Podcast #22 features Norb Vonnegut, wealth management practitioner turned novelist and journalist at the Wall Street Journal.  Besides talking finance and the future of wealth management, we talked a lot about his fiction writing.  He is the author of three Wall Street thrillers:

The Trust

Top Producer

The Gods of Greenwich

He also works on non-fiction.  As a contributing columnist for WSJ.com, Norb probes wealth management issues ranging from

Cybersecurity to

The gender pay gap among industry professionals to

The clash between Wall Street and Silicon Valley for market share of investment management.

Norb knows what he is talking about.  He spent ten years in Private Wealth Management in New York City, where he developed an international practice with over $1 billion in assets under management.

QUESTIONS

Background

Norb, we both come from a wealth management background, but you have morphed into a formidable writer covering wealth management and other topics.

Take us through your background and how you got into the industry

How did you scratch the writing bug?  What were your first experiences in getting published?

Fiction writing

- Your work centers around adventures of wealth managers that get in trouble around their rich clients

Take us through your process in structuring plot and developing your characters?

What is it like to come from an industry and dealing with an editor and customs of the publishing industry?

What was it like to get your first edits and comments from your editor?

Your attention to the details of the industry reminds me of John Grisham or Tom Clancy.  How do you research the ins and outs of the wealth details that make your novels vivid and “ring true”?

What are your plans for the series?  Could this be the cornerstone of a movie or TV series?

Non-Fiction

You write a robust wealth management column for the WSJ- what is the process and timing for articles?

How do you and the paper decide what is newsworthy and how does that square with what is intellectually interesting to you?  Or what might be a niche issue but could have significant impact?

Any plans for collecting your experiences/research for the broader reader?

Trends in Wealth Management

You must talk to a lot of professionals, clients and commentators- what are the broad trends that the industry is struggling to solve

Evolving business models

Justification for fees / compression issues

Next-Gen

Robo-Advice

Fiduciary roles

Technology

Information asymmetry/synthesis

Active v. Passive (Commoditization of investment management advice)

Impact Investing

Regulation

Demographic shifts (aging advisor population)