Top 6 CRMs for Financial Advisors In 2025 – Shape Software

Looking for the best CRM for your financial or wealth management business? You’re in the right place. In 2024, financial advisors navigate a landscape brimming with complex client needs and dynamic market changes, making specialized CRM systems essential. These CRMs, designed specifically for financial advisors, excel in seamlessly integrating with portfolio management systems to provide real-time financial data, crucial for informed decision-making. They also boast customizable financial reporting tools, allowing advisors to tailor reports for financial planning and performance analysis to each client’s unique needs. Equally important in these CRMs is their capability to handle sensitive financial documents with the utmost security, offering robust encryption and secure sharing options. In this article, we will explore the top six CRMs that master these critical features, guiding financial advisors to select a system that enhances their service delivery, ensures data security, and keeps them ahead in the fast-evolving financial sector.

10 essential features every good CRM for wealth management should have

A top-tier CRM software should be as multifaceted and robust as the market itself. Here are ten essential features that every good financial advisor CRM should have, and why they are indispensable:

1. Real-time portfolio integration – This allows advisors to access up-to-date financial data, providing clients with timely, informed advice based on current market conditions.
2. Customizable financial reporting – Tailored reports are key for dissecting complex financial data into understandable insights, essential for client meetings and strategy planning.
3. Goal tracking and management – Advisors can monitor and manage client financial goals, making it easier to adjust strategies in response to life changes or market fluctuations.
4. Secure document handling – With sensitive client data at stake, robust encryption and secure document sharing capabilities are non-negotiable for protecting client information.
5. Client portal customization – Personalized portals empower clients to view their financial information at their convenience, fostering transparency and engagement.
6. Comprehensive client profiles – Detailed client profiles ensure that advisors have a holistic view of each client’s financial situation, preferences, and history, crucial for personalized service.
7. Workflow automation – Automating routine tasks like appointment scheduling or follow-up emails increases efficiency, allowing advisors to focus more on client interaction and strategy.
8. Lead and referral tracking – Essential for business growth, this feature helps in managing prospective clients and tracking the effectiveness of referral programs.
9. Regulatory compliance tools – In an industry governed by strict regulations, these tools are vital for ensuring that advisors remain compliant with legal standards.
10. Mobile accessibility – The ability to access the CRM on the go is crucial for advisors who need to stay connected with clients and markets, no matter where they are.

In the high-stakes world of financial advising, where precision, security and personalized service reigns supreme, these CRM features are not just tools in your toolkit – they’re the secret sauce to your success.

5 easy, effective ways to utilize a CRM for financial services & wealth management

Ever wondered how top financial advisors are maximizing their CRM use? You’re in the right place. Below are some practical, insightful ways professionals are leveraging their CRM tools to enhance client relationships, streamline operations, and achieve financial goals. Let’s delve into some real world scenarios.

1. 360-degree client views
   Financial advisors are using CRMs to get a comprehensive snapshot of each client’s financial landscape. Imagine a dashboard where you can see everything from a client’s investment portfolio to their retirement plans and insurance policies. This complete view enables advisors to give more personalized advice. For example, if a client has a significant amount of education savings, an advisor might suggest different investment strategies tailored to that goal.
2. Automated client communication
   Gone are the days of manually sending out updates or reminders. Financial advisors are setting up their CRMs to automatically send personalized emails to clients about important milestones, like a review of their investment performance or a reminder about an upcoming financial planning meeting. This keeps clients informed and engaged without bogging down advisors in administrative tasks.
3. Real-time portfolio updates
   With integrations to portfolio management systems, advisors can provide clients with real-time updates on their investments. This means if there’s a significant market movement, the CRM can trigger an alert, and the advisor can proactively reach out to the client to discuss potential impacts or adjustments to their strategy.
4. Tracking client goals and progress
   Financial advisors use CRMs to track and manage their clients’ financial goals and milestones. For instance, if a client’s goal is to buy a house in five years, the CRM can help track their savings progress and remind the advisor when to check in and provide advice on reaching that goal more effectively.
5. Secure document management
   In a world where data breaches are a real concern, financial advisors use CRMs to securely store and share sensitive documents like tax returns, estate plans, or investment statements. This not only ensures the safety of CRM data but also makes it easy for clients to access their documents in one place, adding a layer of convenience to the advisor-client relationship.

