Advisor Tech Talk

By Christopher Robbins Values-based investing is having an interesting moment in mid-2022.

Advisors are partnering up to harness each other’s strengths and capabilities. Crypto has muscled its way into the retirement conversation. And artificial intelligence is making it easier than ever for advisors to connect with prospects.  

Millennials are poised to flock to robo advisors, wealth management platforms are becoming increasingly automated and M&A is afoot in the wealthtech space. 

By Christopher Robbins I splurged recently. Wait a minute, let’s start over. I splurge all the time. I love going to record stores...

As advisors awaken to the quickly evolving wealthtech universe, they’re taking a long, hard look at their own firms and industry—and they don’t always like what they see.

When Susan Theder of Advisor Group first launched MyCMO in 2017, it was the culmination of a clear vision: Creating a user friendly, integrated platform of digital marketing communications tools for independent financial advisors to adopt for the purposes of winning new clients while engaging with existing relationships.

Over the past decade, fintech has been shaped to a fair extent by two dueling forces: On the one hand, are those who believe the future is in the hands of DIY investors, empowered by advancements in robo-advice (think Betterment), online self-directed trading (think Robinhood), as well as consumer-facing financial planning tools like Personal Capital or Quicken.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic notwithstanding, FINRA continues to proceed at full speed when it comes to penalizing financial advisors for noncompliance with recordkeeping and supervision obligations. In particular, one recurring area where significant penalties can be imposed is with a financial advisor’s outside business activities (OBA).

In the midst of a stock market correction, the advisor community is hiring more talent, revamping products, raising capital, partnering with portfolio management solutions, and accessing more tools to increase their value proposition to clients. 

By Christopher Robbins As a news writer, it frustrates me to no end that...