Summary:
In this episode of MI Talk, Goshka Folda, host of MI Talk and Global Head of Research at ISS Market Intelligence, welcomes Ashley Wood, Managing Director at ISS MI, as a cohost. Together with special guest Rocco Benedetto, Head of US WMI Field Distribution at Invesco, they delve into discussions on distribution, the liquidity opportunity, sales support for ETF-focused advisers, segmentation, targeting the RIA channel, and more.
Subscribe to MI Talk, the podcast brought to you by ISS Market Intelligence, for monthly episodes featuring in-depth discussions with thought leaders on timely and relevant topics in the asset and wealth management industries.
Transcript:
Goshka: Welcome to MI Talk, the podcast series brought to you by ISS Market Intelligence. And thank you for tuning in. The focus of our discussions on this podcast, is the global retail financial services industry and its myriad verticals, being asset management, wealth management, life insurance, emergent fintech, banking, and so on. For more than three decades, ISS Market Intelligence and its predecessor companies have been passionate students of the business.
And our specialty on this podcast is to peek beneath the industry headlines, look under the hood, if you will, and try to really get at some important topics about the business. And we do so with the help of great experts. And do I have a line up for you guys today. We do create episodes, monthly or more often.
Actually. This is our second recording this January. So if you do enjoy, this episode of MI talk, please remember to subscribe to our podcast on your platform of choice. My name is Goshka Folda, I’m your host and the global head of research at ISS Market Intelligence. And today, we turn our focus to the US asset management industry, the world’s largest laboratory of asset management ideas.
As my good friend of mine used to say, and really, where we would like to focus today is the bottle, on the distribution front lines. I am very fortunate today as I get to step aside from, the hosting mic and appear in my favorite role of a listener. This is because my colleague, Ashley Wood, has graciously agreed to host the discussion with a very, very special guest today, Rocco Benedetto, from, Invesco.
Let me introduce Rocco and actually briefly and then pass the baton to Ashley. Rocco, is head of field sales for US wealth management intermediaries and is a member of senior distribution leadership team at Invesco. And we were just talking about Invesco being really, truly a global player. And of course, I’m here in Toronto, north of the border, and of course, a huge, huge presence by Invesco going many, many decades through its predecessor companies, including the storied, tri-mark in here in Canada.
He leads the field efforts to position Invesco as the frame of choice. And, he serves as the primary resource for financial professionals and strategic partners to help them make investment decisions and grow their businesses. Rocco joined Invesco when the firm combined with Oppenheimer funds in 2019, and during his story career, at Oppenheimer, Rocco held both executive leadership positions, senior executive positions, but started actually it was slightly to say, started on the front lines as a regional sales representative in the late 90s, which I’m sure, we’re so lucky, to know because it really affords in a very unique perspective on the business.
Rocco is very active on, very various, fora at, IMEA, distribution leadership council, investment company, institute, distribution, marketing, company. So I see, and I’m a big part of Rocco’s life as well. I don’t know where he finds the time to do all that. And finally, Rocco earned, the degree in finance from Saint John’s University and an MBA from New York University’s School of Business.
Rocco, we are absolutely so honored and delighted to have you join us for this discussion on MI Talk.
Rocco: I appreciate the introduction. Thank you.
Goshka: Rocco and Ashley. Ashley is a repeat guest hosts MI talk. The only, person to whom I have yielded this awesome power that I come with this mic. She’s managing director, ISS market Intelligence, and oversees the client engagement group.
In addition to managing, client relationships in the northern, and northeastern United States. Actually, is that sought after speaker at U.S conferences, a conference, conferences? She just wrapped up a, what I thought was a fantastic webinar at IMEA. She was very, very beloved by our clients who count on her to help them think through their distribution strategy and competitive positioning.
A little tidbit for our especially for our, which will delight our Canadian listeners, who are hockey fans, which means all Canadians. Is that actually was a star player on women’s ice hockey team at her alma mater, Williams College. What is not so delightful is that she’s a lifelong Boston Bruins fan, so Maple Leaf fans will have something to Alas, welcome Ashley and I’ll pass the mic to you.
Ashley: Thank you very much, Goshka. Look, we have our hockey. We’re not talking about the Patriots as much in New England here these days. So I guess there are parallels to our industry, right? These things sort of ebb and flow. Now, Rocco, thank you so much for joining us.