We hope that gives you a good idea of how to best utilize a decent CRM for financial advisors, now let’s get to the part that matters. Which CRMs currently on the market are hitting the right notes. Which options should you consider. We’ve extensively researched and reviewed 6 of the best CRM software so you don’t have to.

Quick comparison of the top 6 best CRM for financial advisors

The top 6 best CRMs for financial adviors in 2024 are:

1. Shape
2. Wealthbox
3. Advisor Engine
4. Zoho CRM
5. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
6. HubSpot

1. Shape

Backed by a sleek interface, robust features, and integrations, Shape is an all-in-one CRM with a huge variety of tools that can be applied to multiple industries including wealth management. This suite of tools enhances automation, marketing, and sales task management for financial advisors.

One of Shape’s defining features is its fully customizable and white-labeled client portal.
This portal houses most of your client management activities from onboarding clients to tracking client goals and milestones and providing a safe platform for exchanging sensitive financial documents.

Once the client portal has been activated, you can start making a great and professional first impression on your clients. By default, Shape already configures the portal to industry standards but you can take it a step further and customize its settings to your unique needs.

You can modify the client application process, create specific lists of client-required documents (needs lists), add custom questions to gather client-specific financial data and more. Plus since the portal is fully white labeled, you can add your company logo, branding, and color preferences so that as you interact with clients, you also emphasize the value you provide them while at it.

That’s not all, clients will be sharing sensitive financial documents throughout the stages of their financial journey and Shape takes this seriously. It ensures the portal is always secure so clients can upload and manage their documents without any security or privacy concerns. The system then converts the uploaded documents to PDF files without altering the original file size so it’s easy for you to approve and manage them.

When your clients are navigating their financial journey, Shape’s client portal also provides milestones tracking features. These features can be applied to monitor and communicate the progress of their various financial goals such as debt payment, retirement savings, and investments. With your clients’ milestones and progress clearly visible, you can align your strategies with their objectives.

Shape’s wealth management functionalities are not limited to the client portal. The CRM also offers a comprehensive reporting and analytics suite. This suite comes with over 50 pre-built reports and the ability to create custom reports, which are useful for performance analysis, client reporting, and financial planning.

Thanks to the reporting tools, you can easily visualize each client’s financial data and adapt your financial strategies to their profiles and needs on your dashboard.

Despite these features, Shape extends its functionalities by allowing integration with external portfolio management systems through Zapier. At $119 a month you gain access to all these features and even additional capabilities like Built-in Calling, Text, Email, Video, and MMS, plus an AI Suite. All these features come together to create a CRM that offers good value for money.

Altogether, Shape’s customizable client portal, goal-tracking features, mobile app, secure document handling, and comprehensive communication tools make it the ideal CRM for financial advisors. As expected from a comprehensive CRM, users may experience an initial learning curve. However, according to user reviews, it is quickly resolved thanks to the intuitive user interface and highly responsive customer support team.

2. Wealthbox

What sets Wealthbox apart from other CRMs for financial advisors is its specialized design for financial advisors. While other multi-purpose CRMs cater to a broad range of use cases across multiple industries, Wealthbox’s sole focus on the financial industry makes it highly effective in meeting your specific needs. This CRM provides all the essential tools you’ll need including data analytics, contact, task, portfolio, financial goal and pipeline management.

Although Wealthbox does not have a comprehensive financial goal-tracking solution, it provides tools that help you organize individual financial information through notes, emails, files, and reports in one place. These features, though not specifically aimed at financial goal tracking, form a basis for customer relationship management and financial planning processes.

