Forced to Re-Evaluate, CI Financial Chooses Flexible Webinar Provider

Toronto, ON – September 26, 2018 – The Canadian wealth management industry has a large financial advisor base.  These advisors are continuously targeted by the industry, so getting and keeping their engagement is challenging.  CI Financial is an independent Canadian investment company that proudly partners with financial advisors across Canada.  CI has recognized that providing timely content in a variety of formats including webinars with continuing education (CE) accreditation has been a winning strategy for advisor engagement.

In Q1 2018 CI’s provider of webinars gave notice that it could no longer support advisor-specific webinars with embedded CE, providing the catalyst for CI to look elsewhere.  In the re-evaluation process three objectives became clear.  The needs to consolidate onto one platform across the firm, streamlining CE administration and integrating with Salesforce.

CI is a large firm with both manufacturing via CI Investments and distribution through Assante.  And with recent acquisitions including Sentry and First Asset, there are multiple departments with various webinar requirements.  Getting everyone on same platform would provide cost and operational efficiency.  To meet this need The Streaming Network’s (TSN) provided a one platform solution with Elite, a fully cloud-based webinar tool.  Using a parent and child account structure, pricing and service was standardized across the firm.  Training and webinar templates were also standardized so that webinars are faster to clone and produce and various departments can cross-share platform experiences.

CE is a great incentive for advisors but can be administratively challenging for the firm.  Looking at CE more closely, there was an interest at CI to consolidate all CE workflow for venue as well as virtual sessions onto one cloud-based software solution.  TSN’s CE Central, which integrates directly with Elite was chosen.  While most platforms deliver CE on an event-by-event basis and data is isolated, TSN’s CE Central provides a single view into all CE activity including venue and virtual based sessions.  This single view is for all stakeholders, including the advisors, firm CE administrators and marketing leadership.

Webinars generate a great deal of both demographic and behavioural data.  CI recognized that while the webinar analytics are incredibly valuable alone, they become invaluable when integrated with Salesforce CRM.  Using Scribe, the Elite platform integrates with Salesforce and the TSN Integration Service is flexible and configurable, allowing it to adapt to CI’s unique marketing workflow.  Also, over 30 types of webinar metrics can be delivered to Salesforce, including viewing duration, level of engagement, poll responses and user questions giving CI a range of options for how it collects and stores data.

In summary, we are excited about our new partnership with CI Financial.  The ability for us to centralize the end-to-end production and delivery of webinars across this large firm will deliver cost and production efficiencies to the firm.  Advisors will get a consistent user experience across the brands including CI Investments, acquired firms and Assante.

About TSN: 

The Streaming Network (TSN) is Canada’s leading provider of Webinars, Webcasts and Virtual Events, with customers delivering over 120,000 hours of CE accredited webinars within the last year. Over 70% of Canada’s leading fund companies have partnered with The Streaming Network to deliver financial and CE accredited webinar content, along with the majority of Canada’s most recognized banking institutions.  To learn more about visit www.thestreamingnetwork.com

About CI Investments:

CI Financial Corp. (TSX: CIX) is an independent Canadian company offering global asset management and wealth management advisory services. Its primary operating businesses are CI Investments Inc., Assante Wealth Management (Canada) Ltd., CI Private Counsel LP, Grant Samuel Funds Management Pty Ltd. of Australia, First Asset Investment Management Inc., and BBS Securities Inc. Further information is available at www.cifinancial.com.`

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