At first light, sensors “wake” the house. The gate camera scans for one minute and subsequently deactivates the motion sensors. Unless I hit snooze, the blinds open at 8:59:58 with my phone that wakes me with a nifty app that was included in my last upgrade. My smart clock gives me a colourful pixilation of the forecast as I adjust my eyes to look out the real window, feet away. I stretch, pop out of bed and meet Alexa in the bathroom. She’s got a calendar briefing and then today’s financial headlines. I hear the espresso machine finishing as I descend the last stair and speak up loud enough to ask the remote to turn on the TV. Just as I sit down to breakfast, I get a text notification on my tablet – “Payday!” an overnight deposit. “Would you like to transfer your predicted surplus for the month to your Travel budget?”

This scene is not for the latest smart home tech that will allow you to float through life. What we are filming is for a new smart service. That smart service is one I can adopt aside from the other interactions, most of which were simulated. If I am being honest, I love to dream up how things should work, but take my personal application of them with a heaped spoon of cynicism. I generally mistrust sharing online, I am hesitant to deploy devices with “smart capabilities” for fear that they decrease in necessity as they increase vulnerabilities, and I try to be a right-on-time adopter. The service, more specifically, connects notifications and actions to the activity in my financial accounts. It works with a variety of smart devices and places to prompt an action based on another action in another smart device or place. Today, with everything connected – from my refrigerator to my car – this innovation is one of the most impactful for a “networked client”. That is how to use my connected devices, my connected providers and my connected places to be informed, to be actionable and to automate things to promote my financial wellbeing.

I think the Internet of Things has become a bit overblown, and I am not alone.¹ We are a bit ahead of ourselves in what we expect from a world that has ubiquitous connectivity, especially concerning interconnectivity. I can have my coffee maker online and for that handshake get some value through information and automation. But does it solve a problem? The coffee maker is smart enough and making a cup at home is the most money I’ll save in regards to caffeine. So, what can I do to become a “networked client” and what services can I use to make my money smarter? Large financial institutions are deploying smarter code and pursuing automation as the next wave to drive proprietary profits,² and those innovations are starting to filter their way down to the retail market. So, how does a client implement them? Let’s focus on what we can do within the networks we are already a part of, and usually for costs we are already incurring.

I have a smart device that I pay for, along with a monthly service fee. I can use this connectivity to make myself smarter, automate things that drive better behaviour and use it to communicate more effectively. A network easily accessed through these devices is that of information. It has never been easier to educate yourself financially. Do you prefer doing this through socialization? Use your social networks and the way those social networks embed themselves with other services to make decisions. Do you like educating yourself and conducting your own analysis? It has never been easier to tap into the vast network of analysts, economists and research that drive our world economy. I can usually do this with a few paid subscriptions or as value I get back for having an account at a wealth management firm. Even more “networked” and cool, if this information is on-demand and can often be surfaced based on what is relevant to me at a particular time.

In the pursuit to help shape innovation and learn more about you, many firms provide personal financial wellness apps for free alongside their content. These are smart programs that form a network for you based on your financial transactions, accounts and topics that are important to you. They automatically and smartly glean trends and insights to inform you of your financial behaviour and in doing so make it easier to move money around so that it is in the right place at the right time. Begin using these services by aggregating your accounts. And remember, viewing in one place is not the same as having in one place. Think of the place you choose to do this as your personal financial command centre. You will have an easier time viewing everything in one place, it’s easier to establish smart notifications and alerts to notify you of important activity and you are providing a fuller picture of your wealth and subsequent needs to providers that want to serve you. This approach will align your needs and financial firm resources in a much quicker fashion. The more firms can learn about you, the more likely you are to be provided with financial experts and products when you need them. Wealth management is no longer being driven by product; it is being driven by behaviour. Other “networks” you can harness are the various parties vying to have you as a customer. Instagram vs. Snap, Uber vs. Lyft, credit card points vs. frequent flyer miles, Facebook vs. Google, on and on. Each day you are given personalized, contextual opportunities to spend and often, the more you participate in the process the more you receive in return. As these systems integrate with and are adopted by our financial providers, we start to see the “networked client” coming alive in a truly comprehensive way.

In the meantime, financial advice providers can continue to learn a lot from their technology competition³ – always reducing clicks and using the information they have to reduce my decision-making and data input. If you want me to take action based on a piece of information, serve it up in a pop-up notification on my phone and let me swipe it to interact more. Find ways to connect things to help me save and manage my day-to-day expenses (my monthly budget with my thermostat, for example), and don’t improve something that doesn’t need it. Help me know when things change, what communications are important and let’s interact when something’s actionable. If I can text a friend money, I should be able to do the same to fund a new account.

Devices are now an extension of us.⁴ The more providers consider what I can use my device for and fit their products, services and interactions within it, the more likely I am to respond positively and repeatedly. Let’s use financial planning as an example. A “networked client” wants to participate in the process when and how it is most convenient for her or him. So innovate to achieve that. Make the process collaborative, focus the technology on making me more informed when I need it most and let me interface with professionals in the way I like best. Maybe it’s still face to face, but with live video.

What about the vast networks of financial products? Large institutions have figured that this is one of the best networks for automation, so it should follow that a “networked client” would too. Let managed, “smart” (algorithm-driven, factor-based/enhanced, AI-influenced, etc.) portfolios handle your long-term wealth management. If there is a portfolio management team behind it that you can trust and that provides good value, great. If there is a team of experts on sourcing and deploying technology to increase returns, even better. And if you find a way to automate this all together, then you’re among an emerging frontier that will likely gain the most. Another area of automation that provides a bevy of apps to choose from are those services that automate your savings. These can do wonders to augment your behaviour and ease your interaction with your money. Does it take forever and cause a fight with your spouse to review your annual credit card summary? Download a smart budget app that categorizes your day-to-day spending and use it to take a more informed look at where you can save throughout the year. Have trouble not spending extra money if it stays in your account? Download a savings app that automatically finds and moves surpluses to designated goals.

A “networked client” is more valuable to those that want them as customers. In the short term, this can happen a lot faster with both sides working towards common use cases. Machines have made me stronger. Considering the way they’re designed, deployed and connected can potentially make me wealthier too.