For instance, you can use Wealthbox to store data your client’s financial objectives, track progress through organized files and reports, and maintain regular communication via emails. All these elements can be leveraged to help your clients set and attain their financial milestones.

In addition, Wealthbox integrates with several portfolio management systems like Addepar and Axos which provide real-time financial research data for clients and enhance its ability to manage clients’ financial goals and milestones.

Since you will be constantly dealing with sensitive client data, it’s essential that your CRM not only manages this information efficiently but also ensures they are stored and shared safely. Wealthbox’s document management system addresses this concern through features like user access permissions and customized category labeling.

This means you can control who has access to specific documents and ensure that sensitive client information is only accessible to authorized personnel. Likewise, categorizing documents with customized labels also ensures you can quickly access the right document and reduces the risk of misplacing or losing important documents.

Despite its features and integrations, testing the platform was hassle-free thanks to its user-friendly interface and simple setup process. It is a rare combination of a high-end CRM and stress-free operation. Its pricing structure is also flexible, catering to a diverse range of financial advisory firms, from small startups to larger, more established entities.

At $45 per month per user, Wealthbox’s Basic plan provides everything a small startup or independent financial advisor needs in a CRM, including one workspace and pipeline, custom reports, and 2GB of file storage. The Pro plan, at $59 adds five pipelines, and email tracking tools, and increases storage to 5GB while for larger businesses, the Premier plan at $79 extends the number of pipelines to 10 and provides five workspaces and 10GB of storage. It offers a 14 day free trial to experience the software.

In conclusion, Wealthbox CRM stands out as a user-friendly wealth management CRM specifically designed for financial advisors. Its strengths lie in its simplicity, ease of setup, learning, and maintenance, along with its pre-built fields and forms for financial advisors.

The platform also offers value for money with its flexible pricing structure, catering to a diverse range of financial advisory firms. However, it does have limitations. Although it allows individual financial data tracking, it lacks a centralized goal-tracking solution, which may limit your ability to manage your clients’ financial planning effectively.

Another notable shortcoming is the absence of a client portal feature, meaning unlike other CRM systems, your clients can neither view their financial information nor interact with you directly on the platform.

Furthermore, many users have reported difficulties in maintaining workflows and frequent crashes when managing various types of contacts. Therefore, while Wealthbox offers several beneficial features, you should also consider these limitations when making your decision.

3. Advisor Engine

AdvisorEngine is another CRM designed specifically for wealth management. It’s a comprehensive advisor platform that combines CRM tools with extensive workflow automation and document management.

While testing AdvisorEngine, one feature that stood out was its goal-based planning tool. This tool provides a personalized approach to asset management that goes beyond traditional allocation approaches based solely on static risk and return levels. It helps clients develop an investment strategy specific to their situation and objectives and optimizes client portfolios based on the probability of meeting their financial goals.

That’s not all, AdvisorEngine integrates smoothly with several portfolio management tools such as MoneyGuidePro and Orion. This integration gives you access to real-time financial data to enhance decision-making processes and allow clients to engage in client-led planning within their portal.

AdvisorEngine’s client portal contains each client’s detailed portfolio performance data, including transactions and asset allocation, promoting transparency between you and your clients. It is both customizable and fully white-labeled allowing you to tailor the displayed information to each client’s specific needs.

Additionally, you can brand each portal with your firm’s unique identity, which helps to create a smoother and more professional platform, making clients feel more secure and personally attended to.

To ensure every document shared with the client’s portal is secure, the portal includes a safe Document Vault. The Document Vault allows for the safe sharing and access of important financial documents, such as custodian statements and performance reports.

This feature empowers clients to directly manage tasks related to their accounts while maintaining security. These combined efforts in the CRM and Client Portal demonstrate AdvisorEngine’s focus on safeguarding sensitive client data while providing accessible and client-centric services.

