Not too familiar with the term VR? It’s not a term we use everyday in the financial advisory space, but Fidelity is showing us all how to use VR to adapt to change.

The following excerpt is from the RIABiz Article, you can find here:

An avatar in motion

The COVID-19 pandemic has also complicated hiring. Fidelity, for example, now conducts most interviews by video.

Its new positions provide flexible schedules, remote learning, Covid-19 screening, increased healthcare support, remote technical support, online mentoring and an online peer buddying scheme, according to the company.

“Even in times of widespread global disruption, we continue to find new and better solutions,” says Maggie Serravalli, Fidelity’s chief financial officer, in the firm’s second quarter update. See: A last lion of the Ned Johnson era, Gerry McGraw, vacates the Fidelity CFO spot for Maggie Serravalli.

In February 2019, for example, Fidelity quietly enlisted Amazon to help it pool the attributes of RIAs, robo-advisors and call-center advisors into a super, virtual-reality advisor. See: Fidelity Investments takes another leap into the future, enlisting Amazon to turn advisors into virtual reality avatars, but some say it’s pie-in-the-sky.

Fidelity’s VR system is ultimately intended to apply call center-style economies-of-scale to in-person financial advice. For now, however, it has given the firm a handy added means to remotely train staff, says Abbott.

“[We’re] accelerating our use of VR to train and educate employees [having] shipped VR headsets to many of our incoming [staff] for remote onboarding,” she explains.

“[It] allowed employees to connect … as an avatar and get to know one another more personally.”