Episodes

“Why am I fintech heretic? I must get bored easily and so I always look for what’s the edge. Where’s the place where people are breaking things and re-imagining how they could be? Even in a situation where 99% of the industry is the same, I’m always going to look at that 1% that is […]

“We want to be the leader wherever advice is delivered. And as you think about how our firm has evolved, this is really about being there for advisors and helping them where they are in their practices. And we’re agnostic of platform, affiliation level. We’re really trying to help support advice and be the leader […]

“We are taking on AI-based innovation with a deep sense of social responsibility, but also combining a for-profit and a nonprofit at the same time. We recognize that what we do disrupts traditional jobs, or it has the potential to. Every AI company is, in a way, dabbling in disruption of the workforce. ” — […]

Considering the crazy events that have swept over the world so far this year, we thought it would be prudent to compile our Best of 2020 episode a little early, just in case. We had an incredible lineup of guests and it was difficult for the #ItzOnWealthtech team to decide who made the cut. We […]

It’s another fantastic day in the wonderful world of wealthtech. Welcome to episode 69 of the Wealth Management Today podcast. We’re going to try something a little different with this episode. I’ve been guest writing on Michael Kitces’ monthly FinTech column about the latest news in wealth management and advisor technology. We’re going to go […]

“What we believe we’ve been able to do is make our industry more fun, because there was a huge missing layer. We have all this data on user profiles and company profiles that cuts out the first ten conversations between any two parties because most of the questions they were going to ask are already […]

“We’re at the beginning of the ESG data wars. There’s more data coming onto the market with more information that’s tremendously useful, if only you can process it. This means analytics firms, data generators, like the exchanges, financial information providers, like Refinitiv and others, are all struggling to solve this question.” –William Trout, Head of […]

“If you were to ask, what is AI going to do? It’s actually catering to your needs, specifically. It’s like creating Jarvis, it’s the ultimate digital assistant for an advisor so they can be much more efficient when they do their job. But going back to the conversation, we know who you are, we know […]

“We weren’t the only ones that identified this challenge facing advisors, but it was important when we were designing our marketplace so that it wouldn’t become a one-trick pony. It wasn’t just putting a bunch of strategist models on a shelf to make it easy for advisors to adopt into their practice. That’s a component, […]

“The technology trend that we’re seeing is clients want fewer systems and fewer vendors. What we saw in the ’90s and the early 2000s was a shift to “best of breed” and firms were plagued with having to integrate and support many relationships and individual technologies and make sure they worked together.” –Yaela Shamberg, Co-Founder […]

“As someone who operates a wealth management firm in the independent space, when it comes to technology, I feel it’s all sort of racing to average.” –Toussaint Bailey, CEO, Enso Wealth How can financial advisors break out of the race to an average technology stack and avoid creating a bland client experience? Is it possible […]

“I was always challenged to grow an analytics business that was confronted with the demise of active managers as their customer base. So in casting about looking for growth opportunities, I routinely came upon the US wealth segment as something that was undergoing significant demographic and technological change. And as we all know, changes in […]

"My point of view is that technology is the business. Technology is the front door for advisors to work with the custodian. In Schwab's case Schwab Advisor Center is really the front door for our advisors to work with Schwab, and when I think about charging fees for technology, I think, well, technology has to […]

"I feel like I've been ahead of the curve my entire career. And I don't necessarily mean that in a positive way, because we were out there selling web-based portfolio management before people really had a solid grasp on what the internet was. Like I mentioned, a lot of our challenges were describing what we […]

“Wealth management today is still not very cool. It’s still seen as manual with a lot of friction and expensive. As a young person said to me, ‘it’s sold by dudes in suits’. But the perception of digital wealth has changed dramatically. It’s no longer a zero sum game. All advisors need some digital, they […]

This month’s Winners of Wealthtech interview is with Leda Csanka, who graduated from University of Connecticut with a degree in management informational systems and later went on to serve as CTO of Cetera Financial Group. I was inspired to start the Winners of Wealthtech series by one of my mentors, Tim Ferriss, who is a […]

"The trends that we're seeing right now is that the younger generation wants things to be a lot more personalized. They really don't want to be educated. They don't want to know how a Monte Carlo works and what's a capital market assumption. They just want an answer. Like, do I have enough money? Am […]

“The real issue in this industry is a cost problem, the cost to service clients is just too high. Here you have 8 million people who’ve already opted into working with a human advisor, even though they’re getting screwed. And so for us, this is an enormous readily available market if we can open up […]

“In the old world of monolithic systems, there are no open APIs and people do not facilitate any rapid integration of best of breed systems. Where there’s a volatile market, you need to be able to move quickly. So I think advisors need to control the user experience and the client experience much more than […]

"The upcoming transfer of wealth will make it difficult for a client to put their money into a mutual fund when they have embedded capital gains from the huge run-up in stocks like Apple, Google and Amazon. The advancement of UMA technology, combined with the transfer of wealth and increased volatility that we've seen over […]

"The next wave of investors into digital assets, whether they're retail clients or the RIAs, also have somewhat of a different mental model. They may or may not care about the ideology or subscribe to the ideology of the Bitcoin white paper, but they are looking at this as an investment from a very pragmatic […]

What do you get when you bring together five leaders from the largest wealth management technology vendors in the industry? You get a webinar that is jam-packed with valuable information, thoughtful analysis and predictions for the future of enterprise wealthtech. Now hit the Play button! This episode of Wealth Management Today is brought to you […]

"Regulation is a catalyst for innovation, not a restriction on it. In order to deliver on tighter regulations, invariably you need more technology. Regulation drives the demand for technology and and moves the industry forward in a very positive way." — Ian McKenna, Founder & Director, Financial Technology Research Centre (FTRC) After 15 years working […]

"After just an hour, two thirds of our short-term memory is gone, it's amazing how fast it leaves us. If you have a method to capture the information and document it, absolutely you're going to see better results." "The COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for advisors to lead through change and and show their clients […]