While securing client data in AdvisorEngine’s Document Vault is vital, it’s equally important to transform this safe data into meaningful insights. The CRM accommodates this need with its extensive reporting features so if you’re searching for a tool that doubles as your CRM and client management software, AdvisorEngine’s advanced portfolio reporting capabilities make it a great fit.

This feature provides in-depth analysis of performance drivers and incorporates data from index providers like Bloomberg and MSCI, for market comparisons and as a custom benchmark for personalized analysis.

The best part is that AdvisorEngine automates the entire report creation and delivery process, ensuring you get prompt access to financial information. All this financial data including benchmarks and dynamic graphs is presented to the clients through a user-friendly interface so clients can effortlessly engage with and understand their financial position.

Overall, starting at $65, AdvisorEngine offers comprehensive features including personalized goal-based planning, detailed reporting capabilities, and good document organization. However, like every comprehensive CRM, it has its caveats. We found navigating the platform a bit hectic especially when creating customized workflows during our testing.

Additionally, its sales engagement features are somewhat limited, making it less suitable for large-scale client acquisition. Therefore, if your sales team intends to generate substantial website traffic or customer inflow and needs to heavily engage clients, AdvisorEngine may not be the ideal solution.

4. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a comprehensive tool with a system tailored for financial services. It provides a unified view of all your contacts through a user-friendly dashboard. Although Zoho CRM has no default feature for Financial Clients’ Goal tracking and management, it compensates with its customizable client portals. These portals provide a platform where your client base can interact with you and view relevant financial information, enhancing the advisor-client interaction.

Every module in the CRM has customizable access permissions, allowing you to manage how clients interact with the data in the portals. You have to invite a new client before they can use a portal, and you can revoke this invitation at any point.

This ensures that you maintain full control over who can view confidential financial information which is essential for preserving data security. Additionally, since the portals are customizable, you can easily brand them with your company’s identity, and also present complex financial data in a format that is both visually appealing and easy to understand.

Providing high-quality financial advice and service goes beyond managing and sharing client financial information. It also involves leveraging that data to support clients in making sound financial decisions through effective reporting. Zoho CRM facilitates this with its artificial intelligence powered reporting features, including detailed analysis, business health monitoring, and tracking.

However, although Zoho’s reporting features are comprehensive, they may require significant customization to cater to specific financial advisory needs. For example, you might need to merge multiple reports to obtain deeper insights and use the visual builder to organize them for easy access.

This process involves selecting modules, adding fields, and customizing reports to meet your unique requirements. As a result, you may have to dedicate additional time to tailor these features to your specific needs.

Another caveat worth considering is its integration capabilities. While Zoho integrates with some finance-related apps like QuickBooks and Zoho Expense, it does not integrate with many specialized portfolio management applications that financial advisors commonly use. This means you may need to manually manage data between the CRM and your portfolio management tool, which could lead to a fragmented and inconsistent workflow.

One of Zoho’s major defining factors is its affordable pricing. It offers a generous free plan and tiered options ranging from $12 to $45, making it a great choice for small and medium-sized businesses. We also found its user interface simple and intuitive when evaluating the CRM.

However, despite this clean user interface, setting it up came with a significant learning curve, causing a delay in the setup process. Hence, if you’re not already proficient with CRMs, Zoho may not be the best fit as you might not have it fully operational within a day. Similarly, if your business is medium or large and requires many staff to use it, the setup delay might not offer you the best service.

Overall, Zoho is a great CRM for financial advisors due to its customizable client portals, secure document management, and comprehensive reporting. However, because it is not specifically designed for wealth management, it requires extensive customization. Non-technical users may find this challenging, as many users have reported that the CRM is difficult to customize and scale.

5. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud

Salesforce is a reputable CRM known for its extensive functionality and comprehensive suite of tools that cater to diverse business needs. The Salesforce Financial Services Cloud is a specialized version of the Salesforce CRM, specifically designed for the financial services industry.

It leverages the core functionalities of Salesforce CRM and offers additional features and customization to meet the unique needs of financial advisors, banking institutions, insurance companies, and other financial service providers.

