Building trust with your clients and regulators is critical to sustainable growth.
Even the best recommendation can fall short if a client does not understand or trust it. Ovida helps advisers explore client needs, explain recommendations and risks clearly, and check understanding. It assesses conversations against your chosen advisory framework, including how advisers address clients’ interests and regulatory compliance, and provides specific feedback and a place to practice.
Build stronger relationships and prepare advisers for the conversations that win and retain clients.
Clients only follow their financial adviser's advice when they trust them.
Research shows that the return an investor earns is lower than that of the funds being managed by their advisers. This is because clients do not trust their advisers as much as they could, and do not follow their advice. Ovida helps advisers practice the conversations, explain the logic of their decisions and the associated risks, and narrow the gap between what the underlying fund earns and what their clients earn.
a year: what the funds themselves made
a year: what the average investor in those same funds actually kept
of the gain they could have had over 10 years, lost by buying and selling at the wrong time
Sources: Morningstar, Mind the Gap 2025
Industry evidence
Firms that train their advisers to communicate well achieve the best returns.
Equitable Advisors built a holistic financial coaching credential with Columbia University's Center for Coaching Excellence, focused on listening and client conversation rather than technical knowledge. Their own study found advisers who completed it managing materially more client assets than colleagues who did not.
more client assets managed, by advisers who completed the program
advisers trained so far, with a waiting list to join
conversations per adviser on the virtual program, filmed and then reviewed one by one, by hand
Covering the Equitable Advisors program accredited by Columbia University's Center for Coaching Excellence.
Where advice conversations go wrong.
The advice was sound. However, the client did not act on it. The documentation in the file was appropriate. But the adviser did not realize that the client had not connected with the advice provided.
Understanding the client's needs is more than obtaining a signature on a statement of advice. Probing and understanding the client's circumstances and needs is critical to providing successful advice.
Few clients enjoy complaining. It is easier to find a new adviser. Ovida supports advisers to understand the key parts of conversations that demonstrate empathy and understanding with their clients.
Set the benchmark once. Measure it consistently.
Ovida uses your organization's definition of providing good advice as the basis against which to score the conversation.
Industry best practice and your organization's preferred processes become the basis for the model against which every advisory conversation is scored. Ovida is configured to your specific organization's needs.
- Ovida fully configured to your organization and the industry you operate in.
- The adviser's conversation remains anonymous and confidential. The organization sees aggregated trends and patterns to support future training and investment.
- Ovida supports the training and maintenance of compliance requirements and obligations for financial services and advisers.
Advice conversation behaviors
How Ovida supports your organization
Ovida allows the organizational benchmark and the performance of all advisers to be lifted to that of the best adviser in the business. Specific, tailored, measurable feedback is provided.
Lift the average performance across all advisersOvida measures every conversation against measurable criteria like empathy, understanding, developing trust and checking in with the client, to maximize the chance of client satisfaction and retention.
Fewer quiet departuresOvida provides an individually anonymized but organizational picture of how advisers have complied with the processes, controls and compliance requirements of the organization.
Evidence-based assurance providedOvida improves the outcome for all stakeholders.
Clients only act on their adviser's direction when they understand and trust the individual. Ovida helps break down the details of the conversation to demonstrate where the adviser can improve.
- The adviserWhere in the conversation did you lose the client?
Ovida's feedback is specific to the point in the conversation where your client demonstrated they were understanding your recommendations, or where you lost them. Ovida allows the adviser to break down the components of the conversation as to where they need to improve.
- The organizationDemonstrate suitability of the advice
Ovida provides measurable performance against the requirements of providing financial advice and support, so the organization invests in the areas most needing proof. Providing evidence of compliance as well as improvement opportunities.
- The clientThe client understands the advice they accepted
Ovida identifies the moments in the conversation where the client asked questions, accepted the advice readily, or demonstrated an understanding of the decision they were making and accepting.
Questions we often get.
What Ovida measures, how the scoring is checked, what happens to your data, and the questions people ask about financial advice.
Read the FAQsOther places conversations carry consequence
See how Ovida works with one of your own conversations.
No confidential recording needed. We will walk you through a sample.