How Pershing X is Going to Help Advisors

Ainslie Simmonds  00:22

Yeah, so I'd say about a year and a half ago, the bank did a strategic review of, you know, growth opportunities, and realized, in sort of, you know, really understood that wealth management market continues to grow. And that advisors continue to become more and more focused on providing advice, and the advice model, and they thought there was really kind of an unmet need for a really amazing advisory platform. So they decided to start the division, which is a FinTech within the bank in New York, Mellon, and I got recruited to come lead it because I have built a couple of fintechs. before. So that's, that's how we got here.

Shannon Rosic  01:06

Well, congratulations on the relatively newly appointed position. But what is Pershing X is ultimate mission.

Ainslie Simmonds  01:13

Yeah, so our mission is to help advisors help more people. There's a crazy statistic that's a really publishes that advisors spend about 25% of their time with clients, and 75% of their time behind the desk.

Shannon Rosic  01:28

And that seems like it should be flip flops.

Ainslie Simmonds  01:30

Exactly. That needs to be flip flop, and we call it flip the switch, we want to flip the switch. So that advisors are empowered to spend 75% of their time with clients and 25 behind the desk. And we think, you know, by definition, that'll mean that more people will get serviced by advisors, which we believe is really the right way to help people with their money. So, you know, DIY is cool, until you reached kind of a certain level of sophistication. And then you really need advice. And so we really believe that supporting advisors by helping them do their work faster, is the best way to help millions more Americans.

Shannon Rosic  02:09

And that's an obvious benefit of digital disruption right now is giving that time back to really time strapped advisors. So what are the tangible benefits of the platform? Is it an all in one? What are they getting out of it?

Ainslie Simmonds  02:20

Yeah, so it will have all of the things they need. But we're very careful not to call it an all in one, because traditionally, that's meant kind of a closed system. And most advisors, they may not be happy with all of their tech, but there might be some pieces and parts they are happy with. And we want them to continue to use and leverage those, they like it, they're comfortable with it, it works, right? So we're really envisioning on platform, kind of like the Google suite or the Microsoft suite, where you could use the pieces and parts, when you use more than one, you start to see the value of them working together. But if you're really into let's, let's say you're a G Suite user, but you really liked the Microsoft PowerPoint application, we're not gonna say no, you know, of course, you can do that. And, you know, we're just trying to build as much value into our suite as possible.

Shannon Rosic  03:14

And ultimately giving that power back to the advisor to really pick and choose.

Ainslie Simmonds  03:17

Yeah, and we, you know, we're not in the business of telling people how to run their business, everybody's business is a little bit different. All we want to do is take time out. That's it.

Shannon Rosic  03:28

And I think it's incredible that we've seen this trend really over the last decade of technology, augmenting the entire advisor and client experience. So it's encouraging to see a bank, build this FinTech incubator, ultimately, to really push that initiative forward.

Ainslie Simmonds  03:43

Well, and what's so cool about it and why, you know, I joined frankly, is this is really ambitious, right? You got to build all the applications and the operating system have a great data layer, great UI is a lot. It's a lot. And really no one FinTech could really pull off something this ambitious. So what's so great about having the multi year backing of the Bank of New York Mellon is I don't have to worry about raising money. I don't have to worry about finding that next, you know, milestone we can really be thoughtful and careful about building this because we have the patience of America's oldest bank hanging on behind us. So it's really kind of a unique opportunity to build something this ambitious for our community.

Shannon Rosic  04:31

I love it, making legacy work for you.

Ainslie Simmonds  04:33

I love it. Alexander Hamilton started the plays. It's kind of fine, you know?

Shannon Rosic  04:39

Well, that is a fun fact. And Ainslie really appreciate your time today and looking forward to what's next for purging acts. Thank you really delighted to be here. For Advisorpedia. I'm Shannon Rosic