In this episode of AI Readiness for Salesforce, host Luca Benini, COO at Vinton, talks with Nicolas Garcia, Salesforce Administrator at Financial Services organisation SVN Investimentos in Brazil. They discuss how SVN is using AI to drive growth and maintain operational excellence.

Video transcript

Hello, Nicolas. Hello, Luca. Hello. And thank you. And thank you, everybody, for taking a look at or listen in to our our podcast. This podcast is called AI readiness for Salesforce. And we talk about themes, as you probably can imagine, that relate to AI and how companies, people, technology, culture, and us as users are getting ready in the context of Salesforce, in the context of, you know, kind of enterprise, systems, how are we getting ready for AI.

And Nicholas here, is, participating today, bringing the perspective from a very specific industry, financial services, from a very, you know, company, very large, organization, in Latin America. So also perspective from a different continent than where we are based, which, is Europe. So, Nicolas, why don’t you introduce yourself?

Okay, so I’m Nicolas, from Brazil. We are working in Maringá, Paraná, in the south Brazil. And here at SVN, we are a financial advisors office. So we work managing the investments portfolio for the clients and, and, and this year, last year and this year, SVN is working a lot of insurance and a lot of more, more ways of investments trying to do, a hub for the clients to, take care of their money.

And specifically, your role is dedicated to technology, right? So you’re part of the technology team. You’re helping the organization embrace innovation and technology. Yeah. Here at SVN, we have two branches. The new one that I work with, we we call it digital. So we have, acquisitions funnel when we get put money in Facebook, Instagram to generate leads and bring, try to, to bring more customers from the internet, from digital ways.

We, we say two branches because the last the first one is we call relationship because it’s, bank manager way. You you have the, your client and you just get new clients to asking to to research to get a new yeah refer and get a new client, friend or family. So here in the we are using a lot of AI to help us generate new leads and better leads and try to connect to people. Totally make sense.

So the business development, you know, kind of growth area that’s where you specialize and you provide technology. Actually so which leads to, to the question, we’re talking about AI readiness and obviously across organizations that use Salesforce. So how is your relationship, what’s your perspective on AI?

We see here and the financial services that the companies that work with us or the, our competitors, they are trying to reach their clients different ways, like, just by creating a new email idea, from this smallest one to, or to call, AI to call them, like, using AI voice and AI transcription to try to reach the clients without getting the the real phone. So there is a lot of the this happening, and we, we’re trying to future a lot. That’s that’s what I do a lot here at SVN, future and search for new, new tools that we can use.

But it’s a big ocean. That what they say? It’s a big ocean that we try to to get the the right way or not. Not too expensive ways or some companies are our understanding how to pay or, what is worth to pay.

And it’s interesting because I think the, the accent then is or the focus is on the efficiency side, right? Yeah. So it’s, productivity, impact that companies like yours are looking to do.

Is, data and the data that comes from it, and the ability for AI of using data, is that also relevant in, in, you know, in across your organization?

Yes, it is.

One what one way we are using it, preparing for getting ready for AI is understand what what we what the clients to told to us, say to us because. Well, now, I don’t know, last year we did kind of, I don’t know, 1000 meetings and we don’t know what’s happening inside the meetings.

So now we understand what happened in the first meeting. The second meeting. And we’re getting the, the oldest advisors sitting to the new ones and understand how the meeting goes. So they teach them the new ones. I don’t know if that makes sense. Now, we can now ask the idea that it’s easier to pass the knowledge because this financial advisor role is a lot of, it’s not about the numbers, but how you create rapport with your customer how how do you call them? Ask about the family. So it’s you, you make part of their family. So you are trying to to, to change, to transform all of this, unstructured data to structured data, to numbers and to understand and to to understand and get scale with this, bring to the digital branch.

So says it’s absolutely making sense because I think you started saying that, you know, some part of your organization is looking at ways to use AI to bring efficiency at scale. Right? So in volume and now you’re saying that, and this is probably a bit more specific to the use of solutions like Vinton, you’re saying that the accent for you is a lot on the quality of the operations and how AI can help you maintain a consistent, high quality engagement with your with your clients.