We have a lot of questions and topics to cover, so I’ll just get right into it. One of the biggest things I think, just to set the framework here is to talk about, really what we’re seeing in terms of opportunity on the sidelines. That continues to be a huge topic as we, you know, in ’22 and ’23 and as we enter ’24, sort of the liquidity opportunity, as we call it, huge amounts of opportunity sitting in cash money markets, ultra short sort of hyper liquid vehicles.
Many are obviously noticing this, trying to capitalize. What is the Invesco point of view in terms of how you ultimately get these investors back into a risk on mode? What are the appropriate solutions? What is sort of the Invesco how see you on that topic.
Rocco: Yeah. No thanks. Ashley. And, yeah, as you mentioned, there’s quite a bit of cash sitting on the money on the sidelines here.
And I think last number I happened to see was roughly about $6 trillion of, of cash sitting in money market funds. And again, it’s been no surprise to see that’s been happening. And obviously getting yields of more than five, 5.25% has been very attractive for and shareholders like we’ve been fortunate in Invesco. You know, we have a comprehensive platform that allows us to serve clients of all types and sizes, whether they’re looking for broad based ETFs, active private markets, or fully outsource solutions.
Again, we have offerings that fit the bill for those clients. Yeah, we are uniquely positioned to help clients navigate these opportunities in this environment across the entire portfolio because of our diversified investment platform. And again, we have different wrappers like ETFs, separate accounts and mutual funds. We do see many opportunities for our clients to capitalize on this market disruption to kind of really start to rethink their portfolio construction and really the benefit of what we’ve seen now in the last, I’d say, 6 to 8 months, which is kind of this reset of income in terms of the income generations, of fixed income, you know, whether it’s fixed income, mutual funds or fixed income ETFs. It’s been a very attractive space for for most investors that are going to continue to look for, for ways to supplement their income, as well as we allocate to some of these sectors that be maybe more resilient to elevated areas of inflation and market distress. And so, we have recently launched as an organization, a program platform called Portfolio Playbook, which has resonated very well with our clients.
And, you know, again, it’s been important because it’s really helped us put together a narrative on how clients should be rethinking, refreshing their overall portfolios. Because if you’ve seen in the last 12 to 18 months, clients need to look at their portfolios or their portfolios are probably out of balance. They may be overexposed in certain sectors of the marketplace, like equities, which least have done very well and maybe underexposed in some other areas like fixed income.
And so we look at this as a great opportunity for us to go out in market to help educate our clients. We do this through this platform called Portfolio Playbook, which is really about helping them think through portfolio construction. Rethink, refresh about how they are constructed, portfolios, leveraging the different asset categories, in terms of fixed income equities, but also doing it through the lens of what makes the most sense in terms of different wrappers that they have to choose from, whether it be ETFs, separate accounts, or mutual funds.
So yeah, that’s been a critical area of our focus. There has been a big demand for this type of education because again, I think clients and it’s been telegraphed out there is that they’re still sitting in, you know, on the sidelines and holding onto money market funds for the most part because of the yields. And again, we’re trying to help educate our clients about what else is out there to help them build a much more durable portfolio, especially in this new environment we find ourselves in.
Ashley: Yeah, it’s interesting you say that. I mean, and money markets is a massive number, but it’s I’d argue it’s even more than that, right? When you look at CVs and and cash and ultra short and all these other pieces, all roads do, do seem to lead back to education in today’s world. And that narrative, I think, of, how do you help educate advisors on how to educate investors?
Right? On sort of risk on and what the optimal allocation is that that makes a ton of sense. Is that available out of curiosity, digitally as well? I assume that that playbook takes a center position in all of the face to face conversations. But how else is that being delivered?
Rocco: Yeah, no, we do actually, in terms of, you know, depending on how clients we want to meet our clients, where they where they are in terms of if they want to obviously consume this information, from a digital, footprint.
We do that through, through, you know, digital means whether it’s our website, you know, leveraging that has been critically important for our success. And we’ve seen a big uptake again from clients. There’s definitely a thirst for this type of knowledge and this type of insight in market. And so we definitely supplement our digital capabilities with our what I call in, you know, in-person, live, communication.
