Short clip: Vanguard on how technology simplifies investing

February 13, 2007, 12:55pm PST | Length: 00:02:23
Vanguard Group CIO Paul Heller explains how technology is streamlining the investment process and making it more user-friendly.

Transcript

Short clip: Vanguard on how technology simplifies investing

>> Dan: What are some examples of where you've really created some kind of product or service that shows how the combination of all the things you do in terms of providing low cost funds, but also the technology infrastructure you have in terms of the customer interaction has yielded great benefit?

>> Let's see. Two areas come to mind. Dan, our industry is increasingly complex. There's literally close to 10,000 mutual funds, exchange rated funds, all different account types. One of our strategies is basically to try to simplify the offer. I mean, there are a lot of people who love investing and they go out and they really try to understand it. And for others, it's a bit overwhelming. Technology can play a great role there on a simplification front. Just last week, we launched a new service. If you go to open a new account online at Vanguard, and that's the primary way our shareholders open up a new account, there's now a service called the Vanguard Investment Express. And very simply, rather than sort through our 100 plus mutual funds, we ask you a few questions, we get a profile from you, it's highly interactive, it's a rich internet app, and you quickly get to a portfolio that works for you. We have a similar application on the institutional side of our business, or in the 401k business, we call it the 1-Step Program. It's a simplification process. We want to make it easy for our participants to enroll in the plan, get signed up and the like. On the retail side of our business, on the advice front, we have a service called Vanguard Financial Planning. It's entirely a web-based service. You enter some basic information about yourself, we schedule an appointment with you right online and then you find yourself within a week or two having a full investment session with a certified financial planner at Vanguard. Years ago, you simply couldn't do that. I mean, literally you'd have to sit across the table and meet with someone. With the technology today, you can have this really rich experience and get the advice, yet have that kind of interaction and do most of it online. So those are a few of the examples, simplification and advice. We're also trying to do more collaboration with our clients so when they call up and you talk to someone at Vanguard, the client is actually looking at the same web or desktop that our internal crew are. And again, many of the questions are I'm on your website and, and we're looking at the same information and we can collaborate with them. So those are some areas where we're really trying to apply the business and the technology together.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====

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