It’s it’s very interesting because that the two sides are coexisting. Right? One is productivity efficiency. Doing more with automated solutions that AI can bring, on the other side is quality and its engagement and its, you know, kind of consistency in delivering your operations. I think the word is quality, but we are trying to understand what brings quality to the meeting, why this advisor is so good in, in, in take care of their clients because, every month hearing this, the company enters a, I don’t know, like 10 or 15 new, new people.

But how do I teach them to work as the our best advisors? So it’s transformed the quality in numbers to we get the, the onboarding better onboarding faster the this people and try to to teach them the magic formula the first part. Yeah. Trying to discover the magic formula we’re trying to understand what they do and pass to the new ones. And AI is helping in that sense right? Because it’s it’s helping to div-, you know, dissect the call, I guess, and look into the insights that are coming out. That’s why Vinton enters not just the AI, but Vinton. When we met you, we understand that it fits a lot of what we are looking for because, we recorded a meeting, not just required, but we understand, during the the parts that are interesting we can, get the summary, understand and take the notes. We, we prepare a prompt and it’s, given the, a number so I can kind of measure now the quality without asking or without entering all the calls, I can just see a report and see which the advisor is getting

That’s very good use. And with this in mind, you know, taking a step back, how, broadly speaking, how is the organization SVN gearing up, you know, preparing to embrace AI? Is this like coming from the president, from the CEO saying we have to and, you know, it’s kind of creating committees? Is it coming from the people that are working on it and they’re saying, “oh, I’ve seen this solution. I’ve seen the solution.” How is is artificial intelligence being brought into the operations at SVN?

I think started in the the second way. You, you said because, okay there’s AI now and ChatGPT and everybody’s chatting with ChatGPT, I think start with this. So let’s stop and make, institutional way to look at that. Then we, we create a, a committee and a group to think about it, then become top down and now we were, for example, Vinton, become the, the official way to do that, because, you use a lot of, AIs, I don’t know, for prepare my mail, prepare my documents.

They use, a specific way here, I think, to the that the main goal of the advisors to make you, the clients make more money to get more money and there’s the portfolio. So they are they use AI to understand the portfolio, which, which product? Maybe, increase their investments.

So we are trying to embrace this, and get is getting more institutional. So more official inside the company. So now Vinton it’s about meetings. And now you are looking for, AI to to understand the investments to I think the, the main this two main branches. Very, very interesting and what are in your opinion, the, the risks, like, that people should be aware when thinking about AI, when implementing AI?

Like adoption. I’m thinking like did you did you find people. What I’m thinking is did you have people across the organization that were like oh my God, I know what to do. I don’t need the AI or leave me alone or my clients don’t like it or, you know, something like that. Actually, I feel that, some people are like that, like, this way, you know, we can do nothing for this.

But I think the, a lot of people are becoming more the the other way of this, the, this behavior.. they they’re liking… I I’m facing we’re meeting some advisors that don’t know how to build a new portfolio. They don’t know how to, I don’t know, write an email because AI do everything for them.

So I think it’s, future risk because. Yeah, maybe in some, I don’t know, inside a meeting you or, making some measurements, portfolio. You you need to think, understand the, the holistic market, for example, you you need to think, a lot of different things to see it. And build a portfolio or to talk with a client, and people are getting more focused on 1 or 2 things, and they are they they are losing the the ability to stop and think about the family, about the lifecycle of a company because they just write a prompt and wait for output to tell the, the magic formula.

So we try to understand the quality but not bring everything to numbers because we know it’s, a relationship with, a personal relationship. So we try not to lose that. And I think it’s not short, but mid-term or long term risk. It’s a very interesting one. So you you’re saying if we agree that the value of the work that your advisors do is also in the relationship building, then the risk is that they may disregard that, or delegate that too much to the AI and lose the personal touch and will lose. Yes. Then and softly going to lose this personal touch.

I like a, a lot of cinema and, I don’t know, visual producing effects or something like that.

AI, when you ask to Google or Gemini or ChatGPT to create an image, what he does, what it does is to get your idea and search for a lot of different images, and he makes, like, a puzzle to bring any images to you.

Okay. So in long term, think about, these relations, these meetings, these knowledge or images like we’re, we’re talking now, AI produces more image more and more image and AI now AI now is consuming AI so it’s kind of life a life cycle. It’s a cycle that it’s a risk, a long term risk.

