In|Vest West 2018 Direct

A 10% duty will stay in place for most countries as the president praised dozens of countries that did not impose retaliatory tariffs of their own.

Unpredictable policy outcomes and market volatility have led this month's Financial Advisor Confidence Outlook deep into the red.

Social media offers a pool of potential clients to advisory firms, but most planners struggle to connect with younger audiences.

Christopher Hensley, president and CEO of Houston First Financial Group, used the loss of his assistant as a chance to take a hard look at how the different pieces of his tech stack were talking to each other.

A house on Alaska Avenue in Cincinnati's Avondale neighborhood is central to one planner's protests over HUD's possible clawback of 78 grants.

As the head of the investment solutions group at Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank, Nancy Fahmy ensures the firm's advisors have access to investments they recommend to investors.

Rathi Murthy is the Chief Technology Officer at Varo Bank, the first nationally chartered all-digital consumer bank in the United States. In this role, she leads the company's end-to-end technology strategy, overseeing the design and development of secure, scalable, and AI-powered digital banking platforms. Her leadership is instrumental in advancing Varo's mission to build inclusive, accessible, and real-time financial solutions for millions of consumers.

A seasoned technology executive, Rathi brings over 25 years of experience leading innovation and digital transformation at some of the world's most recognized technology and financial services companies. Prior to joining Varo, she served as Chief Technology Officer and President of Expedia Product & Technology at Expedia Group, where she modernized the company's global travel infrastructure, integrating AI-driven personalization, modular architecture, and advanced cloud capabilities across its family of brands.

Earlier, she held executive leadership roles at Verizon Media and Gap Inc., where she led enterprise cloud migrations, e-commerce platform evolution, and large-scale product delivery initiatives across global markets.

Rathi also served as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Enterprise Growth at American Express, where she was responsible for the technology strategy and operations of the Serve platform and a suite of prepaid products including Bluebird. 

Rathi's early career includes engineering leadership roles at eBay, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, and WebMD, where she consistently delivered improvements in platform stability, operational agility, and customer experience.

In addition to her executive work, Murthy is a board member at PagerDuty, Inc., a leader in digital operations management, and serves as an External Expert Advisor to the University of San Francisco's Board of Trustees Committee on Information Technology Strategy. She is also a regular speaker at industry events and leadership forums, offering thought leadership on topics such as fintech innovation, integrating AI, platform transformation, and executive technology leadership.

Follow Rathi Murthy on LinkedIn and X. 

Guy Baker, CFP, Ph.D., is the founder of Wealth Teams Alliance in Irvine, California.

He is a member of the Forbes 250 Top Financial Security Professionals list and is author of  "Maximize the RedZone," a guide for business owners, as well as "The Great Wealth Erosion," "Manage Markets, Not Stocks" and "Investment Alchemy." He received the 2019 John Newton Russell Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in insurance.

Internal Revenue Service employees are being offered a last chance for a voluntary buyout as the Supreme Court blocked a ruling requiring the IRS to rehire workers.