Episodes

After a summer break, the Advisor Innovations podcast is back. In the new season’s inaugural episode, David Armstrong, director of editorial strategies at Informa Connect’s Wealth Management group, is joined by Rick Wurster, the president of the Charles Schwab Corporation, along with Bernie Clark, managing director and head of advisor services. The conversation was held on the eve of the firm’s Impact conference, and weeks after the final Labor Day marker which concluded the conversion of $1.3 t...

Tim Maurer is a financial advisor and author who most recently took on the role of Chief Advisory Officer at SignatureFD. In this episode of the Advisor Innovations podcast, Maurer talks with David Armstrong about what, exactly, a Chief Advisory Officer does, and how he sees the lessons of life planning and qualitative financial advice being tactically implemented in advisor-client relationships. Tim discusses: Why he made the move to fast-growing RIA Signature FD after years at the larger Buck...

For many advisors, Larry Swedroe needs no introduction; He’s the author of numerous books on investing, a frequent columnist in advisor publications, including Wealthmanagement.com, and the Head of Financial and Economic Research at Buckingham Strategic Wealth, one of the largest RIAs in the country. He’s also active on social media where he can be found in sometimes heated debates with other industry luminaries on the merits of different compensation models for financial advisors, the dire pros...

Advisors have long been aware that the better they know the client, the better client experience they can provide. Advisory boards and feedback surveys have been around forever to give the advisor some guidance over how to better engage with clients and prospects. In this episode, David Armstrong speaks with Julie Littlechild, founder and CEO of Absolute Engagement, on taking client engagement feedback to the next level. Littlechild recently launched the Engagement Engine, a digital platform tha...

Mark Miller is a career journalist who digs deep into the world of retirement planning, social security, medicare and the state of retirement “readiness” among people nearing the goal line. Miller has written regularly for The New York Times, Reuters, Morningstar and has been a long-standing columnist for Wealth Management magazine and WealthManagement.com. He is the author of the recently published Retirement Reboot: Commonsense Financial Strategies for Getting Back on Track. In this episode, W...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Bruce Bond, CEO and co-founder of Innovator Capital Management, a pioneer in the ETF industry and three-time WealthManagment.com Industry Award winner, to discuss pushing boundaries within the ETF market, diving into where the ETF business is going and how advisors are using ETFs in their client portfolios. Bond discusses: The problem Bond and co-founder John Southard were looking to solve with Innovator’s Buffer ETFs, which limit the upside potenti...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by James Hughes. head of investment advisory at Live Oak Bank, to discuss how and why Live Oak became one of the earliest lenders to RIAs, helping facilitate succession plans and the rise of mergers and acquisitions. Hughes has a bird’s eye view on the RIA industry, peering into the details of the businesses his bank works with and shares insights into what makes a firm valuable in the eyes of the market. Hughes discusses: How SBA loans work within suc...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Shirl Penney, President and CEO of Dynasty Financial Partners, diving into the history and ecosystem of the independent financial advisor movement. Shirl discusses: The problem Penney and his co-founder were looking to solve when they launched Dynasty. How technology was the great enabler fueling Dynasty’s growth Replicating wirehouse capabilities and financial products outside the wirehouse’s walls. What are advisors looking for as independent advi...

In this episode, recorded live at the Wealth Management EDGE conference at the Diplomat Beach Resort Hollywood in Florida, David Armstrong is joined by Robert Sofia, Founder and CEO of Snappy Kraken, a digital marketing platform for financial advisors. Robert discusses: What problem Sofia was trying to solve when he founded Snappy Kraken. Why each financial advisor requires marketing tailored to their own clientele and prospects The importance of advisors finding their authentic voice when it c...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Founder and CEO of Altruist, Jason Wenk, to talk about the state of advisor technology and the move toward consolidation of onboarding, custodial services, trading, account management and portfolio reporting with digital applications. Wenk explains why the current state of advisory technology needed a kick to bring it closer to what advisors, and clients, expect. He shares his journey as an advisor and an entrepreneur, why he started Altruist, how it...

In this episode, David Armstrong talks to Dr. Daniel Crosby, Chief Behavioral Officer at Orion Advisor Solutions. The son of a financial advisor, Crosby holds a Ph.D in psychology from Brigham Young University, and has spent his career bridging those insights to help people understand how they think about, and plan for, money and finances. He was a consultant to the industry for many years (and a one-time columnist for wealthmanagement.com) before joining Brinker Capital as chief behavioral offi...

