Gurgiolo’s responsibilities include providing investment
counseling services and technical expertise regarding plan design, compliance,
vendor sourcing, plan governance, fee benchmarking and fiduciary responsibility
management. She will work in collaboration with other members of the PSA
consulting team.
Before joining PSA, Gurgiolo held a number of consulting and
product management roles and has worked in compliance, design, administration, relationship
management and recordkeeping for both corporate and non-profit clients.
Gurgiolo received a bachelor’s of arts degree
from Washington & Jefferson College before earning a juris doctorate with a
concentration in taxation law from the University of Pittsburgh. She also holds
a master of laws degree in taxation from the University of Denver, with an
emphasis on retirement plan and executive compensation law.
Beyond the company website, an asset manager’s digital
presence is critical, and three in five advisers judge asset managers by their
Internet activity.
“What Advisors Do Online,” an annual study kasina has
conducted for more than a decade, examines the online preferences and behavior
of financial advisers. This year’s study reveals where advisers go to research
asset managers, their use of financial planning tools, what content they access
via mobile devices, and how they use social media to build and support their
business. The report also recommends actionable strategies asset managers can
use to more effectively engage advisers online.
Today, managers must realize that “online presence” goes
far beyond the bounds of the company website. While advisers increasingly expect
managers to deliver relevant, timely and personalized information via their
websites and emails, they also consider the bigger online picture—including
the manager’s presence on industry and news sites they frequent, social media
networks and mobile access.
Digital engagement has become such a critical component of
the asset manager-adviser relationship that the manager’s online capabilities
influence the overall perception of its firm for a majority of financial
advisers, according to kasina’s report.
In fact, “What Advisors Do Online” reveals that one in five
advisers already uses a smartphone or tablet as his primary tool for
accessing online information. “One of the most important qualities for advisers
when evaluating asset managers is how easy they are to do business with,” said
Julia Binder, director of e-business research at kasina. The ability to access
information via a mobile device, whether by email or a website, is fast
becoming a crucial differentiator, since one in five advisers already uses a
mobile device for business content.
For example, managers may be able to funnel more funds to mobile
development by foregoing development of financial planning tools. The study
found that few advisers use tools offered on asset manager websites—preferring
to use those on their firm’s intranet or on third-party sites instead.
The importance of building relationships with advisers
outside managers’ online properties was also underscored. Asset managers have
tremendous opportunity to reach financial advisers through LinkedIn—by far the
most popular social site for personal branding—participating in professional
groups, and researching and finding new clients, according to Binder.
“What Advisors Do Online” used results from kasina’s Advisor
Insights survey in July, based on responses from 566
U.S. financial advisers representing 118 firms.
More about the report can be found on kasina’s website.