• by Jess Nelson , March 8, 2016

Salesforce announced the launch of its Financial Services Cloud on Tuesday, with more than 20 inaugural partners. 

Salesforce’s newest cloud-based solution is a customer relationship management (CRM) system tailored for financial advisors and their clients. For a monthly fee of $150 USD per user, financial representatives have access to a suite of data-focused and personalized marketing technologies in Salesforce’s new Financial Services Cloud, including portfolio and data management, prospecting, security and compliance.

Powered by Salesforce Lightning, an Enterprise app design and management solution, Salesforce Financial Service Cloud aims to bring the personalized 1-to-1 marketing experience to the financial industry.

Inaugural partners joining Salesforce’s cloud-based ecosystem include RIA United Capital, Informatica, PwC, Capgemini, DocuSign, Accenture, Deloitte, CipherCloud ND Smarsh.

The solution also offers a multichannel experience and is integrated across mobile and social. Email marketers who work in the financial sector might be particularly interesting in leveraging Smarsh’s archiving platform alongside the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to streamline email marketing and communications by consolidating customer communication and data.

Email is the most popular form of customer communication in the financial services industry, according to a 2015 study by credit card company TSYS.

“Today, we live in a new world that is digital- and client-centric, which is turning the wealth management industry on its head," states Simon Mulcahy, GM of financial services at Salesforce. "We're not only building tools that advisors need for this new world, but we're also joining forces with best-in-class partners to deliver a next-generation solution that takes advantage of modern, cloud technology. This will help advisors transform the way they serve clients."

Additional features of the Salesforce Financial Service Cloud include holistic customer and household profiles, real-time analytics, and a customizable user-interface with daily agendas and client prioritization

"Advisors are in a race against the clock and cannot afford to waste precious time toggling between siloed systems to find information about their clients," states Sanjeev Kumar, president and CEO of The Athene Group. "Our integration with Salesforce will help advisors to maintain a single, holistic view of their book of business within the Financial Services Cloud."

Although wealth management advisors is the obvious target of Salesforce’s Financial Services Cloud, the new solution could benefit any relationship-based professions in the financial services industry, including advisors, brokers, insurers and retail banks.