We’ve hosted quite a bit of webinars with clients, around this topic. And part of the topic is really about, you know, portfolio playbook is keeping it alive around, you know, how on different market regimes, how should investors advisors think about allocating, their clients, assets and to different categories, in the marketplace. So it definitely has been something that’s where I was doing very well.
And we want to make sure that we are widely available, with all of the needs in, in market, both digital as well as in human and human interaction.
Ashley: Yep. Makes sense. That’s the way of the world these days. Now, switching gears a bit, because we have a lot of topics to cover, Invesco is doing a lot of really interesting things.
I don’t think I could talk to you and not bring up ETF distribution and the success that you’ve had in that space. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, what’s working there from a distribution standpoint. There’s obviously a huge spotlight on active ETFs in particular right now. What what’s working from a coverage standpoint?
On the distribution side, there’s a lot of debate around generalist versus specialist in this space. So could you just talk a little bit about the, Invesco strategy and point of view here?
Rocco: Yeah. This is, quite a bit to unpack there. Obviously, as you know, we are one of the larger, players in this space, and thankfully so.
And I think it starts out with, our clients are central to everything that we do here. So today we serve clients who have a wide range of investment objectives, preferences, time horizons, risk tolerances, and, look, we’re in a great position to help them offer choice, to help them reach their their investment objectives here. And so look ETFs there’s no question has been the vehicle of choice.
From a portfolio construction perspective. If you take a look at overall flows, I mean, the industry last year I think finished off at roughly about $650 billion in net new flows, a bit off of the 2021 high of $1 trillion of net new flows, but still very healthy in terms of overall flows going into the space here.
And so, look, we had a terrific quarter, as you mentioned in flows. And you know, as I referenced before, our success is really a triple to kind of what I call a team of team approach. I think that, you know, the ETF business or just any business that you get into, having this team of team concept makes the most sense.
So we have here at Invesco alongside our generalist consultants, wholesalers out in the marketplace, we have a great team of ETF specialists that work alongside that journalist team. And their job, again, is really to help us further educate our clients about ETFs and how they fit into our overall client portfolios. So part of that remit obviously is out there traveling with our clients, doing joint meetings.
We do webinars, we do, client events with our ETF specialist. But again, it’s been critically important to have this generalist specialist team because look, we’ve got a wide variety of different ETF strategies and market at 250 plus ETFs is a lot to remember. So again the ETF specialists are really critically important to help us drive, the flows into our ETF and help educate our clients about our ETF platform.
You know, I think the critical thing here is we all are tied to the same string. From a I guess we I call it compensation or initiative or focus. And, you know, in other words, you know, compensation is really aligned around both the qualitative and quantitative metrics. Look, we obviously look at flows as a critical KPI in terms of how well we’re doing in this space.
Are we getting positive to the industry as a positive flows? Are we getting our fair share of the flows in the overall industry? So that’s obviously critically important for our success. But what we also do too is, you know, we take a look at the engagements that we you in this general, field sales organization has with our specialist teams and what we found around, you know, measuring those engagements is that and it should not be a surprise here.
Is that the more the field sales organization leverages the ETF specialist, the greater the flows are with that specific region. It’s really about deepening those client relationships and doing that. When you have you know, we always talk about this. It takes a village. You can’t do it alone. You know, we got depth and breadth of capabilities across the different wrappers.
You know we’ve got ETF support accounts, mutual funds as well as private markets. So there’s a lot for that generalists to know. And so that that specialist team is so critically important to really helping us know getting dry flows for these type of capabilities here. So it’s really about the deepening as well as broadening our client relationships, in market here.
So, that that tandem has been a tremendous, you know, accomplishment for us in terms of how we best leverage both the generalist and the specialist, as well as the ETFs market.
Ashley: That’s great to hear. And I imagine you I would imagine you heavily socialized those stats on the on the ROI of the team based approach and that that breeds further adoption.
Rocco: We do. I mean, that’s something that I’m a big believer on transparency. And I think you need to have that transparency. And look, I think it’s a whole story. You want to get to the narrative as to like why. So why is someone not using for example, a specialist team, you know, is it is it because they don’t have the capacity, is it that individual, person that they may be the don’t see eye to eye with?
So it really gives us a good sense of how we best leverage the team. And again, I think the overall industry has a capacity issue. And so our industry is very complex. We have a capacity issue overall. And so this team of team concept makes the most sense in terms of delivering the firm to the right clients to help and deepen and broaden relationships.
