Suitability Pro with Shawn Brayman (CEO) | E88

Bringing together risk assessment, financial planning, portfolio management, and account level data for better client outcomes.

Summary:

In this 88th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host discusses Suitability Pro with special returning guest, Shawn Brayman, Founder of Plan Plus. With over twenty-five years of experience, Brayman is an expert in providing investment and financial planning solutions to financial advisors. His newest product, Suitability Pro, aims to improve the lives of advisors and their clients by helping them provide better recommendations almost by default. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:42: – What is Suitability Pro? 

● 02:53: – What is the entire experience for an advisor using this tool? 

● 03:51: – Brayman describes the Suitability Pro dashboard. 

● 05:49: – They give an overview of bi-direction communication capabilities within the dashboard. 

● 08:53: – Suitability Pro introduces new mechanisms that allow advisors to frame their own professional judgment. 

● 10:09: – A key part of Suitability Pro is maintaining suitability. 

● 12:38: – Suitability Pro provides value by enabling triggers that help advisors know when to coach clients. 

● 14:40: – They discuss caring about client goals over the rate of return. 

● 16:22: – Brayman explores how to help advisors provide value without realizing they’re providing value. 

● 17:39: – What are possible integrations for the product? 

● 23:06: – This product’s new infrastructure will help to avoid conflict that comes when advisors are using different methodologies. 

● 25:14: – They review the five University of Georgia case studies and follow up research. 

● 25:56: – What biases and traps am I falling into as an advisor? 

● 28:08: – Discussion of the challenges of maintaining your own consistency as a professional. 

● 28:49: – Pereira reflects on the value of checklists and standardization of procedures. 

● 30:55: – “We made things complicated to pretend that they had value.” – Shawn Brayman. 

● 33:19: – If he had one wish, what would Brayman change in his industry? 

● 34:42: – What was the biggest challenge in building this product? 

● 37:05: – What excites you most about what you’re working on? 

3 Key Points 

1. Suitability Pro introduces new mechanisms that allow advisors to frame their own professional judgment while standardizing their approach. 

2. One of the goals in developing Suitability Pro is to help advisors provide better financial advice almost by default. 

3. Suitability Pro builds on a legacy of academic excellence as well as the culture that is oriented to best practices in every instance. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “Pro is taking the very best that we've learned in goal-based investing, risk profiling, at every level, tolerance for risk, and so on, and all of the pieces around tracking suitability over time." – Shawn Brayman. 

● “A planner should know their client better than anyone else in the world.” – Shawn Brayman. 

● “It's not only what you do, it's that you articulate how you're doing it and you maintain your own consistency.” – Shawn Brayman. 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Episode 6: Plan Plus with Shawn Brayman 

● The LegacyGroup 

●FinaMetrica 

●Redtail 

●Orion 

●MoneyGuidePro 

● The Checklist Manifesto 

● SuitabilityPro 

● Shawn BraymanLinkedIn,Twitter