tips and pointers on how to create their own videos,” Mr. Clarke said.
“Then, if they wish, they can send us the videos, we'll post them in Wistia and create the scan tags for them,”he added.
Another advantage of Wistia is its ability to provide video usage reports and other helpful stats to Orion and advisers, Mr. Clarke said.
Of course, Orion was not the pioneer of adviser video, so I got in touch with an early adopter, Thomas C. Scott, president of the RIA firm Scott Wealth Management Group Inc., who began posting videos in March 2007.
“There is no doubt, it's a great way to get in front of your existing clients and even prospects, but it is a big pain in terms of compliance” for registered reps, said Mr. Scott, who was affiliated with LPL Financial at the time he started using videos but has since sold his firm to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC.
“The good, honest advisers making use of video right now find themselves handcuffed. Having every freaking word looked at, reviewed and edited really slows down the process,” he said.
Additional information:
Here is a link to the most recent video market commentary by
Bob Jergovic of CLS Investments that was produced by Orion Advisor Services
For more information on Orion visit them online:
Orion Advisor Services LLC
Links to the free open source ZXing (short for Zebra Crossing) project readers for Android phones and the iPhone:
Barcodes, for iPhone,
Barcode Scanner, for Android
Here is a link to Microsoft's
Tag page or you can go to
http://gettag.mobi on your mobile phone browser.
Visit this page from Mobile-Barcodes.com for a list of
QR-Code Readers and links to their download pages as well as a list of mobile phone manufacturers and operating systems and their compatible readers (that list is to the lower right of the page).
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