The Augmented Advisor

H. Adam Holt, CEO and Founder of Asset-Map is not the first financial advisor to have had an epiphany that led to a revamped approach to how we worked with his clients. But, he just might be the guy who's quest to design a client experience that led to the most meaningful impact for the wealth management industry to date.

As you'll hear in this episode of the podcast, Adam and his team at Asset-Map have made a key discovery about the business of wealth management. We are in the "process as a service" business. Financial advice isn't just being a resource for clients and managing assets. It is about a process for helping clients maximize their life experience.

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

• Adam’s Podcast - Rethink. The Financial Advisor podcast
• John’s Book Recommendation - Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web and Mobile Application Design

Ryan George, CMO of Docupace made an astute observation that "the industry has let the complications of the wealth management experience flow down to the client experience unnecessarily" and in this episode John Prendergast and Mike Langford joined him in-person for a conversation to unpack that assertion. The trio also dove into several ways that financial advisors can leverage technologies, including emerging AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's Bard, to improve their clients' wealth management experience.

Resources From This Episode:

• The Surprising Value of Personal Advice - Episode 7 of the Augmented Advisor Podcast featuring an in-depth interview with Kieran Bol from PriceMetrix by McKinsey on the state of the wealth management industry.
• RIA Productivity Suite - John and Ryan dove into the benefits of systematizing the workflow of an RIA as a key mechanism for improving the wealth management experience for advisors and their teams.

James Lee, the new President of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) explains why financial planners are the 4th great profession alongside doctors, lawyers, and clergy. James talks about his advocacy for of financial planning and specifically mounting a legal defense of the term “financial planner”. He talks about his own values and practice led him down this path. And he shares his vision for the future of the profession. If you’re a financial planner, I think you’ll agree James is exactly who you want advocating for you.

Resources From This Episode:

• Lee Investment Management - James is also the President of an RIA in Saratoga Springs, NY
• The Future of Financial Advice - Episode 4, A bird’s eye view with the NAPFA CEO Geoffrey Brown.

Scott Wetzel, CEO of SkyView Partners and SKYVIEW 1 and Jason Henrichs, CEO of Alloy Labs Alliance and host of the Breaking Banks podcast share how RIAs and independent financial advisors are gaining access to banking solutions for their clients that were previously only available via wirehouse advisors.

The rise of banking as a services for financial advisors holds immense promise for enhancing the wealth management experience for clients.

Jason and Scott also shared their thoughts on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and what it means... or doesn't mean for banking solutions offered to financial advisors and their clients.

Resources From This Episode:

• SkyView Partners - Offering conventional commercial financing exclusively for financial advisors for mergers and acquisitions, succession, and debt restructuring.
• SKYVIEW 1 - Banking as a service for financial advisors. Launching in May 2023
• Alloy Labs - The only consortium that drives exponential growth for banks by leveraging powerful network effects.
• Breaking Banks Podcast - The #1 global fintech podcast. Hosted by Jason Henrichs.

Tammy Robbins, EVP and Chief Business Development Officer at Cambridge Investment Research shares how the landscape has changed for independent broker-dealers and the financial advisors they serve. The needs of today’s advisors and their clients have evolved dramatically in the past decade requiring broker-dealers to become more flexible and nimble in their approach to business.

Other Resources Mentioned

• Tammy Robbins on The Modern Financial Advisor Podcast - Leadership During Our New "Work From Home" Reality
• Seniors Use Of Online Banking - As John mentioned, 72% of people age 70 and older say they use online banking.

Ivan Barretto, Founder and Managing Director of RIA Compliance Concepts shares how financial advisors and RIA firms should adapt to the new SEC rules on "Outsourcing By Investment Advisors" and "Cybersecurity Risk Management". As a former regulator, Ivan explains what to expect should the SEC or a state regulator decide to audit your financial advisory firm.

