This blog recaps a recent episode of The WealthStack Podcast published in WealthManagement, hosted by Shannon Rosic | August 18, 2023

Our CEO, Anton Honikman, recently appeared as a guest on The WealthStack Podcast, hosted by Shannon Rosic of WealthManagement.com.

Change continues to sweep through the wealth management industry, with technology at the forefront. How will advisors adapt?

We encourage you to listen to the full podcast here, or on the many podcast apps like Apple or Spotify. Here is a sampling of the key issues discussed.

 

“Every wealth management firm that survives will be digitally enabled in some way…from my perspective, it’s adapt or die.”

Emerging technologies like AI push firms to think about future proofing their businesses

While it’s impossible at this point to fully grasp what the eventual impact AI will have on the future of the wealth management industry, it’s important to recognize that it will play a significant role. It has to, especially against a backdrop of margin compression across the industry. Two of the ways in which firms combat these challenges is through increasing scale and deploying more automation to free up capacity, the latter of which requires improved technology to succeed.

But a murky future doesn’t mean that firms cannot start taking steps to prepare for an AI-enabled future. First and foremost, it’s imperative for firms to invest in their data infrastructure. And that isn’t limited to improving data hygiene, but also data collection and curation, and building insights models to parse this plethora of data to generate actionable insights on behalf of clients. It will ultimately push our industry to deliver advice to investors on a dynamic, insightful basis, that spans multiple data sets over the full lifecycle of an investor and leaving the discrete monolithic financial planning model of old behind.

The future of direct indexing

One of the most discussed investment trends over the last couple of years, the expectation is that direct indexing will continue to grow and make inroads, but near-term growth will likely be in the HNW and UHNW segments because of tax implications when it comes to core equities exposure. For the mass affluent and retail segments, there is still a healthy debate as to whether direct indexing is the right choice for many investors, especially when compared to ETFs in terms of performance, fees and tax efficiency.

Redefining client engagement and the emergence of “advice engagement”

Recently, there have been a number of “good disruptors” that have entered the wealthtech scene, such as Bento Engine, that are accelerating the transformation of how firms deliver investment advice and redefining client engagement through the lens of “advice engagement.”

This is a positive step forward for the wealth management industry, and one that’s needed toward dynamic systems that deliver advice that is relevant and delivered when it’s needed, instead of around a quarterly or annual meeting. 

It is ultimately about thinking about the moments that matter in an investor’s life, and delivering advice around those moments.