One of the key features of the Financial Service Cloud is the Financial Goals feature. This feature assists clients whether as individuals or a household in achieving their short and long-term financial objectives.

For instance, you can create a goal on one person’s account record to save for a new business, and on another’s to save for a new car. If both account holders are part of the same household, you can view their goals collectively and add a priority and status to each goal to help them prioritize the more important goal.

You can integrate the financial goals feature into the client’s profile for a comprehensive view of their financial situation, goals, and progress. This allows you to make data-driven recommendations based on their specific goals and current status. The CRM also provides a self-service client portal, where clients can access their financial information and interact with advisors. However, this feature comes at an additional cost.

Due to Salesforce’s history spanning over two decades, it integrates with plenty of software you may already use. This includes portfolio management solutions like ArtemisVC, a leading system specifically designed to manage venture capital and private equity firms. Integrating with this tool allows you to manage due diligence information, financials, contacts, notes, and more.

Financial Services Cloud also enhances client reporting and performance analysis with its customizable reports and dashboards. The prebuilt dashboards are designed to provide practical insights about your client portfolio, graphically representing key metrics you can use to stay on top of client goals, satisfaction, leads, and referrals.

All financial information handled within the CRM is sensitive. Financial Cloud ensures this information remains secure with its document handling features, which include automated approval workflows and checklists. These features help you efficiently manage your document approval process.

The Automated Approval Workflows feature speeds up the document approval processes. By automating this process, all documents are safely passed through the necessary approval channels. This minimizes human error and guarantees all document approvals are obtained in a controlled manner.

Similarly, the system promotes secure document handling by creating checklists for frequently needed documents. This strategy ensures that all essential documents are collected, properly managed, and readily accessible for processing and review. It also prevents any crucial documents from being overlooked.

Salesforce Financial Cloud’s pricing structure is on the higher end, starting at $325 for the Enterprise plan and $500 for the Unlimited plan. Therefore, it is more fitting for large firms with enterprise needs.

Generally, Financial Service Cloud is a robust tool that’s well-suited for wealth management activities and managing a large number of relationships. Its interface is user-friendly and designed for easy navigation even by new person. However, its pricing structure may not be ideal for independent advisors or smaller firms due to its high cost.

Despite the straightforward interface, if you’re new to CRM systems or have only used simple CRMs in the past, you might find Salesforce’s extensive platform challenging. Implementing all your processes may also take significant time. It doesn’t help that many users have also pointed out a high turnover rate among Salesforce’s customer service staff. This could make it difficult to get your questions answered and may affect the platform’s overall effectiveness of the product.

Regardless of these factors, Salesforce’s Financial Cloud remains an efficient CRM for financial advisors and providing a positive client experience while at it.

6. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM designed to manage various aspects of business operations, particularly sales, marketing, and customer service. Although HubSpot doesn’t have a CRM solution dedicated to the financial services industry, the CRM’s Sales Hub covers an extensive set of advanced features and ample customization options that can benefit financial advisors. You can also integrate the platform with other HubSpot products, like Marketing Hub or Customer Service Hub, to unify business processes.

With HubSpot, you can efficiently manage your schedule, from setting appointments and reminders to organizing your to-do lists. These features help maintain organization, follow up on client requests, keep track of meetings, and manage important tasks effectively. And the best part is that you can use the CRM completely free of charge, making it ideal for independent advisors!

We tested the free CRM and found it quite robust, with features like email templates, social media marketing, tracking, scheduling, and list segmentation. Additionally, you can use it along with other free tools from HubSpot, such as the landing page builder.

Adding landing pages to your website is a great way to increase leads. These pages could be promoting free offers such as free courses or simply be contact pages. Regardless of its appearance, the aim is to gather contact information from prospective leads.

HubSpot CRM’s free landing page builder lets you create attractive landing pages without any code. Furthermore, you can monitor the number of new leads generated by these pages and convert them into active prospects using HubSpot’s reporting capabilities.

