Financial services giant bets big on analytics

A team of 100 financial advisers for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is testing predictive software to improve the quality of recommendations they make on stocks, fixed income securities and municipal bonds.

As reported by Clint Boulton in the Sept. 18 online edition of CIO Journal (a publication of the Wall Street Journal), “The goal of the analytics project, called Insights for You, is to provide MSSB advisers with tools letting them see all of a client’s information that the firm has in its various systems, and see recommendations for the client to sell or buy stock based current positions and market conditions.”

“The only way as a firm we really can compete – what is our fundamental differentiator – is our intellectual capital,” Jeff McMillan, head of the advisor platform and digital strategy group for MSSB, tells Boulton. MSSB is a joint venture between Morgan Stanley and Citigroup that employs 17,000 advisers who manage $1.7 trillion in assets for four million clients.

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