2019 Agenda

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Arrive early and find your seat in the general session if you want to hear Wall Street’s newest comedic voice and his irreverent take on the wealth management industry.

Barry Ritholtz is one of the most respected voices in wealth management, with books, newspaper columns, newsletters, podcasts, TV and his role as CIO of Ritholtz Wealth Management offering platforms for his outspoken views. Jon Stein is the CEO of Betterment, which has raised $275M in six rounds of funding as it promises customers “the smart, modern way to invest.” American Banker Technology Editor Suleman Din will sit down with Ritholtz and Stein to hear where they agree, and disagree, on the present, and future, state of digital transformation in wealth management.

Schwab Advisor Services has a 30 percent share of the market, and has become increasingly aggressive in its acquisition strategy. Yet advisors haven’t fully embraced the firm’s institutional digital advice platform and pricing models are under pressure. This free-ranging Q&A with Schwab Advisor Services head Bernie Clark will talk tech, teams and pricing models as we look into the eye of an uncertain market.

In December, E*TRADE launched a national referral network to connect independent financial advisors to potential clients; Edelman Financial and Mercer Advisors were two high-profile signings. And since the fourth quarter, E*TRADE secured significant commitments to its RIA platform while adding sizable assets under custody. Technology was at the heart of those efforts. Sit down with E*TRADE CEO Karl Roessner and American Banker editor Penny Crosman to hear more about Roessner’s vision.

Back by popular demand, we’ll have the industry’s hottest technology companies showcasing their new products, with a panel of industry judges on hand to give them a no-holds-barred assessment of their efforts.

Many wealth management firms are well on their way to implementing hybrid advice models. Some are already launching their second-generation hybrid proposition. But why are some firms not getting value out of their advice transformations? Has the proliferation of advice largely focused too much on technology and not enough on the quality of advice?

How does a 100-year-old company serve its customers in the new “attention economy?” MyVest CEO Anton Honikman sits down with TIAA’s Chief Digital Officer Scott Blandford to discuss how they break through the clutter to help people better manage their full financial lives.

The recent rise of digital platforms has called into question the relevance of financial advisors and the viability of current advisory business models. In this session, we look at how technology is once again driving major changes in the business model of financial advisors, driving a great convergence across historically-separate industry channels, triggering a crisis of differentiation, a search for new business models, and rising pressure on improving the client experience.

Back by popular demand, we’ll have the industry’s hottest technology companies showcasing their new products, with a panel of industry judges on hand to give them a no-holds-barred assessment of their efforts.

Just what is direct indexing, and why is it so important to the future of your advisory firm's portfolio management strategy? In this session, Orion's VP of Managed Accounts, Sean Hollingshead, will define direct indexing and explain how you can harness this powerful tactic in combination with Orion's technology to increase efficiency, differentiate your service, decrease risk in client portfolios, and reduce costs as well.

Various forces are colliding to change the face of our industry. These changes will be so profound that they will make the industry virtually unrecognizable in the next 5 to 10 years. “So what” is a Firm to do?

Fieldpoint Private has emerged as one of the fastest growing young firms of its kind in America. While this may seem ironic for a firm born with a mandate to remain a boutique forever, it is all part of the plan. In this presentation, Fieldpoint’s Director of Private Banking and Advisory, Christopher DeLaura, will share how Fieldpoint crafted a technology strategy to drive growth while remaining human, staying boutique, and never becoming the kind of firm it was designed to replace.

For the past 10 years, the Motley Fool’s mutual funds and ETFs have been the company’s best-kept secret. Motley Fool Asset Management set out to change that last year with a re-branded digital and mobile presence. Learn how their focus on the end user and audience drove their design and decision-making and led to a user-centric mobile experience.

How United Capital, the firm acquired by Goldman Sachs leverages technology to better serve their clients through a digital client experience (3 Pillars)

The old model of creating and distributing investment products...

Digital direct acquisition is growing more sophisticated by the day...

You can’t manage what you can’t measure, according to Peter Drucker’s maxim...

AI and machine learning offer the next disruptive opportunity...

Behavioral finance tools and theories aren’t just limited to analyzing customers. The latest wave of tech turns the lens on to the advisor or portfolio manager to help them understand how their experience and biases are impacting performance. This session will explore the myriad of ways BeFi tech is being applied in asset management.

Mergers and acquisitions are one of the defining factors of the wealth management industry today—whether it’s the consolidation in the RIA landscape or the tie-ups among the biggest technology players. This session will outline the biggest deals and identify trends in both aspects of the market.

The ultimate value of engagement is loyalty, no small thing in an era where fees are being driven down and competitors are ramping up their offerings. But getting digital engagement right is a delicate balance. This session will explore the strategies and results of effective customer engagement.

For a handful of firms at the forefront of adoption, the advisor desktop is already a digital collaboration tool that optimizes time spent with clients, and offers them the self-serve capabilities they’re looking for. This panel of tech strategists will offer their views on the best that’s available now, and what’s on the horizon.

When it comes to opening credit card accounts, making purchases, or accessing accounts, consumers increasingly prefer digital channels to get the job done. Although widespread web adoption drives down acquisition costs, the largely anonymous interaction also creates a critical vulnerability for fraud. Fraudsters can engage in social engineering or exploit the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) available through high-profile data breaches to circumvent fraud measures and open fraudulent accounts or take over existing accounts.

