The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relevant to wealth advisors and their clients.

Hightower, Zocks
Zocks, a US-based privacy-first AI assistant for financial services, and Hightower, a US wealth management firm, have announced a new partnership that will make Zocks the exclusive AI assistant offered to Hightower financial advisors.

With this new partnership, Hightower advisors can use Zocks to automate the administrative and operational work that previously consumed hours of manual effort and data entry, the firm said in a statement. Advisors will be able to spend more time on understanding their clients' needs and deepening relationships.

Zocks captures information and context from client conversations, turns them into structured data, and syncs them across the systems used by Hightower advisors, including salesforce as well as financial planning and portfolio management tools. With Zocks, advisors can easily prepare for client meetings and leave each meeting with notes and follow-up tasks immediately sent to clients and synced across connected systems.

By automatically entering data into planning tools, and filling out forms such as client intake and account openings, Hightower advisors can provide financial plans and onboard clients faster. Advisors will spend less time on operational work, and more time delivering guidance, the firm continued.

An initial pilot program of two AI platforms led Hightower to select Zocks, with Hightower advisors expressing enthusiasm for Zocks’ ability to streamline their workflows and save hours of administrative time per week.

"Client expectations are rising faster than advisors can meet them with manual processes alone,” said Mark Gilbert, CEO of Zocks. “With Zocks taking care of many operational tasks, Hightower advisors can focus on delivering the strategic guidance and white-glove service that the company is known for.”

Dispatch
Dispatch, a US-based data orchestration layer for wealth management firms, has introduced Advisor Transitions, an industry-first software solution designed to help firms transition advisors, client accounts and assets between firms. The launch formalizes Transitions as the fourth core workflow on the Dispatch platform alongside account opening, client onboarding and real-time data synchronization.

The launch comes as the wealth management industry is having to cope with a rise in advisor movement. Registered investment advisors (RIAs), broker-dealers and aggregator platforms are onboarding advisors and client assets at an unprecedented pace, increasing demand for infrastructure that can support faster, more scalable transitions without disrupting operations or the client experience.

“Transitions are among the most operationally complex workflows in wealth management and, until now, the industry hasn’t had purpose-built software to manage them on,” said Rob Nance, co-founder and chief executive officer of Dispatch. “Firms have been forced to choose between a custodial program they may not qualify for and a manual process built on spreadsheets and people. We built Transitions to give them a third option.”