And it’s not about images. It’s about knowledge. Talking to people. And that’s what I mean. Yeah. And I think you’re touching on a major, theme, that relates to AI, which is, self referencing. Right. So what you’re saying is, you know, kind of learning from itself and being trained by AI, which is not necessarily a good thing because it becomes a closed loop that doesn’t necessarily, you know, embrace creativity. You know, kind of lateral thinking or personal touch, like, you know, we, we, we just mentioned. So, so it’s an important, balance, I guess, that needs to be, to be to be, kind of managed, at that level where that’s very interesting and awareness, of course, you know, being aware of those, thinking about the future, you know, I don’t know, in, so we’re having this conversation now.

It’s the start of 2026. 2028, 2030. Right. We have a similar conversation. We are looking back four years, two years, four years ago, were, you know, what are we thinking about? What are we reflecting on? Where are we? What do you think will be the key themes? Going forward?

I think the easy one. It this is not an easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what what I see is that, make make a parallel again about, I don’t know, clothes or haircuts. You got, we got, Hi. I don’t know, new, new ways to to dress or to do things. Now, everything is gray, dark and white.

Okay? It’s really modern straight lines. And this is it about architecture, about clothes, about cars. And then it’s a cycle

I don’t know if you know, but, like, crochet is getting a lot of, females on Europe wearing crocheted clothes that my grandma did crochet. But now the teenagers are using that because I know it’s a cycle when people, use a lot of things, then go back and it’s it’s a cycle. So maybe we AI is the year of the AI now and maybe this year to and and 27.

But people are going to. Okay. We are using a lot let’s do something like more manually or I think about five years where you are, we are talking about this downcycle. Oh. Very interesting. So you you see this accelerating now we are at a moment where everybody’s like, it’s so obvious we we are doing something with AI, we have to do something with more and more and more with AI. And then at some point it will be maybe for what you said earlier would be so disconnected from personal touch, from creativity. So it becomes all gray and square and, so, yeah, there’s, a movement that says, look, let’s actually create something authentic. Let’s restart to meet in person rather than talking to a robot on the phone and, let’s… Yeah, it’s very interesting. Yes, but it’s not that just because people are going to lose interest. But AI is going to be in their normal days, like everything are we going to do is going to have AI. So it’s normal to them and that they are not just looking to AI because everything has AI, so they’re looking to other things, it’s coming naturally. Not because they are avoiding AI but they okay AI is just there let’s do something else then. I don’t the, the the word is becoming normal. Very interesting.

Yeah I, I’m, I’m on the one hand, I’m looking forward to that world. Because I think we’re a blessed generation.

We are seeing things that nobody else, has seen before. And, you know, kind of evolving so rapidly in all directions. But it’s a bit it’s a bit interesting and scary at the same time. You know, with what’s happening, coming back to specifically to the financial services you mentioned about investment and, you know, portfolio. And are there other ways in which your industry, is transforming, maybe through AI or is preparing to transform, with, with AI?

And I’m thinking also, you know, crypto on the one hand, yes, automated investments and optimizer AI optimization of investment because I think in your relationship, in your line of work, your advisors, they actually create a relationship based on the risk profile of the people. They, they they get to understand them and they create solutions that maximize profit, but within the constraints of the risk profile.

Yes. AI can probably take that to a different level, right. If, if we want to, but it loses the personal touch, as we said. But, you know, there are many different things that are happening in, in financial services. And I’m wondering if you, you know, have a couple of interesting things to share. Yeah, I think about, two things to, to ways of use, about the markets, the financial market and just, I don’t know, stocks and companies.

Some, some years ago, they created something I think many years ago they create something called HFT high frequency traders. Yes, they are bots, robots that buy and sell stocks very fast. And they understand what market marketing, the marketing training to, to bring more money. And now AI they’re using AI because step back. It’s, algorithm, but if devs do something like the, the very simplified it their job, but it’s like if, if this happens, do this.

If this happens, do that. Very simple. But now AI can change, why you it’s happening not not just, 1 or 0 question. Yes or no. It’s more okay. Because market, the trend of the market trends involves a lot of human behavior. If you study this, you’re going to see that, we we can see patterns in the screen about the, the prices.

But what happens is, when, a breaking news, about the present to or, the president or a big company happens, goes into the newspaper or in the internet it’s not the robot it’s not the the bots are selling. People are getting afraid and sell everything they have or buy more. So AI can now adjust this.

