President of Broadridge Canada speaks out on growing AI opportunity, risk of 'spaghettification', and more
Late last month, Karin Yorfido was officially announced as president of Broadridge Canada. And in ascending to the role previously held by Michael Dignam, she’s feeling that peculiar sense of excitement that washes over many a leader on the verge.
“Mike had a longstanding career at Broadridge, spanning over 40 years. That’s immense and really intimidating in a way,” says Yorfido (pictured above). “He’s built up this business in a way that I can only aspire to do as I follow in his footsteps.”
She’s stepping in during an exciting time for Broadridge, whose footprint as a wealthtech provider runs the gamut from the smallest to the largest financial institutions. The space is facing change on all fronts, she says, with regulatory updates, rising digital requirements, and escalating needs across products and segments.
“I’ve been in the financial services industry for more than 25 years on both the business and tech side,” Yorfido says. “To have the opportunity to help our Canadian clients and guide our direction is very exciting for me, and our teams that I’m working with.”
A ‘spaghetti’ of wealthtech apps?
With the rise of ChatGPT and other AI-enabled tools, including predictive analytics and smart language tools, she says Broadridge’s clients across Canada are being empowered to access and leverage data differently. Having those capabilities within reach, she says, is allowing firms to tap value from their business in unprecedented ways.
“What we see in the industry is a press towards straight-through processing,” Yorfido says. “AI and tools like AI can help simplify reconciliation by taking away manual processes in checks and balances. Our clients are benefiting significantly by automating those areas.”
AI is also helping advisors personalize their efforts at client service and financial literacy. Broadridge’s AdvisorStream tool, she stresses, helps advisors publish content that’s targeted to their clientele, then collect data on how they engage with it. With that data, advisors can sharpen their aim, providing even better products and services to their clients.
“The challenge we see organizations struggle with is incorporating these technologies into regular workflows, as opposed to having them as sideline tools,” Yorfido says. “We’re seeing a proliferation of apps and tools for advisors … the more apps and data they take on, the greater the chance they’ll have a spaghetti of desktop applications. What we’re trying to do is ensure the advisor experience is streamlined, so that more apps and tools doesn’t mean more work for advisors to navigate between those tools.”
Cyber fortresses for digital gold
In the latest edition of its Digital Transformation in Wealth Management Report, Broadridge found wealth industry leaders across North America, EMEA, and APAC are planning to ramp up their data analysis and visualization investments by 30%. Leaders in Canada, she says, are projecting the same trajectory.
“Data is like gold; it’s currency, it's valuable. Financial institutions have enormous amounts of data on everything from our transaction processing to our interests, our goals and objectives for saving, and for investing in the future,” she says. “That data can be harvested in a way that it couldn't be before, and applying AI and predictive analytics on top of it can help financial institutions better understand our future behaviour – not just what we like today, or what our KYC tells us we should be investing in, but what we’re likely to be interested in in the future.”
While financial firms have an opportunity to tailor products and services to clients’ specific needs, Yorfido says large enterprises should also be wary of redundancy and confusion from having multiple data locations. To create a superior client experience, she says firms should be ruthless about ensuring their data is streamlined and consistent all throughout.
Broadridge’s report also found wealth leaders are planning a 29% increase in cybersecurity spend over the next two years. Canadian firms are making that a priority as well, she says, as online, self-service, and data-driven activities become more the norm.
“Financial institutions and wealth firms understand that credibility and trust across the market is underpinned by the need to safely protect their client data,” Yorfido says. “We’ve seen so many regulatory rules come out around how data can be used … large enterprise systems need to provide a fortress of security to protect those cyber aspects of data.”
With the merging of IIROC and the MFDA into the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO), Yorfido expects changes to operational and processing requirements – and by extension, technology – will come trickling down across registrant firms. On the advisor side, she expects digitization and personalization will continue to be central themes, as well as enabling consistent views of products and client relationships throughout their lifecycle.
“I recently read interesting industry statistics that show the importance of hearing from your advisor directly, and how it positively influences client-advisor relationships,” she says.
“I think overall, technology is an enabler, and we’ll see a trend towards firms learning how to best use technology to enable the customer experience, achieve operational efficiencies, and address the regulatory changes that are ahead of us.”
