Welcome to “Show Me Your Stack,” a series from Financial Planning in which we interview those who deliver financial advice to learn what tools they rely on to make it happen. Rising client expectations are driving the need for more powerful tech tools, and we’re digging deep to find out why advisors prefer certain solutions.
When federal job cuts swept government workers in Washington, D.C. earlier this year, Alvin Carlos realized just how important it was to have an efficient client communication system in place.
District Capital Management, where Carlos is a financial planner and managing partner, helps “D.C. professionals in their 30s and 40s maximize their money and retire by 55.”The recent turmoil surrounding the future of federal workers’ livelihoods hit his clientele particularly hard.
“It’s been tough, obviously,” he said.
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Due to this uncertainty, client communication is more important for his firm than ever.
District Capital Management — which has $23 million in assets under management, $675,000 a year in monthly flat-fee revenue, five total employees and three advisors, Carlos said — had recently left Wealthbox and moved to Monday.com‘s CRM (which it also uses in conjunction with financial planning), allowing for targeted outreach. Carlos said it’s easier to send messages to clients as Monday.com can send up to 500 emails at a time, versus 100 per batch in Wealthbox. He said he can also configure a dashboard with data, including where leads came from over the past few months, monthly revenue, how many clients are in each state for compliance purposes, the number of clients per advisor and more. It can also perform automations for following up with prospective clients.
In tandem with Monday.com, the firm uses RightCapital for its financial planning services. Each of the firm’s clients has a written financial plan configured in Monday.com that they can access and see which tasks they need to work on.
“Monday.com will also ping the client when the task is about to be due or it’s overdue,” he said. “The client can also communicate with us through Monday.com.”
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Having entered wealth management about a decade ago from another field — he previously worked in social justice and served on the boards of the Sierra Club and Oil Change International — Carlos didn’t hesitate to look outside the normal financial industry tech stack options for solutions that would work.
“It’s actually influenced the way I approach our investment advisory firm,” he said about his background. “So instead of trying to go up-market, we try to work with younger folks … so that we can help them make smarter decisions earlier in their life, compared to working with just retirees.”
Scroll down the slideshow to see what Carlos feels are some of the most important pieces of District Capital Management’s tech stack.