And it’s getting more complex to enter or to gain more money, or it’s easier to not losing money. So it’s a big thing. It’s happening here. So it’s beyond the algorithmic I think that’s what you’re saying. Right. Because before it was an algorithm says, you know, these are the rules. And if this happens then this will happen. But you are saying it’s actually more complicated than that, because again, it is human behavior and it’s a bit unpredictable.

It has emotions. And AI can sense that something is happening… or it can virtually do that. The, the AI it’s kind of person. So they, they can think like us. Yeah. And they simulate how a person would react, including, what would be, done driven by emotion rather than rational thinking. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a crazy thing to, to, to understand. The other thing is about what do we do, like more in the sales front? The financial advisor is a salesperson. It sells investments. Right. So, the bank now is reading or the AI is reading all the conversations, all the, the lifetime of the person here inside our our company. We connect to a lot of different, data, we call data cloud, too, because we have, what the, this person do with the, in the marketing, the last time he bring money or take off the money, if has he shares he is not here. If he has child, what do with the the credit card?

So you have a lot of different ways and AI is bringing the salesperson info to call the, the client and say or bringing the screen like a big red alert to say you need to sell insurance to this client now or. Or this this investment here is not so well. Bring this another one that is in our campaign to to gain more money.

So the AI is in the center of this hub to to understand the different data and the meetings and try to tell the advisors how best way to make more money, more intelligent ways. This kind of this thinking about earning money. Okay, is thinking about the same with, with the, the purpose in mind. I think that that’s a very smart assistant, effectively that, you know, you do the work.

But a lot of doing the work is preparing and prioritizing the work, and you’re thinking that will be very easily prioritized and organized by the AI. So I know exactly what I need to do. It’s in front of me, and it says, you know, call this person, talk to Nicolas. This is the product that will most likely be interesting.

These are the questions that you should ask, or these are the areas where you should be kind of probing. And this is, you know, how you, you position the solution. Very interesting. Because when you think in this new way, years ago, again, about the algorithm, if the client has this product, give one point. If the client has insurance two points and then you rescale the client and prioritize the tasks about to sell or about to do.

But now you the AI brings the info, bring what the client has or and or or don’t have and goes to the market it goes to the internet and I don’t know understand the news, what’s happening. The there’s a lot of context about or how far you can just ask ChatGPT what is has being selling and it is going to to, to tell you the phase and it brings to the, the, the, the CRM. So, it brings a lot of more context to the selling to sell the investment or to, to the meetings. And, and it can dynamically adapt to it rather than being static… to each client… Exactly.

Well, it, it sounds, you know, to, to to to sum up, I, you know, really, appreciate your, your time. I wanted to bring it to a close. It sounds like, you’re very optimistic, about the the future and the use of AI to help organizations like SVN. And in general, a lot of work to do to, again the future, understand and build inside.

And, many players are doing really interesting, tools like Vinton we’re talking to a tool now that it’s called Sparring You know, sparring from boxing? You… it’s called Sparring. What’s the idea? You have, you have a new advisor, a new SDR, and you put in front of the Sparring and it calls you. It’s a AI voice.

And you have to… there’s a context of the training, the, it’s mainly about the enablement on the team when you call… Okay… So now you are going to test, first call with the AI, and we you, we make a prompt, you do the persona and how if the AI is going to be money or have some money or not, and the it’s the our our goal is to improve a lot of onboarding.

And they are going to do a lot of a lot of meetings, hours of meetings before going to the real people. Yes. And that’s, having, another idea that we are using here, very interesting and actually something that we are also developing. So I will, we will talk to you about that, but, you know, separately from, from for on this podcast.

Well, for now, look, this was very interesting. I’m sure you know, the people that are listening, have very interesting, perspective, you know, from, from within the financial services, you know, specifically and, you know, personal engagement and conversation centered value proposition, like, like yours and that of your of your industry and how AI and getting ready for AI is is mandatory and crucial at the moment.

So I really want to thank you very much. Yes. No, thank you. Thank you, Nicolas. And, well, you know, if, anyone who is listening, if you enjoyed this, please, you know, kind of comment, reach out. You’ll find Nicolas on LinkedIn and you’ll find us at vinton.ai. We’re open for business.

And, you know, come and talk to us about how we can transform conversations into seamless data into and do a lot of the things that we discuss in this podcast with Nicolas.

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