Everyone needs it, but implementing a customer relationship management platform, or changing vendors, is not for the faint of heart. This session will offer a decision making methodology, and offer lessons learned from two firms that have gone through the process with two different vendors.

Digital Advice programs focus on the "digital" aspects of client experience. But across the industry, investors in digital wealth programs are placing high value on FA interaction and support in the initial sale and ongoing service. The human financial advisor as a powerful and required component of a digitally-enabled wealth management program. This panel will explore how leading wealth management organizations are providing high quality financial advice, leveraging a digital platform supported by a large network of call-center based, highly skilled and licensed financial advisors.

Now in its 23rd edition, the World Wealth Report 2019 from Capgemini is the industry’s leading thought leadership. This session will look at the latest dynamics in high net worth individual population and wealth growth, while highlighting shifting preferences of HNWIs and wealth managers.

Decumulation strategies have moved beyond the four percent rule into to complex simulations that take into account life expectancy, geography and more. Join this session to hear from two startups looking to help advisors help clients manage their retirement savings and spending.

In June 2018 HSBC launched a global lifestyle service in seven global markets – including the USA and Canada – to help support their High Net Worth proposition, HSBC Jade.

Subscription pricing is all the rage in many areas of consumer products, and a handful of wealth management firms are testing the pricing model as well. Join this session to hear how a number of firms are experimenting with the model, and how industry experts predict they will fare.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are advancing too quickly for most firms to keep up. This session will offer a peak into some of the state of the art platforms from both industry leaders and scrappy startups.

Join this exciting session showcasing ParameterInsights’ market-leading consumer data and insights. Attendees will learn how trends in brand awareness, usage, and loyalty can help them identify strategic opportunities. Attendees will also witness a simulation of consumer responses to a competitive digital advice product 'face/off' not to be missed by wealth executives seeking to gain advantage in the evolving digital wealth management landscape.

Case study of Voya Financial’s process for driving innovation to improve customer results. Overview of how Voya leverages consumer research into the underlying forces behind the financial decisions that people make to drive superior financial outcomes for customers in their workplace retirement business. See in action how Voya leverages behavioral finance research and insights into mega consumer trends to drive its innovation program.

Nearly 80 percent of Americans feel under-prepared for retirement, and current approaches to the challenge aren’t making much headway. Enter BlackRock and Microsoft. The investment and tech giants have come together to explore the development of a new platform to address a critical part of the problem: solving for retirement income. In this session Anne Ackerley, head of BlackRock’s Retirement Group, will illuminate the thinking and strategy behind the move.

Back by popular demand, we’ll have the industry’s hottest technology companies showcasing their new products, with a panel of industry judges on hand to give them a no-holds-barred assessment of their efforts.

Client Digital Experience is increasingly a differentiator in wealth management. It is not just about building new apps like the award-winning, client app that UBS released in March 2018. It is also about building an internal capability, i.e., a digital lab and factory, to design, develop and release new digital features on a continuous basis over time, with the voice of the client informing everything the company does. Kraleigh will share her views on what it takes to engage affluent clients digitally and how this emphasis on client digital experience is transforming UBS and the wealth industry around it.

Financial institutions need to seek innovative approaches for improving client experiences and creating lasting relationships that sustain growth. It is critical to have a platform that maximizes the value exchange with your clients by identifying client needs in real time and addressing those needs with the right messaging across the right channels. By applying data cloud signals and outcome-driven AI, you can deliver these truly personalized experiences at scale.

The wealth and investment management space is heating up. With the emergence of challenger fintechs and the arrival of a young and digitally savvy new customer demographic, investment firms are looking at ways to leverage their brand, reach and expertise with new and innovative technologies. As the expression goes, forewarned is forearmed, and preparing now for this massive shift in market dynamics, customer engagement and competitive threats is something we all need to talk about.

J.P. Morgan moved markets last year with “You Invest,” a brokerage account with mass market appeal aimed at millennials that offers 100 free trades per year. The follow-on digital advice platform under the same name is expected soon. Hear from Global Head of Digital Wealth Management Dr. Kelli Keough about the early learnings from these offerings and a hint of what’s coming next.

Digital transformation statements are everywhere. Everyone is investing. But are they thinking about the long game, or are they just defending turf and entering the race to the bottom in pricing? It is time to look up and think differently. This session will investigate the evolution of business models from all segments of the industry to spotlight pathways for actually increasing total income per account. The insights will include showcasing some firms that feel they’ve got it figured out.

Dynasty Financial Partners has come a long way in the past eight years, and continues to evolve both its business, and the tech and strategy it brings to its clients. CEO Shirl Penney joins the In|Vest stage to talk about servicing the different RIA market segments, technology and M&A trends, and what he sees as the next big thing.

The reward, and risk, of monetizing data has never been more central to wealth management than it is in 2019. The challenge? Most of the industry doesn’t have a handle on data from an infrastructure perspective, much less the kind of control they need to safely make the most of it. This session will highlight the current state of data and aggregation in the industry; pressing challenges facing the industry from its collective internal tech stack; and the pressure coming from GDPR, Tim Cook, and a growing number of states to improve privacy and data security practices.