Catchlight Launches to Optimize Lead Qualification for Time-Starved Financial Advisors

By Business Wire Last updated Sep 1, 2022

AI-powered prospecting data engine debuts at T3 Advisor Conference

Nearly 70% of registered independent advisors struggle to reliably schedule at least one prospect meeting on a weekly basis¹, limiting success in an industry hungry for long-term business growth.

“Independent advisors don’t need to be told that qualifying leads is important. The problem is that most of them don’t have enough hours in the day to go through a list of hundreds of prospects they continue to gather and research them all by hand”

The 2020 study from Catchlight Insights LLC found a stark gap between RIA’s growth expectations and the time they can devote to their pipeline of new business: 90% said they seek to grow organically by 10% per year or more for the next three years. And while advisors have several strategies to generate new leads, vetting each of those leads takes an average of 30 minutes of manual research. It is this time and efficiency crunch that Catchlight’s new AI-powered growth optimization technology was created to alleviate.

Launching today after a year of beta testing and feedback from early access users, Catchlight uses institutional data vendors and analysis of 100,000+ successful conversions to breathe life into a list of names or email addresses, showing advisors their best potential leads and suggestions for how to approach them.

“Independent advisors don’t need to be told that qualifying leads is important. The problem is that most of them don’t have enough hours in the day to go through a list of hundreds of prospects they continue to gather and research them all by hand,” said Yelena Melamed, Catchlight’s head of product and co-founder. “We worked with advisors and large successful institutions to answer the question, ‘If an advisor only has a few minutes a day to pursue new business, how can we make that time as productive as possible?’”

The Catchlight data engine is the latest startup to launch from Fidelity Labs, the software incubator for Fidelity Investments. Catchlight enriches an advisor’s leads by identifying prospect’s turnkey segments, life events, and interests. Catchlight’s machine learning ranks an advisor’s most likely prospects based on an AI model that captures the complexity of their life circumstances and similarity to other successful conversions.

Adaptability is a stand-out feature of the data engine’s design. As more advisors use Catchlight and report their feedback, as data sources evolve and the lives of prospects change, Catchlight will continually sharpen its ability to analyze leads and surface those who are most likely to need an advisor’s help.

This feedback loop has been an eye-opener for Catchlight’s early users, said CEO and co-founder Wilbur Swan. “With the invention of social networks and digital marketing, advisors have connections to a large number of potential clients. Catchlight helps advisors pinpoint who to call, how to pitch, and what to pitch, in a simple, repeatable way that leads to results.”

Catchlight offers individual advisors a single seat package that can be used in tandem with CRM solutions to optimize week-to-week sales results. Catchlight also offers an option for marketers that is geared to much larger numbers of leads, to enable personalized marketing at scale. Last, for the enterprise, Catchlight can enable reporting for senior level executives who seek to understand their growth prospects.

Advisors attending the 2022 T3 Advisor Conference, May 2-4 in Dallas, Texas, can experience a first-hand demonstration of Catchlight’s capabilities by visiting Booth 811 in the Exhibit Hall. Advisors can also contact Catchlight to set up one-on-one virtual demos.