Introducing Wealthbox

Today we’re happy to release Wealthbox CRM for financial advisors. Our New York City-based team at Gotham Tech Labs, Inc. (editors note: now called Starburst Labs, Inc.) has a long and successful track record in building and operating software-as-a-service CRM systems, and we think Wealthbox will be an excellent solution for financial advisors who yearn for a user-friendly, collaborative, and modern CRM product to build their books of business.

Here’s what we really think…

The product quality of most advisor CRM systems is driven by the legacy design of enterprise software. The bloat, complexity, and sheer ugliness of many CRM products leave advisors wanting. As we’ve often said, many CRM systems for financial advisors have an interface that only the mother of a database technician could love. Is it any wonder that the adoption rate for CRM is so low? Is it any wonder that so many advisors still use Outlook or Excel as a de facto CRM?

An industry reporter asked us this question recently: “Don’t you think CRM is a crowded space?” to which we replied, “Are you describing the market for advisor CRM or the clunky, complex, old-school CRM interfaces in which so many advisors toil like data-entry clerks?” We truly believe the market for well-designed CRM for financial advisors is a wide-open space, full of opportunity for a new generation of collaborative, social, and outrageously simple CRM apps like Wealthbox to flourish. This isn’t just about a pretty interface; it’s about the entirety of the CRM design and resultant product experience for financial advisors.

Customer profile: Jason Wenk

We’ve been operating Wealthbox CRM for over a year in private-beta testing with about 40 financial advisors from about 10 different firms. One recent convert to Wealthbox CRM is Jason Wenk of Retirement Wealth Advisors.

You might have heard of Jason from a recent article in RIABiz about his content-marketing skills that result in significant lead-generation to his practice. To us, Jason is the kind of savvy advisor that represents the future of the wealth management business, and we were delighted by his and his team’s reaction to Wealthbox CRM, so much so that we asked him to be on the Wealthbox marketing site homepage. He readily obliged.

The core

We’re calling this “Version 1.0” of Wealthbox which is a signal to the market that the “core” of basic CRM functionality in Wealthbox is now complete after a year of testing and iterating with financial advisors. Nothing’s “complete” in SaaS apps and we’ll always be improving it, but you get the gist. Our next product development cycle is focussed on product integrations with financial planning and portfolio tools, as well as integrations with custodians and independent broker-dealers. (And, of course, we’ll be integrating Wealthbox CRM with our forthcoming Wealthbase product, a marketing and lead-gen network for financial advisors. Stay tuned.) But make no mistake, Wealthbox is ready to use now and will meet the requirements of many advisors as our happy customers will attest.