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Wealthtech Startups to Watch: How Conquest Planning is Bringing AI to the Forefront of Financial Planning

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12 March 2024
Chris Bendtsen

Can AI do more than just drive internal efficiencies in wealth management? According to one Canadian startup, AI can be the engine powering financial planning decisions.

Wealthtech Startups to Watch is a Celent blog series that identifies compelling wealthtech startups and discusses the implications for incumbent wealth management firms. This edition covers Conquest Planning, a financial planning software company with an AI-powered digital assistant that provides next-best financial decision recommendations for advisors.

In February 2023, Conquest Planning raised a $24 million (CAD) Series A round from Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, Portage, BNY Mellon, and RBC. Over the last year, the company made several strategic partnerships in Canada to extend platform access to:

  • RBC’s financial advisor network

  • WealthSimple’s portfolio managers and HNW clients

  • Vancity’s network of community credit union financial advisors

  • CapIntel’s network of 12,000 financial advisors

  • Aviso’s credit union partners and their advisors

Conquest’s expansion indicates that there is indeed an appetite for AI-powered financial planning. That demand is driven by the fact that Conquest Planning unlocks two of the biggest needs of wealth management firms today:

  1. Streamlining advisor productivity

  2. Personalizing financial advice

Streamlining advisor productivity with AI-powered financial planning

According to the Celent Technology Insight and Strategy Survey, one-third of wealth management executives ranked advanced data analytics and machine learning as a top 3 technology investment priority. No other answer was selected as often by respondents.

Source: Celent, Wealth Management IT Priorities and Strategy in 2023

One important factor as to why wealth managers are prioritizing AI is to improve advisor productivity. Conquest Planning reports that through the combination of its AI digital assistant and API-first approach, the platform can reduce the average time an advisor takes to create a financial plan from 10 hours down to 45 minutes. That is a considerable amount of time saved that advisors can then put to better use through more revenue-producing activities, such as meeting with clients or acquiring new customers. For more on this topic, read Advisor Productivity: What’s Technology Got To Do, Got To Do With It?

While other financial planning software like eMoney, Envestnet MoneyGuide, and RightCapital may leverage machine learning or other AI technologies as components or features of their products to make advisors more efficient, what makes Conquest Planning unique is that the AI is the product. The Conquest platform revolves around its AI digital assistant, SAM, which stands for Strategic Advice Manager. SAM analyzes client information and thousands of data points to suggest financial planning strategies tailored to each client.

The greatest gains in advisor productivity appear to be with SAM’s strategy recommendations and automated fulfillment. The AI assistant eliminates the need for the advisor to do manual trial-and-error planning. That said, it is important to acknowledge that while SAM is the engine behind the financial plan, the advisor is still the driver that makes the final decisions.

Personalizing financial advice through AI-recommended next-best financial decisions

Not only does Conquest Planning’s AI improve advisor productivity, but it also enables customization in financial planning. SAM’s proprietary algorithm takes every piece of client information—who they are, their assets, their current plan, their aspirations, etc.—and recommends personalized strategies based on those inputs and preferences.

The process starts with specific goals agreed upon by the client and the advisor. Those goals include financial well-being, retirement, education, cash reserves, and more. For each goal, SAM automatically quantifies the impact that different strategies will have on achieving that goal. The AI ranks and recommends strategies based on their impact, but it is ultimately up to the advisor and the client to implement those strategies.

Conquest calls these personalized recommendations “next-best financial decisions.” Advisors can then decide to drag and drop the suggested strategies into the financial plan, with further customization options available.

So what comes next with AI in financial planning? According to an interview with Conquest’s CTO with Wealth Professional Canada, the company is working on implementing generative AI into its product. The GenAI bet makes sense, as 20% of wealth management executives say GenAI is the one technology that will have the biggest impact on the industry over the next five years.