Organic growth continues to be one of the hardest challenges facing community banks and wealth management firms. Advisors feel pressure to grow assets efficiently while competing with fintech platforms, shifting client expectations, and limited time for meaningful prospecting. On a recent episode of Banking on Growth, our host Mike Graham sat down with Dan Gilmartin to talk candidly about how data, AI, and intentional process design are reshaping how firms pursue growth.
Dan leads marketing at Catchlight, a company built within Fidelity Labs. Their work focuses on helping firms stop guessing who to pursue and start prioritizing prospects with greater precision. The conversation moved beyond technology buzzwords and centered on a practical question many institutions wrestle with, how to grow smarter without wasting effort.
In This Episode
- Why traditional prospecting methods often create activity without real momentum, and how firms can refocus efforts on higher-quality opportunities.
- How minimal contact data can be transformed into meaningful insight that helps advisors prioritize outreach more confidently.
- Why relevance and personalization build trust faster than high-volume marketing, especially with younger and digitally native clients.
- How disciplined process design turns data into consistent growth rather than one-off wins.
- What the long-term ROI case looks like for investing in smarter, more intentional client acquisition strategies.
Why Prospecting Still Feels Hard for Advisors
Many advisors spend hours each week researching prospects manually. LinkedIn searches, social media scrolling, and scattered notes often feel productive, but rarely translate into consistent results. Dan explained that this kind of activity creates motion without momentum, especially when advisors lack a clear way to determine who is actually likely to become a client.
The issue is not a shortage of leads. Most firms already have thousands of names sitting in databases, CRM systems, or legacy spreadsheets. The real challenge lies in knowing which individuals deserve immediate outreach, which belong in long-term nurture campaigns, and which are unlikely to ever convert.
Turning Limited Information Into Useful Insight
Catchlight’s approach starts with very little information, such as a name and basic contact details. From there, data is aggregated from opt-in, public sources to build a broader profile that helps firms understand who a person is and where they may fit within an advisory practice.
Dan shared how their team developed proprietary models to estimate investable assets and income more accurately, filling gaps that often exist in traditional prospect data. On top of that, Catchlight created a scoring system that compares a prospect’s characteristics against individuals who have already expressed interest in paid financial advice. That comparison helps firms rank large prospect lists based on likelihood to convert.
Why Relevance Builds Trust Faster Than Volume
Our conversation also focused on personalization, not as a marketing buzzword, but as a trust signal. When outreach clearly reflects a person’s life stage, interests, or financial priorities, it feels intentional instead of generic. Dan pointed out how quickly credibility erodes when messaging misses the mark, especially with younger clients who already question whether financial institutions truly understand them.
Better insight allows firms to communicate more naturally. Instead of blasting the same message to everyone, advisors can align conversations with what actually matters to the individual on the other side of the table. Relevance makes the first interaction feel less like a sales pitch and more like a meaningful exchange.
Growth Only Works When Process Comes First
Both sides agreed that data alone does not drive results. Without a defined process, even the best insights fall apart. Firms that succeed tend to design clear workflows around how leads are segmented, how outreach happens, and how follow-ups are handled over time.
Intentional process design also improves efficiency. Narrowing a list from hundreds of prospects to a smaller, higher-quality group allows advisors to spend more time preparing for conversations that matter. Conversion rates improve not because more effort is applied, but because effort is applied more deliberately.
The ROI Case for Smarter Client Acquisition
From an ROI standpoint, the numbers quickly become compelling. A single high-value advisory relationship can generate meaningful lifetime revenue, which puts investments in better prospecting tools and processes into perspective. Dan noted that many firms continue to underinvest in growth infrastructure, even when the upside is clear.
Smarter acquisition strategies do not require chasing more leads. They require better decisions about where time and money go. When firms reduce wasted outreach and focus on high-probability opportunities, growth becomes more predictable and less exhausting.
Building Growth by Design, Not by Accident
The episode closed on a shared belief that sustainable success does not happen randomly. Firms do not grow because of occasional lucky breaks. They grow because they commit to systems, discipline, and intentional improvement over time.
For banks and wealth management firms, the takeaway was simple. Growth by design outperforms growth by default. Institutions that invest in understanding their data, refining their processes, and staying intentional about who they serve put themselves in a stronger position to remain relevant in a rapidly changing financial landscape.
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