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

• How Financial Advisors Are Leveraging Outsourcing And What The SEC Has To Say About It - In this episode of the Augmented Advisor, Laura Gregg from FlexShares ETF shares insights about advisors' use of outsourcing. John... well... he had an epic rant about the new SEC rules for outsourcing.
• The RIA Compliance Collective Podcast - This is Ivan's podcast. Mike has been a guest twice and John will be joining Ivan in a future episode.
• SEC's Proposed Rule for Outsourcing by Investment Advisers
• SEC's Proposed Cyber Security Rules and Amendments for Registered Investment Advisers and Funds

Just about every independent financial advisors and RIA outsources some of their business activities. For instance, very few serve as their own custodian or brokerage.

But as Laura Gregg and her team at FlexShares ETFs outline in their latest survey titled "The Race to Scalability 2022 - Current Insights from 12 years of Advisor Research on Investment Management Trends", advisors are outsourcing other core business functions as well.

And while the trend toward leveraging outsourced providers to open up new doors for better client service and increase wallet share is gaining steam with financial advisors, the SEC has proposed new rules to raise the due diligence bar outsourcing.

Other Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

• Episode 10 - How To Build a Flexible Wealth Management Business That Supports Your Lifestyle and Unlocks Growth
• Episode 14 - How To Drive High Quality Investment Returns By Aligning Client Values And ESG Investing Strategies

Live From RIA Summit 2022 with John Guthery, CFA and Peter Brittain of FushionIQ.

Today's clients demand a digital experience from their RIAs that rivals that of the largest retail wealth management firms while offering the while glove approach the expect of a boutique shop.

Hear how FushionIQ was born out of one firm's desire to deliver on this promise for their own clients.

Other Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

How Personalized Portfolios Powered By A.I. and Machine Learning Are Helping Advisors Attract Millennial and Gen-Z Investors - Runik Mehrotra and Samir Vasavada, Co-Founders of Vise share their vision for helping advisors attract and service the next generation of clients.

This is a fascinating conversational journey that ranges from using Michael Kitces as a verb to leveraging deep empathy and the “righteous tricks” to help clients. Carl Richards shares some of his deep thinking about real financial planning, wealth management and working with human beings and their money to help them accomplish what’s important to them.

Core Topics Covered In This Episode

• Making the abstract concrete
• Words (and shared meaning) matter - the different meanings of Exposure
• Deep empathy and the “righteous tricks” to help clients
• Money, meaning and real financial planning (aligning your use of capital with what’s important to you)
• Humans and their money are a complex adaptive system so goal clarification happens overtime as the system adapts and change
• You could “Michael Kitces” your way to it (deep analysis)
• Compound “influence” 

Additional Resources Mentioned In This Episode

• Behavior Gap - This is Carl's business and the jumping off point for "all things Carl Richards"
• Behavior Gap Radio - This is Carl's daily podcast where he practices his concept of "compound influence".
• The Society of Advice - Here there be dragons.
• "Wanting" by Luke Burgis - Carl mentioned this book as a resource for financial advisors to gain a deeper understanding of what clients really want.
• Larry Swedroe - Carl mentioned how Larry wrote books to share stories about his investment process and philosophies as a little marketing hack.

Live From RIA Summit 2022 with Knut Rostad, Co-founder and President of The Institute For The Fiduciary Standard.

The Fiduciary Standard is the bedrock of the RIA business model. Yet as Knut shared with John Prendergast and Mike Langford, the very concept of a fiduciary is under attack and at risk of losing its relevance if RIAs do not defend it aggressively.

Other Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

• The Future of Financial Advice: A Bird’s Eye View With The NAPFA CEO - Knut mentioned the great work that NAPFA is doing to support RIAs. Check out John and Mike's conversation with Geof Brown, CEO of NAPFA.
• Knut Rostad Clarifies The SEC’s Revisions to Form CRS - Knut sat down for an interview with Jeff Benjamin and Bruce Kelly on the InvestmentNews Podcast to talk about the Form CRS updates that John asked him about during this show.