Ashley: That’s great. No, that’s great perspective. Thank you. One other big topic. I mean, there’s many, but one of the bigger ones that we often hear about on the ETF side of the fence is this concept of cannibalization. Many firms, and I’m sure you all are one of them, are grappling with, you know, do I need to play in this space?
Am I going to lose that asset altogether if I don’t have the ETF products, or am I going to, you know, cannibalize my own existing mutual fund lineup? It’s that sort of risk return, trade off in its purest form. What are you seeing at Invesco in terms of flows? Are you garnering ETF assets largely from new advisors who weren’t using Invesco in any other capacity?
Are you seeing a high degree of cannibalization? Can you just talk through a little bit about, really what you’ve seen to date in that space, given the ETF growth you’ve experienced?
Rocco: Yeah, I mean, I think actually this maybe speaks to the thought I wanted to get to just before I, which is really about this misperception about ETFs, low margin products therefore not profitable.
And you know again our at Invesco we have a our platform runs the range of you know what I call low fee products all the way to high fee type of capabilities. And so to me, the important part about the ETF business is driving both organic growth revenue. And that’s critically important to driving, you know, organic or so-called profitable growth for the organization.
So scaling this business is so critically important. Again, it’s why you have this team of teams. But also thinking through product development, thinking through, you know, how do you really drive flows into this space. And it really starts out with clients right. Client choice. And I think we’re seeing it over and over again. There’s no question it always comes up around cannibalization.
Like, you know what happens at Invesco here. If, you know, we start to cannibalize our our mutual fund business. And to me it’s really about goes back to what are we trying to accomplish and solve for for our clients. Right. Clients one choice I think what we’ve seen over the years is that, you know, based on their goals and objectives, that in certain for certain clients, the ETF wrapper offers a better choice for maybe taxable accounts because of the tax efficiency properties and maybe funds, for example, have done very well for the more what I call tax deferred accounts.
DC type of platforms. And so again, we’ve seen a mix of both of that that said, you know, we continue to have this, this debate conversation around cannibalization. And again, from our viewpoint, is that our objective here at Invesco is that we want to grow our wallet, share with our clients. We want to do it in a wrapper agnostic way.
And so we would prefer to cannibalize ourselves as opposed to having our competitors cannibalize us. And so I think it’s critically important because I think sometimes people get caught up with that. And it’s really about the, you know, you got to put the client in the center of that conversation about what a client’s what their what is, what are their preferences, why they choosing some vehicles over others.
And and again, if you’ve got a great array of strategies across all of the different wrappers out in the marketplace, you can best serve that client and help gain while share and build loyalty with that, with that client. So that’s kind of the way we think about it, is that, you know, it depends on how you view cannibalization.
I kind of look at it as a great opportunity to cross-sell and upsell within the platform. Long as you have depth and breadth of capabilities, others may use that as how you cannibalizing your strategies. But again, I rather cannibalize our own strategies as opposed to having our competitors cannibalize our strategies.
Ashley: Yeah, that’s a great way to put it.
And the associated loyalty and retention rates that come with, you know, getting them into the right, sort of the right wrapper, the right solution at the right time. One other question on the ETF space before we switch gears is just around. You made a lot of comments around net health and profitability, and perhaps some of the misconceptions in that space as it pertains to ETFs.
But can you make just a couple comments broadly around how you’re thinking about that from a from a compensation perspective? Right? All roads do continue to lead back to the to the bottom line as we all know and firm profitability. So what framework are you using? Just at a broad level. And in terms of how you think about that for incentive and compensation planning?
Rocco: Yeah. No. Look, I think I think it starts out with I think the critical thing is you’ve got to have all of the key stakeholders in the organization, supporting obviously this business. So you think about distribution and you think about marketing, you think about investment, you think about finances. So we work closely with all of our partners throughout the organization to ensure that we’ve got the right plan in place to grow this business, right, to grow it, to grow business, business in a very profitable way.
So the way we look at it through the lens of compensation is that, you know, because it is that float. So you think about it from the standpoint of like you’re looking at compensated net flows. And we built a model at Invesco that is inclusive of the revenue that’s generated off our net flows, which I think is critically important.
