Technology is a wonderful thing that provides us with opportunities to do much more in much less time than we would have ever thought possible.
But, at the end of the day, the financial services industry is about people helping people, and there’s only so much technology can do without the human touch.
We briefly mentioned some of technology’s limitations in that blog post, but we wanted to devote this week’s newsletter to some of the other weaknesses of technology when it comes to providing financial services.
Empathy
Empathy is a natural human emotion. It’s especially important to have and be able to communicate empathy in an industry like financial services, which involves dealing with one of the most personal aspects of a client’s life: their finances.
Not to mention people often seek financial advice in times of trouble, such as a divorce or a death in the family. Convincing people in these situations that we can help them make the right financial decisions is one thing, but without empathy, we won’t earn their trust. And no one will hand over their financial assets to someone they don’t trust.
Ethics
Computers are great at analyzing data. They’re not so great at analyzing situations, including social situations and ethical situations.
That has the potential to cause problems for any business owner, but especially those of us working in financial services who have to worry about, not only the rules and regulations we have to follow, but the ethics of what we’re doing.
As humans, we know the difference between something being legal and something being ethical.
A computer does not have the ability to make that distinction.
Creativity
Computers see things in black and white. There’s a “right way” and a “wrong way” to do something.
Our human brains are more complex and better able to see loopholes where a computer might only see a roadblock.
We can come up with ways to go over, around, or under the roadblock while the computer is still standing in front of that roadblock, at a loss for what to do next.
As humans, our creativity is our superpower. It’s what enables us to come up with solutions to seemingly impossible problems, and has been largely responsible for our rise to the top of the food chain.
At Vertex, we pride ourselves on using fintech when it makes sense to do so, but we also know better than to rely on it too heavily.
We know our team is comprised of smart, creative individuals who know their stuff backwards and forwards. Assembling all these knowledgeable professionals, and providing them with the software they need to do their jobs better and more efficiently, is part of what sets us apart from the other financial services firms out there.
If you want to know more about what a partnership with Vertex looks like, please contact us at in**@************rs.com.
