How Executive Relationship Intelligence Transforms Financial Services CRMs

October 31, 2025

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Financial services teams live inside the CRM. Pipelines, interactions, compliance notes, call outcomes. Yet the most important variable for winning mandates sits outside those records: access to the right executive, through a trusted path, at the right moment. CRMs record what happened. Dealmaking depends on knowing who matters and how to reach them.

That gap is costly. Data decays at 31 percent annually, according to Salesforce. Contacts change roles. Self-reported profiles lag behind reality. When your coverage map is built on stale data, even strong relationship managers fly blind. Verified executive intelligence inside the CRM closes this gap. Accurate biographies, board memberships, and relationship maps surface the warmest routes into the C-suite. You replace cold outreach with credible introductions.

The CRM Blind Spot in Financial Services

A banker preps for a meeting with a target CFO. The CRM shows prior calls, emails, and notes. Useful, but incomplete. It does not reveal that your vice chair served on a board with the CFO five years ago. It does not show that your senior advisor overlapped with the CFO’s COO at a prior company. Those are Paths to Power that turn a first meeting into a strategic conversation.

This is the relationship blind spot. Activity data is plentiful. Relationship context is scarce. Without it, teams over-rotate on volume. They send cold invites to busy executives. They miss the top-to-top connection that changes the tenor of the room.

How Financial Services Teams Win With Executive Relationship Intelligence

Embedding ExecAtlas data inside your CRM workflow changes how coverage teams operate. The value is not another external portal. The value is intelligence at the point of action.

Keep records clean automatically: Enrich contacts and accounts with the latest executive data. Reduce duplicates. Improve segmentation and reporting without manual cleanup.

Track executive movement in real time: Set watchlists for target accounts and former champions. The moment a key executive changes roles, coverage teams know and act.

Confirm who actually influences a decision: See executive hierarchies, board ties, and buying committee dynamics without leaving the record.

Read concise, accurate biographies: Prepare sharper talk tracks and anticipate objections with context that comes from verified public sources such as SEC filings, corporate websites, and press releases.

Plot Paths to Power: Identify warm routes into the C-suite and request a Power Intro through colleagues, advisors, and client champions.

ExecAtlas + SS&C Tier 1: Executive Intelligence in Action

This vision comes to life through the partnership between ExecAtlas and SS&C Tier 1, a leading CRM platform for global capital markets and investment banking teams. The integration brings verified executive and relationship intelligence directly into the Tier 1 environment, allowing users to access continuously updated data on key decision-makers without leaving their core workflow.

"Accurate CRM data remains a persistent challenge in financial services, and poor data quality erodes confidence and slows adoption," said David Chun, Founder and CEO of Equilar, the company behind ExecAtlas. "Clean, structured executive data creates a trusted source of truth that powers better outcomes across the board and positions firms to capitalize on the power of AI. By bringing this directly into Tier 1, we're enabling users to act with confidence and cultivate the relationships that win business."  

For Tier 1 users, that means accurate profiles, biographies, and relationship maps appear directly within client and account records. Financial institutions can view who influences a deal, how decision-makers are connected, and the warmest paths for introductions, all within a purpose-built CRM designed for regulated, relationship-driven industries.

In the words of Doug Christensen, VP of Capital Market Solutions for SS&C, “Partnering with ExecAtlas allows Tier 1 users to access high-quality executive intelligence within their existing workflows, creating new efficiencies and enhancing engagement with the C-suite.”

The collaboration reflects a shared commitment to helping financial institutions move beyond contact management toward true relationship intelligence. ExecAtlas provides the verified data foundation. Tier 1 delivers the workflow environment where that data becomes actionable. Together, they enable deal teams to transform every interaction into an informed, relationship-driven opportunity.

What Deal Teams Can Do Differently

Account planning with Relationship 360. Build a relationship map for each priority account that includes your firm’s connections and your network’s network. Identify the best sponsor for a mandate, then confirm who can make the introduction.

Deal origination and co-sponsor mapping. For private capital teams, use verified overlaps in employment history and board service to surface credible backchannels with founders, CFOs, and potential co-investors.

Executive meeting prep in minutes. Pull a single view that includes biographies, recent career moves, and shared connections. Share the one-page snapshot with the partner or MD before the call. Enter the meeting with a clear ask and a clear way in.

Event recruitment that gets a yes. Executives do not respond to cold invites. Use relationship intelligence to recruit panelists and guests through peers. A peer invitation from a shared board contact lands on a very different part of the calendar.

Champion tracking that turns movement into revenue. When a friendly COO leaves a client and joins a prospect, alerts fire in CRM. The account team replaces the champion at the client. The coverage team at the prospect activates a warm introduction within days, not months.

Why Verification Matters

Executives expect precision. That expectation should extend to the data you use to approach them. ExecAtlas is built on verified public records, not self-reported profiles. This data includes over 3.6 million executive and board profiles with complete work histories and more than 500 million first-degree connections derived from overlapping work and board affiliations. The result is relationship intelligence you can put in front of a managing director with confidence.

This accuracy can represent the difference between a credible opener and a misstep.You have a targeted approach to the buying committee instead of a wasted cycle with the wrong contact.

The Payoff Executives Care About

Warm introductions outperform cold outreach. In our own internal studies, engaging through a trusted path is 15 times more likely to yield a response compared with cold emails. The tactical benefits compound into outcomes that leaders track.

• Higher executive meeting conversion and faster time to first conversation.

• Better coverage ratios at priority accounts, especially where Top-to-Top connections exist.

• Improved pipeline quality and win rates on mandates that involve C-suite sponsorship.

• Cleaner CRM data that supports compliance, reporting, and forecasting.

The Future of Relationship-Driven CRMs

The SS&C Tier 1 partnershipis one example of a larger shift across financial services: CRMs evolving from static systems of record to dynamic systems of insight. Verified data, automated enrichment, and relationship intelligence are becoming the new baseline for competitive coverage.

As relationship-driven organizations continue to digitize their client engagement strategies, integrations like ExecAtlas inside Tier 1 show what is possible when data, technology, and relationships converge inside the same workflow.

Executive access makes deals happen. Verified executive intelligence inside your CRM turns that access from chance into a repeatable system. Interested in learning more? Schedule your demo today.

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