With our business, again, we’re blessed that we’ve got depth and breadth of capabilities. We kind of have the different range of low fee to high fee products based on client demand and where the markets are. So a part of that input is, is obviously the revenue side. The other part of the input is obviously are we getting our fair share of the flows, which is really about, market share, you know, are you punching above your weight in market share?
And so that is a measure that we look at very critically. And so that’s another kind of input into the compensation mix is that, hey, are we growing because the industry is growing or are we growing faster than the overall industry. We obviously want to make sure that we are growing much faster than the overall industry. So that’s a big input, around the compensation.
So combination of, you know, flows. Are we getting our fair share of the flows, the revenue that’s associated with those flows. What does that make up, look like? And then, you know, our asset base because, you know, you still have to defend the overall asset base is important. Those are kind of the inputs that go into the compensation plan, overall.
and part of that too, is I talked about that’s the kind of the quantitative piece and then the qualitative pieces and the engagements that we have with our special teams. As I mentioned before, what we found is that when there’s high engagement with the specials team, it does lead to better flows, deepening relationships with clients. And so we do incentivize on a qualitative measure in terms of how they are leveraging their specialist team in market to help deepen those relationships.
I think, again, a combination of the qualitative and quantitative is critically important to really growing this business and to being a very profitable business for investing.
Ashley: That’s great. Yeah. And obviously the wholesaler understanding of the components and the makeup. But certainly that specialist engagement being a piece of that is, is something we’re seeing more of as well in our data.
Rocco: And one thing to ask, I think, which is so critical for a lot of folks, I get calls from a lot of our competitors, right? Like just in terms of like, it’s not as transparent as mutual funds are tracking the business. And there’s a big commitment that’s been it has to be made there on the transparency.
And we did that. We did that. Invesco is really investing in the data. The data is there. You have to kind of stitch it together. It does take a village to kind of stitch that data together. But that’s another, you know, area of investments for organizations is that if there’s transparency, is there you got to put a lot of work into it to to gather that and pass it out to, to your field sales organization, because that’s that’s a critical part of it.
We’re all used to how the mutual fund business was, was built, right. Full transparency. You get to see the immediate gratification ETFs are a little bit more nuanced. So you know, it’s gotten so much better in terms of the level of transparency in this space. But I think that’s where I think most firms struggle, is that you have to put a lot more resources there to get it right. Is that infrastructure and the data that comes with it?
Ashley: Yep. Makes total sense. The so this the concept of transparency and work around the data I think is a is a perfect transition into the next topic I wanted to ask you about which is hybrid wholesaling. Now Invesco and formerly Oppenheimer, you all have been sort of legacy adopters of the hybrid wholesaler model.
Many have followed suit. Right. We see in our data, you know, two increases in hybrid headcount over the last, you know, two or 3 or 4 years. I would argue just anecdotally, there are mixed results. And the efficacy of some of these groups is, is a little bit unproven in some cases. Right. Some firms are doing pilot approaches.
Some firms have jumped in all in with both feet. what is your take on this? I think you have a unique point of view really, That’s very valuable. Just given the longstanding commitment that that Invesco and formerly Oppenheimer has had to the to the hybrid model. But can you share with our, our listeners just your, your point of view around this?
How do you measure ROI? What type of, skillset are you looking for? When you’re, you know, putting someone into this hybrid position, any comments on that? I think it would be extremely valuable for me.
Rocco: Yeah, I think this has been a an age old topic that I can’t tell you how many times and different events keeps coming up about hybrids.
And yeah, the validity of a hybrid, consultant wholesaler out in the marketplace. I mean, look, I think the overriding catalyst here is the pace of growth in our business today, which really demands, I call it greater capacity. And scale, through additional team members. So again, it’s no dissimilar to what we see with our best clients, right.
Our best clients over the years. Right. They they’ve gone from sole practitioner to, you know, delivering holistic wealth management through a team of team approach. And it’s no dissimilar to our business and our industry in on the asset management side. So look over the last several decades, our hybrid model has served us well in both deepening and broadening client coverage.
So when I double click on deepening, you know, what does that really mean? You know, from that perspective, the team works alongside our traditional consultants and deepening relationships in markets with clients that have what I call largest concentration of assets. You know, we call it the mega teams. So these are the advisors that have, you know, $500 billion of assets.