Sometimes, your clients might get emotionally carried away and make irrational money decisions, especially during times of high market fluctuations. It is your responsibility, as their advisor, to remind them that money is not the end goal, but only the means to the goal — a joyful and meaningful life. In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by author and founder of Shaping Wealth, Brian Portnoy. Brian explains why the true definition of wealth should be “funded contentment,” or the ability t...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Carter Gibson, vice president and head of advisor M&A at LPL Financial. Working with a network of some 20,000 independent advisors, Gibson and his team have consulted with firms across the spectrum, giving him unique insight into how advisors think about, plan for, and execute, successful succession strategies. Whether that’s transferring a firm to junior advisors or merging with another, the process, he stresses, should be based first and foremost o...

By November 2022, all advisors will have to be in compliance with the new rules for marketing and advertising their firms, including the use of client and third-party testimonials. Understanding what these new rules are and how they will impact an advisors’ ability to market their services is crucial. In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Max Schatzow, founder of RIA Lawyers, to dissect the new rules and compliance regulations surrounding marketing for advisors. Max shares some of the ol...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Colin Falls, president of GeoWealth, on the firm’s growth trajectory, what it means to be an “advisor-driven” turnkey asset management platform for RIAs, and how technology can ease the tension for RIAs between model portfolios and customized investment management, and what the company’s recent capital raise means for the future of GeoWealth. Colin discusses: The history of GeoWealth, how it launched as a family office-backed tech platform that acq...

In this episode, David Armstrong talks with Kay Lynn Mayhue, president of Merit Financial Advisors, about the $7 billion firm’s aggressive growth trajectory.. Kay Lynn discusses: The strategy that’s fueled Merit’s aggressive growth rate since 2017. Merit’s “hub and spoke” approach to acquisitions and partnerships. How Merit evaluates its acquisition prospects—and what will kill a deal. The long search for a capital partner and learning which equity investors made sense—and which didn’t. Why Mer...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Scott MacKillop, CEO of First Ascent to discuss TAMP services, differentiating themselves from the competition through the team they have and how their team works. Scott shares the benefits of technology within the business, both for the advisors they work with and within their own team, while revealing the problems that arise from a legal and fiduciary standpoint when advisors don’t understand the context surrounding TAMP and it’s uses with clients....

Facet Wealth’s Anders Jones on Building a Hyper-Efficient Financial Planning Firm for the Mass Affluent. In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Anders Jones, co-founder and CEO of Facet Wealth, to discuss the firm’s recent $100 million equity raise, how the business model of Facet Wealth has evolved from a buyer of clients’ business from other RIAs to a consumer-facing, subscription-based financial planning firm for clients who may not at first have the assets to sit comfortably at a more...

Traditional 60/40 portfolios are not delivering the returns clients are looking for, argues Matt Brown, a former financial advisor and now CEO of CAIS, an alternatives investment platform for wealth managers. In the current market, alternative investing has increased in demand, prompting advisors to look for more information on these investment options. In this episode, David Armstrong talks with Brown about how the CAIS platform works to connect financial advisors with alternative asset manager...

Ten years ago, the idea of a $1 billion AUM client-facing RIA was hard to fathom. Today, the $100 billion RIA is the new hurdle, and a few have already crossed it. That speaks to the incredible growth and whirlwind of mergers and acquisitions in the independent advisory channel, and few have watched that transformation as close as Mark Bruno, Managing Director at Informa Wealth Management, the home of Wealthmanagement.com, Inside ETFs and Wealth/Stack. In this episode, David Armstrong talks to B...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Gary Carrai, former financial advisor, co-founder of Fortigent with Steve Lockshin, and currently executive vice president of LPL Financial in charge of third-party technology partnerships. Gary discusses the evolving affiliation options LPL Financial has opened for financial advisors and how he views the fintech ecosystem around wealth management, where he thinks LPL will turn next for fintech partnerships and his views in Cryptocurrency and artific...

Winners of Wealth Management’s 2021 Best Financial Planning Technology, Asset-Map has grown from personal use cases to helping thousands of financial advisors make meaningful decisions to grow their business. In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by the CEO and founder of Asset-Map, Adam Holt. Adam shares why he started Asset-Map, and how its success reflects the need for advisors to expedite the process of explaining each aspect of a client’s financial plan. He discusses how automation has...

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Services (now Edelman Financial Engines) and the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. Edelman discusses how he founded his firm with a focus on middle class savers when every other advisory firm was only looking for HNW clients, and grew the business $22 billion in AUM before merging it with Financial Engines. Stepping away this year from the firm he founded, he is now focused on investments bas...

Clients largely respond positively to values-based investing—when it can be explained to them. In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Jay Lipman, co-founder of Ethic, a direct-indexing investment platform for advisors. Ethic can demonstrate to clients how to construct portfolios that reflect their values, or demonstrate how far their current portfolios are from their personal ideals. Jay shares how Ethic provides advisors with comprehensive data about each company’s impact on different so...