HubSpot CRM’s customizable dashboard and reporting software offer valuable insights. This tool is useful for financial planning, client reporting, and performance analysis. The reporting dashboards are flexible and customizable, allowing you to create reports that meet your specific needs.

Although HubSpot does not have a specific feature for tracking client financial goals and milestones, you can use the CRM’s general goal tracking and management features to create custom goals aligned with your client’s financial objectives.

Additionally, HubSpot CRM provides customizable customer portals that clients can use to interact with you. This customer portal feature is so intuitive that clients can solve their common service issues without requiring customer support. Also since the customer portal is customizable, you can tailor it to create a portal where clients can view their information and interact with advisors.

In addition to Hubspot’s comprehensive digital solutions, the platform offers an app marketplace where you can find external tools for integration, including project management tools like GSuite, Jira, and more. This capability provides the flexibility to customize your technology stack to the specific needs of your business, while still benefiting from a centralized CRM.

HubSpot’s pricing is equally flexible, allowing you to choose the services and price tiers that best suit your goals and budget. Then as your business grows, you can conveniently add more features.

What’s more HubSpot provides a free tier for its CRM product that includes significant features such as unlimited users, contact management, sales funnel, email marketing automation, integrations, and more. As your needs expand, you can upgrade to a Starter, Professional, or Enterprise plan at $45, $99, and $399 per month respectively, with added sales and marketing features.

Your loyal clients entrust you with highly sensitive information, so it’s crucial to use a CRM that prioritizes security, and HubSpot does just that. Before CRM data is transferred from a HubSpot server to your browser, it’s encrypted using 2048-bit or stronger keys, making a successful brute-force attack nearly impossible.

HubSpot also uses a web application firewall and network-level firewalling to monitor web traffic. They also regularly perform vulnerability and penetration testing and submit to external security audits so you are in safe hands.

Setting up and learning how to use many CRM for financial advisors is usually where most of the challenge is, as they often come with a steep learning curve that may prevent all team members from using the CRM effectively. However, while testing HubSpot’s CRM, the clean interface and intuitive dashboard made getting started seamless.

Additionally, the platform’s numerous free online tutorials helped us get through more complicated tasks, so unlike many other CRMs, you can spend less time setting up your system and more time using it.

However, because HubSpot is not specifically designed for financial advisors, it lacks some industry-specific features, such as wealth management and financial planning. This means that even though it offers a wide range of functionalities, you may need to supplement it with other tools or customization to fully meet industry-specific needs.

How to pick the right CRM for financial advisors/wealth management

In wrapping up our journey into the world of financial services CRMs in 2024, we’ve seen how these sophisticated tools are revolutionizing the way financial advisors manage client relationships, track goals, and handle sensitive information. Moving beyond basic client management, these financial CRMs offer a suite of features tailored to the intricate needs of finance professionals- from real-time financial portfolio updates and automated communication to secure document handling and comprehensive client views. We’ve explored how these functionalities are being effectively utilized in real-world scenarios, demonstrating their impact on enhancing client service and operational efficiency.

So, what’s next for you as a financial advisor or wealth manager? If you’re considering a CRM, reflect on how the uses and features we’ve discussed align with your specific business needs and client management style. And if you’re already using one, this might be the perfect time to delve deeper into its capabilities, ensuring you’re leveraging every aspect to its full potential. In the dynamic and ever-evolving field of financial advising, staying ahead means continuously exploring, adapting, and employing the best tools available. Embrace the power of a specialized CRM, experiment with its features, and watch as it transforms your practice and boost revenue.

Please note: All pricing mentioned in this article is based on information available as of 24-01-2024 and sourced from the respective companies’ public pricing pages. While we strive for accuracy, we recommend verifying with the specific company for the most up-to-date details.

Need more business advice? Take your pick from one of our many well-researched articles

• Best Lead Distribution Software Systems
• Best Email Automation Software
• 7 Reasons Email Marketing Is Better Than Direct Mail Marketing