The importance of innovation and developing new solutions that take advantage of data, artificial intelligence, natural language generation, and new delivery platforms has never been more important. Customer expectations demand that financial service firms continue to focus on delivering advanced technologies that support their desire to have access to their wealth information when, where, and how they want. The current pandemic has highlighted and accelerated that need – financial service firms cannot currently rely on in-person transactions to interact with their clients.

While there are numerous innovation trends that one could highlight, I would like to focus on two innovations that are front and center of innovation at First Rate:

1. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
2. Natural Language Generation

1. Application programming interfaces (API)

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are nothing new – they have existed for quite some time. What is new is how APIs are used. They have grown up from being an internal tool to a tool that is used both inside and outside a company. First Rate’s next generation of APIs are being built to serve customers, partners, and employees by helping to minimize the disconnect between data and information that exists for many organizations. These APIs allow one computer program to be used by another computer program, which leads to the streamlining of processes and avoids developers having to recreate the same code each time an action is desired. Once in place, this next generation of well-written APIs will increase the flexibility, scalability, and speed to market of any organization and allow them to deliver an enhanced user experience where new features can be easily implemented. Last but not least, APIs have allowed us to focus on what WE do best and to partner and integrate with other best-of-class solution providers to deliver exactly what wealth managers need to serve their clients.

2. Natural language generation

Natural language generation is a form of artificial intelligence that extracts meaning and context from Word and PDF documents, emails, and vast amounts of unstructured data. Today, wealth professionals spend an average of two to five hours preparing for each client interaction, scanning various reports and bulletins in order to extract key content. Imagine a technology that was able to scan client reports and bulletins and automatically extract meaning and context – natural language generation is that technology. First Rate is working to develop and introduce natural language generation into client reporting. Early studies have shown that recent advancements in natural language generation can reduce client interaction preparations by twenty to forty percent. A significant efficiency and effectiveness win for your client-facing wealth professionals.

The future is now and First Rate is ready.

If you would like to learn more about the different innovations happening at First Rate, please reach out to your client service representative!