Episodes

“There’s so much emotion wrapped up in this college buying decision, we’re saying can we help families shop smarter. You can be proactive instead of reactive using our predicted outcomes that provide about 90% accuracy for out of pocket costs, and we can have those conversations when they’re a sophomore of a junior, not when […]

Alexander Graham Bell made the famous announcement, “When one door closes, another opens.” While this may seem quaintly optimistic, many world-famous scientists and entrepreneurs who struggled through years or decades of failure have spoken about learning from their mistakes to reach success. Bell himself had many failures and setbacks in both his career and private […]

“How Holistiplan came about was we were looking for a way to automate tax planning a little more, to scale it so that as you grow as an [advisory] firm, and bring on more clients, you can support all of your existing clients without having to pick and choose who to do it for. If […]

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It’s lethal.” – Paulo Coelho, author of ‘The Alchemist‘ This quote was written pre-pandemic, but it certainly fits. We all created routines the past year or so while we’ve been stuck at home that we would love to break out of. But travel is coming back! I’m seeing […]

“We think of ourselves as a technology company first, which you would think might be obvious, for somebody that’s providing digital infrastructure and back end pipes and plumbing, but I’ve observed that it is actually an area where there has been precious little innovation, and perhaps not as much investment in bringing forward the best […]

“The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle.” — Richard Dawkins, British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author This month, we cover six stories in wealth management technology related news. Four of them are acquisitions. This is not a new trend as we see a constant boom and bust cycle in almost every industry. A recurring theme […]

“The fact that we’re new technology and we have very low tech debt, our tech debt is measured in weeks not months or years, decades, in some cases with older companies, we think that’s an added advantage. With RBC BLACK, they’ve certainly taken advantage of those functions, they white label and they’ve taken advantage of […]

“The most compelling thing you can have when you go to market in any industry is simply providing immense value to your users. So the combination of people who are frustrated with their current solutions, so it’s not like we had to go manufacturer demand, people are not super happy with what they have today, […]

“I think that Merrill embraces that opportunity which has multiple entry points, Merrill Edge, Merrill One. They have something that they announced last year called the customer experience workstation. So in other words, they’re thinking about it from a more client centric point of view, which is what needs to happen instead of from the […]

“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” A phrase attributed to Aristotle and misquoted by those seeking to understand one of the most mysterious properties of a system: Emergence. [read my exploration into that topic] The phrase is also used to explain the importance of Synergy and the foundations of Gestalt theory. […]

European geography has become almost irrelevant as FinTech markets have flattened out, enabling technology firms to more easily reach customers beyond national borders. Boosted by cloud software efficiency, specifically productivity tools, communication and open architecture, some aspects of FinTech in the US seem to be falling behind that of most of Europe, where regulation looks […]

“I know this from my many years at Jefferson National, it was difficult to get the Orions and the BlackDiamonds of the world to build insurance functionality, because they didn’t have demand. Their advisors aren’t really using these products, so a data feed would be enough. But as there’s more demand, the technology becomes necessary […]

“Firms like Cetera, and certainly Genstar, at the private equity level, we see a lot of value there because we are already a well oiled engine inside Cetera. So we know that when we bring on this number of advisors and this number of assets, that we’re going to be able to help them run […]

“For markets to work there have to be winners and losers. It’s not a good look for Robinhood to change the rules of the game and effectively turn off one side of the GameStop trade. It’s also not a good look for the DTCC, the prime brokers, the intermediaries, the market makers, the exchangers, it’s […]

“Data as an asset is a theme that comes up in conversations time in and time out. It’s almost universally across size of customer, market segment, go to market strategy in terms of employee or independent contractor model. Data as an asset is a conversation that we have every day with our existing customers and […]

“Essentially, blockchain has the potential to change the economics of how we manufacture different securities as we know them. Whether it’s a deposit, or some other structured product and DeFi is one experiment, we will see whether it works or not. Blockchain is allowing us to do all of these things and I see a lot […]

“There’s a large percentage of American households that are not being served by financial advisors. That’s where this concept of financial wellness comes into play, in helping individuals in need of advice who don’t know where to turn. Helping them to lay the foundations for a healthy financial life by understanding the key tenants and […]

Welcome to our annual best of the year edition of the Wealth Management Today podcast. I’m your host, Craig Iskowitz, and I run a consulting company called Ezra Group. We are experts in everything related to wealthtech, and this is where I usually give our standard marketing pitch, but instead I’m going to sneak in […]

“Our goal is to make sure that every single person that touches this platform, irrespective of who it is, if it’s an advisor, if it’s an asset manager, if it’s a company, if it’s the employees of those companies, every person has to be better with Vestwell than without. And that’s something we focus on […]

“The old man rubbed his hands: ‘Ah! A meta-subject! Using language to discuss language, there’s nothing better. I adore that’.” ― Laurent Binet, The Seventh Function of Language This episode is one that I’ve been talking with my team about doing for a while. I get a steady stream of questions about how I started […]

“What I think is different about our approach, firstly, is that we’re purpose built for decumulation. The second thing is that we’re built for what I call modern retirement. In the old days you had a pension, but you probably were only living until your early 80s. Today, the vast majority of our customers don’t […]

“TAMPs are often the first thing that advisors outsource. They know that they aren’t very good at investments and they were very happy to turn to somebody who had some expertise in there. So what’s happened is that they’ve had to adopt and integrate more tools such as onboarding and proposal generation. I think the […]

It’s another fantastic day in the wonderful world of wealthtech. Welcome to episode 75 of the Wealth Management Today podcast. This is our monthly roundup of some of the top wealthtech news and we’ve got a terrific mix of stories to keep you on top of the latest industry updates. When is a custodian less […]

“Not all checks are equal. You can go get funding from somebody who will give you a check and no more than that. Or, you can get funding and a partner in a journey that will inspire you, support you, push you. There’s so much capital being poured into our space right now. The check […]