We want to kind of mimic what they look like in terms of this team of team approach, where it’s kind of a divide and conquer. So they work very, very closely with the traditional person that’s in person in the field. They just do it at, at the, at the hybrid level. So they may be working with different client segments, maybe doing some additional prospecting for some parts of our business, in other parts of doing some servicing.
But again, to me, it’s really about that orchestration with the traditional person that’s in the market, to help deepen those client relationships. And then also from a broader perspective, you know, we we’ve had quite a bit and we’ve had great success over the last couple of decades. Look, this 100,000 buying units out in the marketplace. And those are, you know, what I call advisor teams.
You’ve got on average, you’re going to have you know, we’ve got 100 people facing off for clients. You know, most organizations have anywhere from 20 to up to 100. The math doesn’t work. And so what you have to kind of figure out is, okay, so who’s going to be touching which clients you want to make sure you’re deepening those relationships?
The most important clients that have the assets and have the capacity, you know, aligns very well with your capabilities, but you also have clients that you want to engage with, but you just don’t have the personnel. And so again, I think that’s where hybrids have helped. Help us achieve that objective of broadening out our kind of client base, bring the new clients into our platform.
The next segment of clients that are outside what I call large traditional wealth centers or larger broker dealers. And so, again, I think that’s been a big part of our success over the years. And that’s the reason why that, you know, since I’ve started out in the space, we’ve gone from having, what, 2 or 3 hybrids, two decades ago to now, roughly about 30, 30 hybrids, in our current, construct.
So, look, I think it’s been critically important. It served us well in terms, again, both deepening and broadening client relationships. The other benefit that we have for hybrids as well, which I think helps us, is really it’s been a terrific training ground for our traditional external consultants. So you think about it, it’s folks that are coming off the desk that want to go to a what I call traditional external, consultant.
They would go to a hybrid role and really it helps them really kind of figure out, you know, what it takes to run a successful business. Right? They’ve got a they’ve got a budget that they use for travel. Like, what’s the best way to use that drought, that travel budget to help us get deep and broad, broaden client relationships.
You know, they’re out there with client segments. They have their own client segment, to, to cultivate. And so it really gives them that skill set that is needed to to help them kind of get to that next level of being a traditional consultant. So again, it is serve this very well in terms of bench strength and also retention of our sales desk.
Because if you think about it, that sales desk is so critically important to our success native lifeblood. And so as they continue to progress in their careers, it gives them another avenue to pursue in, in helping kind of develop that skillset of being a great traditional external consultant.
Ashley: So and that was my next question was going to be around retention.
And, and you know, we do see in our data internally, with, with the internal role in particular, that that’s been a very interesting topic because it’s evolved, you know, post-COVID especially, you could argue that role has evolved very rapidly. But we do see in our data that the levels of satisfaction in that role do tend to take a pretty sharp dip after 2 to 3 years as they’re looking for, you know, opportunities to advance.
So it sounds like predominantly though for that hybrid position, you’re hiring internally and the retention and just any other comments around sort of recruitment and retention on that.
Rocco: Yeah. Look, I think, I think this kind of goes back to like we’ve, we’ve had gosh, I think if you go back, we probably it’s probably about a 90% of our hybrid have come from within a probably more like 95% of come from our sales desk.
And again, it’s it has served us well in terms of really kind of getting that next up and coming crop of folks that want to be externals from our sales desk and really helping them hone their craft, being a good external consultant, because to me, that craft of being an external consultant is kind of quasi running a business, right?
You think about it, you got your set of clients, you’ve got a budget, and your job is to ensure that you’re using that budget wisely. You’re using your time wisely, and then all of the firms resources wisely to really grow the business. And so, you know, to me that that’s a great training ground for those internals that aspire to be an external consultant.
So it really has helped us tremendously in terms of retaining that top talent from a sales desk perspective. It also has been critically important for our externals in terms of retaining talent, because it’s another resource. If you think about it, this kind of goes back to like where we’ve been more and more. This team of team approach allows us to better, you know, deepen and broad client relationships.
And if you think about it, for that external persons that they have another partner to help them bring in new business, or cultivate existing business. So, you know, that has really served us well on multiple fronts in terms of, again, the next crop of folks, the next generation, helping them to aspire to be great external consultants. But even our current external consultants, it’s giving them another resource to help them with their business as they look to grow it.
