Sonya Dreizler's zeal is turning 2022 RIA events into a giant coming-out for talented women, with Choir algorithms and a larger halo effect

Choir is preaching, and the RIA conference faithful are answering its efforts to include more women and minorities in the event spotlight.

The hyper-missionary San Francisco startup, founded by Sonya Dreizler and Liv Gagnon, is already making a mark up and down the industry, with speakers, panels and event topics as virtual events come out of COVID cold storage and go live, again. 

Choir is proving to be the evangelist's evangelical. Michael Kitces publisher of Nerd's Eye View, is squarely in their camp.

His XY Planning Network is a Choir customer and paid the company to certify its conference, he says.

“We’re big supporters of what Choir is trying to accomplish, and we’re happy to go through Choir’s review process to get Choir Certified to affirm what we’ve been doing for years. We get the official 'score' from them after this year’s event wraps up." 

Willow, another firm that provides coaching and personalized guidance for women, launched "Willow Insight for Advisors" in August. It helps financial firms attract and oversee minority investors and under-represented individuals.

The Boston firm recently signed a partnership with giant, $10-trillion BlackRock to work with women and minority investors, especially when there's a life change with the client, such as a death or divorce. 

Spillover effect

Gagnon says her firm began building out Choir a year before it launched. "We had a big vision and wanted to execute it thoughtfully, and so far, we believe we've done so." 

The first phase of Choir was to launch the certification and guidance process based on its proprietary scoring algorithm. The next phase, Choir's platform, "Voices," is launching shortly.

The Voices platform enables conference organizers and media to connect directly with expert speakers, sources who are women and non-binary people or individuals of color. The firm hasn't started to market this program yet, Gagnon says. 

The Choir spillover effect is showing up broadly. Women made up 60% of the speakers at The Deals and Dealmakers Summit, designed by FiComm. See: Cheryl Bicknell drops the largest on-stage news bomb, and Dan Seivert's revenge event in sparkling San Diego got a WTH explanation for those 20-times multiples

Kitces says he had previously executed a DIY diversity plan for XY events, but Choir's process -- called a "Diversity and Visibility Analytics Report" --  makes it more measurable, accountable, and, hence, improvable.

"Choir's consultant feedback does find any incremental areas in our conference process that could get better still, we’ll certainly be taking that feedback to make further improvements in the years to come.” 

Benchmarking

Choir, operated by just its founders, broke even this year and is expanding its operations and programs into the next year. 

Conferences that work with Choir have a range of options.

For $5,000, they can score a conference to determine whether it is Choir-certified and provide diversity and visibility analytics.

Most events are interested in year-over-year benchmarking, consulting, marketing and speaker introductions, and those packages start at $12,000. 

The action can be traced in part to awakening society but getting kicked in the assets may be the bigger catalyst, says Lacy Garcia, CEO, and founder of Willow. 

“It has changed from data to the front lines. Advisors are losing clients, and they're seeing this and feeling it. It becomes a real pain point," Garcia says. 

Retention rates

A McKinsey report shows more than $30 trillion will be transferred to women in the next three- to five-years, and 70% of women change financial advisors after a significant life event.

The study shows financial companies could grow revenues by one-third by retaining baby-boomer women clients and could grow by four times by attracting younger women clients. 

Garcia adds: “Our data is speaking for itself.

"When our advisors are willing to help with the retention of a client in transition such as divorce or widowhood, we have a 90% plus retention. The coaches can go directly to the client."

Willow declined to disclose what's inside its arrangement with BlackRock but clearly it has a budget.

Willow has a staff of 10 and about 50 consultants who coach advisors and work with clients. Industry leaders are giving the green light to these programs.

Willow's strategy is to close a gap by coaching advisors these issues and meeting directly with BlackRock and other financial services clients to further evangelize, Garcia says.

Essential for diversity

Elizabeth Koehler, managing director and head of BlackRock's U.S. Wealth Advisor Insights, said in a statement to RIABiz that Willow is helping BlackRock to sell more products by educating and bridging the gap between women and minorities in financial services. 

"Our growing partnership with Willow adds a crucial lever that equips advisors with the personalized education and tools to better serve the New Majority clients and demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion," she says. 

Leaders at Willow and Choir maintain that these projects are essential for diversity and can deliver return on investment. 

“Beyond conferences, there are countless reports available that tell us companies with a diverse representation of different genders and people of color perform better because they have the perspectives needed to reach new markets, drive innovation and avoid potential PR pitfalls,” Gagnon says.

For now, few firms feel like they have it all licked and most conferences that work with Choir have signed up for the next year - angling for a better score, Gagnon says. 

Driving returns

It's all fine tuning at XY Planning where at least 33% of keynote presenters are minorities and at least 33% of keynote speakers are women. Within breakouts, at least 50% of speakers are female and at least 20% are minorities, Kitces says.

"Our internal guidelines are quite similar to what Choir mandates. So in practice, following the Choir guidelines has not entailed any substantive changes to our speaker process."

XY Planning has been aware of the issue for years, says Kitces, who points out his firm has had a strong focus on it back to 2017. 

Of course, speaker line-up allocations drive better long-term returns, Gagnon says.

“We view investing in diversity and inclusion resources as absolutely critical for organizations that want to stay relevant and profitable in 2022 and beyond.

"Qualitatively, conferences that have a diverse speaker lineup are attracting higher attendee numbers, more diverse attendees, and more media attention than those with the same lineups of homogenous speakers,” Gagnon says. 

Raising profiles

Prominent conferences in 2021 have paid to attain a Choir certification, including Envestnet's "2021 Advisor Summit," Carson Group's "Excell 2021" and First Affirmative Financial Network's "2021 ESG for Impact." 

This year "Future Proof Festivals Changing Faces of Wealth" also paid Choir for certification and has a robust list of speakers.

The list includes: Renee Baker, head of PCG Advisor Inclusion Networks at Raymond James; Katherine Jollon Colsher, president and CEO of Girls Who Invest; Holly Mazzocca, CFP of Barlett Wealth Management; Blair duQuesnay, investment advisor at Ritholtz Wealth Management and Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement at Morningstar.