Let me set the scene: We’re sitting in a stunning ballroom inside a beautiful historic hotel across the street from Central Park in New York City. 

In the audience, an impressive group of executives, compliance leaders, program managers, and marketers from 60 leading asset management, wealth management, property and casualty, life insurance, and banking firms ready themselves to learn what’s new and what’s next in the industry. Among them are thought leaders from and industry executives from New York Life, BlackRock, J.P. Morgan Chase, Mass Mutual, Oppenheimer, and Ameriprise Financial. 

There’s a quiet buzz in the room, which dulls when the lights dim. The stage comes alive as Hearsay’s Senior Manager of Customer Success, Elizabeth Vasconez, and Director of Solutions Consulting, Devin Stevens, make their way into the spotlight and greet the crowd. Then, with a passing high-five, they pass the mic to Hearsay CEO Mike Boese. 

Setting the tone for 2024 Hearsay Summit

After welcoming everyone, Mike expressed awe at the resilience firms have shown throughout the last year. He highlighted the impressive progress the industry has made in embracing digital transformation while navigating back-to-back crises—from inflation to political unrest—all in a volatile regulatory environment.

Mike challenged the audience to proactively anticipate and embrace the future changes that will need to be made in order to stay ahead. He emphasized thinking through the impact of AI as it continues to evolve and the need to prepare agents and advisors to meet the inevitable challenges head-on. Then, he called Alex Falls, Hearsay’s Chief Product Officer, to the stage to talk about Hearsay’s own evolution.

Hearsay’s product philosophy and innovations take center stage
Big screens to the left and right of Alex displayed a photo of Felix Hayes—a fictitious financial firm program leader who represents all of us. Like everyone in the room, Felix has lofty 2024 business growth goals to tackle while supporting a diverse team.

This year, he’s focused on three key words: activate, guide, and transform:

• activating all users to create more value, 
• providing the right guidance to optimize behaviors and 
• leveraging the Hearsay’s partnership to drive transformation. 

Multiple product demos showcased how Hearsay product features will help streamline Felix and his team’s path to success—turning all users into great sellers.

A few highlights include:

• Allowing users to leverage Hearsay in more places, with publishing, insights, and automation available outside of our application, like within your CRM.
• Delivering innovation around content and publishing, such as intelligent modification and personalized campaigns.
• Surfacing strategic, tailored guidance—such as tips on the next best action to take to move deals down the sales funnel

We also learned about specific product innovations rolling out this year.

Hearsay Relate updates include rolling out a slew of new compliance features to help firms mitigate risk in the face of ever-changing regulations. A number of new productivity-boosting tools will also help streamline and simplify compliant text marketing. New and upcoming features and functions include TCPA support tools, automatic call recording and transcription, admin and advisor-created message templates, and administrator drip texts.

Hearsay Social is expanding to effectively support all levels of social selling mastery. Embedded social tools, more robust mobile functionality,  and refreshed planning tools will help your ‘social skeptics’ embrace the business growth social media can bring while also equipping your social power users with all the tools they need to thrive. New and upcoming features and functions include profile web pages, listings integration, a fully refreshed calendar, and enhanced social scheduling tools.
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After seeing what product innovations are on the horizon, we pivoted to big-picture thinking.

Thought starters sparked ‘aha’ moments

To prime everyone for open-minded learning, Cory McCrudden, the Managing Director of Wealth and Asset Management at EY, shared predictions on how AI will impact financial services in the coming years and challenged audience members to think about what the future of AI looks like in their world.

Cory anticipates that by 2026:

• Advisors will leverage AI to dramatically expand their digital marketing footprint. Successful advisors will use gen AI to expand marketing efforts, save time, and get more mileage out of existing content.
• Advisors will offer products and services tailored to individual clients. Leading advisors will use gen AI to generate real-time client profiles that include interests, behaviors, and life stages. Then, they’ll input internal and client-provided data into an AI model to identify opportunities to tailor services with more personalized products. 
• Talent will quickly become more experienced and productive. Advisors will use gen AI to help answer complex and time-consuming questions about markets, investments, and regulations.

In closing, Cory encouraged firm leaders to embrace AI and to get curious. With the right mindset and willingness to learn by trial and error, she believes we’re on the cusp of embracing AI to help organizations become more efficient, productive, and personalized at scale.

Next, Matt Repking, the Financial Services and Insurance Vertical Leader at LinkedIn took the stage to share “Top LinkedIn member trends you need to know.” The goal of his thought starter was to help the audience deepen their understanding ofLinkedIn members to help them connect in meaningful ways that are likely to inspire conversion.

Much like the financial industry, LinkedIn’s platform is built on a foundation of trust. Audiences trust LinkedIn far more than any other social platform—and 31% of users trust LinkedIn to offer personal financial advice.

Other key metrics he highlighted include:

• 26% of LinkedIn members find video content valuable (compared to 22% on YouTube, 18% on TikTok, and 15% on Instagram and Facebook)
• More than two-thirds of LinkedIn members say “becoming wealthy or financially independent” is a life goal and 1 in 4 consults with a financial expert at least monthly
• LinkedIn members are ready to buy financial services products and services in the next year—43% stocks, mutual funds, or EFTs; 23% annuities; 30% brokerage accounts; 39% retirement accounts
• Compared to other social platforms, LinkedIn has the most members with $100K+ investable assets
  

Matt’s data illustrates how building an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy lets you tap into incredible business growth opportunities. This is especially true when you consider that LinkedIn offers access to a high-quality, receptive audience that helps you build valuable brand impressions. When run in parallel with Sales Navigator, LinkedIn can generate even more growth. In fact, a top 5 firm generated 294% in new client revenue thanks to Navigator.

Prepped for growth, Summit takes flight

After the opening session, the ballroom doors opened, and attendees spilled out into the hallway—making their way to breakout sessions, panels, strategy sessions, and workshops. With fresh ideas in mind, the audience was primed and ready to dive into the many new strategies and tactics presented by a wide range of financial services leaders. Over the next two days, 30 Hearsay customers took the stage to share their stories, advice, best practices, and even some lessons learned the hard way. We’ll share some key moments from their sessions in our next post!