Ashley: Yeah, that’s a great point from the from the external point of view as well. Now I’ll wrap up with just one closing question a little bit cookie cutter, but have to get your take on it as you think ahead to, you know, the rest of this year and beyond, what are the top, you know, 2 or 3 focus areas that that you’re most keyed in on in the months and years ahead?
Rocco: Yeah. I mean, like, I’ve got, I’ll say top. Yeah. It’s a top three for, for my team outside of what I call driving our numeric goals, organic growth, revenue growth. Those are critical objectives for us. But in addition to that, I think number one, and we just talked about this was talent management, right? Talent management to me is critically important.
We got to get it right. You know we’re in the people business. So you know I spend all my time, thinking through how do we attract and retain top talent. And so the things that we’ve talked about in terms of increasing promotion, we look at very closely retention rates, diversity of our talent, to really enhance some of the, the overall, experience that we have with both our internal sales desk as well as our external is, is critically important to me.
So that is our number one objective is continue to be talent management, you know, how do we continue to invest in our people? So that that takes a takes a lot of work. We work closely with our different partners throughout the organization, specifically HR, to ensure that we’re meeting our goals and objectives. They’re, number two is really about scaling our services more efficiently.
As I mentioned before, capacity is an issue for our industry. And, you know, we’re we’re spending time exploring, and hopefully implementing this kind of what I call ways that we can enable our folks to leverage technology to help prospect and serve clients more efficiently, and effectively. So, you know, peeking around the corner in terms of, you know, we’ve done partnerships with fintech companies, we continue to build up that capability internally as well.
And again, a really our way of helping solve this high tech, high touch approach. And there is actually a kind of a spectrum of that, you know, clients, they like the high touch approach in certain cases. Some like the high tech high touch approach and and in all cases, they just want a high tech approach, you know, in terms how do you how can they engage with us in more of a digital fashion? So we’re spending a lot of time thinking through the entire ecosystem. And really the premise for on that is how do we scale our overall service offerings more efficiently out in the marketplace? And in the last part, that, is top of mind for us is this kind of concept of being the CEO of their business and for our external consultancies, you know, developing, you know, business scorecards that help our externals think like a CFO.
You know, getting more timely information for them to they can make better informed decisions in terms of how they can run a profitable business. So constant education around that is top of mind for us. And again, critically important for our success in 2024.
Ashley: Rocco, thank you so much for joining. That’s such valuable insight. Thank you for your time. I will hand it back to Goshka for just a couple closing comments.
Goshka: Thank you Rocco, thank you, Ashley. Rocco, you’re welcome back any time. Just, fond of knowledge and, boy, Rocco, I thought it was pretty quotable, but, you know, team of teams. And it takes a village and capacity issue. I don’t know, I made four pages of notes, so I’m going to steal some of those, Rocco. Thank you so much. You both have given us a lot to think about clearly, in an industry that large. And, as Rocco pointed out, with some capacity constraint to really engage all the advisors there on the front lines, you have to really have a very sharp distribution game. And, many, many competitors are buying for the business.
I love the point that Rocco made about, you know, it’s not about making a decision who’s, you know, about cannibalizing yourself or not, with ETFs or mutual funds or SMEs or active ETFs, but it’s really, you don’t want anybody else to grab that market share. And I think that’s a really or wallet share, that’s a really critical point.
So thank you both for helping our listeners, think through, this, this critical topic. And that is a wrap for us in this episode, I encourage our listeners to come back and join us in the coming months as we have more, exciting topics and guests, lined up. As always, I encourage you to ping us about any ideas or topics that you would like for us to tackle on this podcast.
You know, I’m, pretty much an open book. I’ll talk about anything related to this business, the great passion of my life. So please do, let us know. And, with that, I’m going to thank, our guests again and thank our listeners on behalf of ISS Market Intelligence. Thank you.
About the series:
MI Talk, a podcast series brought to you by ISS Market Intelligence (MI), delivers global coverage of developments in the asset management, wealth management, insurance, and distribution industries. Each episode features ISS MI’s experts in conversation about topical issues, trends, and developments that are shaping the market intelligence landscape, specifically, and global financial services industry more broadly. Financial services professionals focused on funds, annuities, insurance, mortgages, and related areas will find MI Talk particularly helpful in staying abreast of what’s of import across the industry.