As the new year approaches, it’s a good time to look back and evaluate what blog posts and topics have resonated most with our readers. It’s also a convenient way to get caught up on the top posts, if you missed them.

It is increasingly important for leaders in financial services firms to be well versed in technology so they can make informed decisions about buying vs. building technology solutions, choosing the right partners and, most significantly, realizing a positive outcome or return in a timely manner. With this in mind, I have assembled some key insights to help guide you to make better technology decisions for your company. 

The TicoonSales platform offers independent insurance advisors with powerful search and segmentation tools to help you easily access client information and organize that information to drive more sales opportunities and provide better client service. 

The successful financial advisor of the future will be a whole new breed of professional – a team player that is integrally connected to their clients’ financial lives, leverages technology to work flexibly and has systems and processes in place to ensure their clients’ interests are always paramount.

As financial services regulations continue to evolve, there is a clear trend towards increased disclosure. Advisors and firms are required to provide their clients with more information than ever before, and the result is a growing number of documents crossing advisors’ desks everyday. Ticoon’s document distribution tool enables advisors to send documents to clients quickly and easily, within a secure, firewall-protected environment.

As technology emerges as essential to being competitive in the 21st century, financial services businesses need a new way of thinking about their technology platforms – one that addresses growing regulatory compliance challenges while freeing up organizational resources and energy to focus on servicing clients and growing the business.

Users of the Ticoon platform can now get comprehensive product support and guidance online to help them drive the results they want in their business.

Your clients have dynamic lives and ever-changing needs.  In a competitive industry, it’s critical to demonstrate that you’re capable of keeping up with all aspects of your clients’ lives, and their evolving financial circumstances. 

As a financial advisor or insurance agent, managing your book of business and keeping in touch with your clients can be extremely time consuming. While there are many choices for contact management software in the marketplace, few are customized to the specific needs of financial professionals. TicoonSales provides you and your team with a single, easy to use solution to manage all your clients’ information for all business and financial product lines. 

Hackers are regularly in the news these days for attacks on large business and government websites. However, it’s not just large organizations that are being targeted. Financial advisors – and their clients – are the targets of regular hacking attacks as well. In this short guide to online security, we show you ways to protect your clients' security and privacy by protecting yourself.

Digital technology is not only transforming how we communicate and stay informed, it is also reinventing how we shop and purchase products and services – including financial products and advice. To better understand what lies ahead, let’s take a brief look at some industries that are further along in this digital transformation.

With innovations in financial technology comes a new set of lingo and terminology to describe new ways of doing old things. Because it can get confusing out there, we’ve compiled a list of key terms and definitions directed to business leaders, as technology talk in financial services is no longer something that can be relegated only to the IT department.

The Disruptor Array clarifies many important forces that are driving “creative destruction” in the economic systems and models that we have developed over the past decades and lays bare some of the implications we need to consider as business leaders in financial services.

Robo-advisors, a.k.a. automated portfolio management tools for retail investors, have arrived and they are poised to have a significant and, I would argue, largely positive impact on the investment business – both for advisors and investors.

Canada is well known around the world for its strong and highly regulated financial services industry. However, this reputation comes with numerous challenges and costs, as increasing regulatory oversight and compliance requirements have become more complex and multi-layered. As the industry struggles to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing regulatory and compliance environment, new technology tools and solutions are needed. 

While new client acquisition is often the focus of sales efforts, retention of and selling to existing customers has long been recognized as an effective growth strategy.

The PIMA Affinity 2020 Report does an excellent job of summarizing key demographic, technological and regulatory issues that business leaders in financial services and products distribution need to be aware of and addressing if they want to be thriving in the next five years. 

Michael Kitces' recent article provides an excellent overview of the challenges facing the financial technology ecosystem to provide a single view of the client and the sharing of client information across multiple stand-alone applications. This is our response.

Digital technology can be a powerful tool for serving and communicating with your clients. It can also be a risky place if you don’t take precautions to protect your clients’ privacy and security.

Through a data feed integration with FundSERV, advisors using the TicoonSales platform can now see all of their Segregated Fund (Seg Fund) investment accounts placed with any carrier.

Online social networking technologies are making it easier than ever before to stay connected and build engagement with one’s clients.

Client engagement is critical to any advisory practice because it supports not only the retention of your services over time, but also generates warm referrals – both of which are a potential source of significant growth in your book of business.

Rick Hyde, CEO of Ticoon Technology, describes three disruptive forces impacting the sales and distribution of financial products in Canada.

Ticoon's secure document exchange is designed specifically for the financial services and insurance industries. It enables advisors to share confidential information with their clients through a set of secure, interconnected portals. 

You’ve worked hard to win your clients’ trust and build your practice up to where it is today. But are you fully leveraging this hard work to take your practice to the next level? These 8 strategies will help you serve your clients even better AND grow your business at the same time.

Ticoon began working with RGF in 2005.  For RGF, the Ticoon solution brought much needed stability and accountability to the software development process, as well as a number of features and functionality that RGF has come to rely on.

TicoonSales has been upgraded to support new Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) requirements. 

Portal sites developed by individual product manufacturers haven’t proven to be the most effective engagement strategy for advisors and product distributors.

TicoonSales now offers a consolidated client-facing insurance report that brings together life insurance and living benefits policy information from multiple life carriers