For financial services companies, the great majority of data is in the form of content like insurance policies and onboarding materials. The value and insight in all that “unstructured data” can be an enormous differentiator for financial services companies like wealth managers, if they can actually extract it. But manually extracting data and navigating records slows down operations and delays client servicing. AI is the tool finally giving financial services companies the ability to quickly locate important information within their content and put it to use.
Valmark Financial Group is a seasoned independent broker-dealer and registered investment advisor serving about 400 financial advisors nationwide. Acting as the essential back office, Valmark helps these advisors better serve their clients’ complex financial needs. With over six decades of experience, Valmark’s advisors handle mountains of documents daily, from insurance policies to onboarding materials. “Valmark has been around for over 60 years,” says Valmark CIO, Geoff Moore. “And if you think about financial services, documents are part of everything.”
Despite its long history and expertise, Valmark faced growing challenges managing all that content efficiently in an increasingly digital world. Its legacy on-premises content management system was falling behind modern demands for speed, security, and innovation. The company needed a solution that would not only store documents securely but also unlock new efficiencies through automation and AI. That solution was Intelligent Content Management from Box.
Key takeaways:
- With Box, Valmark cut manual processing time by up to 48 hours per task thanks to automated data extraction
- The company will extract 240,000+ data points annually vs. just 4,000 before using Box AI
- AI-powered search gives 400+ advisors instant answers, replacing tedious document hunting
Unstructured data is at the heart of modern financial services
Financial advisory, wealth management, and broker-dealer operations run on documents. Every client interaction generates complex files that require stringent compliance and governance, yet must remain instantly accessible to advisors and operations teams. Valmark’s legacy on-premises content system created bottlenecks: Critical client data was trapped in static PDFs, requiring analysts to spend hours manually rekeying numbers into core systems.
As just one example, Valmark frequently conducts insurance policy reviews, and one of the important documents under consideration is called an illustration. As Moore describes it, an illustration is essentially “a table with lots and lots of rows of data.” Prior to Box, it was too time consuming to load all that data, “so we would just load a single row, and the next year, come back and lay another row over it.”
This was a limiting process, and extracting key data points from lengthy insurance illustrations was endlessly tedious. Analysts had to review numerous pages annually to pull out critical illustration details. Additionally, advisors struggled to find relevant information across thousands of dense documents in Valmark’s portal.
The company needed a modern solution that would not only store documents securely but also unlock new efficiencies through automation and AI.
From 4K data points to 240K with Box
When evaluating Intelligent Content Management partners, Valmark prioritized cloud- native architecture with robust APIs and strong security and compliance — all areas where Box excelled. “After Box became the trusted location for our sensitive documents,” says Moore, “it was a natural fit to layer AI capabilities on top.”
With Box as a central, governed document layer for Valmark’s sensitive client records, it was seamless to layer AI capabilities directly into everyday workflows. Moore’s team began migrating all departments off the legacy system onto Box, with a year-long initiative supporting around 150 users companywide. Employees across departments rapidly adopted Box AI to streamline their most document-heavy processes:
- Box Extract automates metadata extraction from complex insurance illustrations (even scanned images), saving analysts days of manual data entry
- AI-powered search enables advisors to ask questions directly across thousands of documents via custom-built portals powered by Box APIs
- Custom AI Studio Agents replicate expert knowledge (like HR processes) to deliver instant, expert answers to internal staff while upholding strict access permissions
- Seamless integration with Microsoft Dynamics feeds approved document data directly into CRM records without manual rekeying
As Moore explains, “We went from pulling just 4,000 data points annually from ‘dark data’ in policies to extracting over 240,000, thanks to enhanced extraction models.”
Box isn’t just our document storage provider anymore. They’re our long-term AI partner helping us reimagine what’s possible.
The impact of AI beyond mere efficiency gains
The measurable benefits of Intelligent Content Management are clear for Valmark:
- Analysts now preload entire tables spanning decades instead of reviewing single rows yearly
- Advisors save valuable prep time using natural language Q&A search portals backed by accurate citations
- One commissions team member avoided two full days of monthly manual entry after switching vendor reports from PDF feeds into automated extraction with OCR capability
Beyond efficiency gains lies improved job satisfaction, as staff shift focus away from repetitive tasks toward higher-value analysis and client service improvements.
Looking ahead, Valmark plans on leveraging the latest Box AI features, like the ability for end users to experiment with their own extraction prompts, further unlocking data and accelerating new AI use cases.
By establishing Box as its unified, governed document platform with embedded AI capabilities, Valmark has eliminated back-office data-entry bottlenecks, accelerated advisor responsiveness, and laid the foundation for continuous innovation across the entire client lifecycle.
As Moore sums it up: “Box isn’t just our document storage provider anymore. They’re our long-term AI partner helping us reimagine what’s possible.”
