Financial Advisor Transition

It’s so hard in our industry to “benchmark” things like comp, benefits and work-from-home philosophies, because if you show me 15 teams or firms, I’ll show you 15 different ways to answer these questions. I know the WFH question is a big one, and many teams are struggling with it.

As billions of dollars leave Bitcoin and Ether funds, money is flowing into a corner of crypto that promises something investors have long struggled to find in digital assets: a clearer path from economic activity to token value.

Goldman Sachs announced a partnership with Anthropic in early May, though you probably shouldn’t view it as just a cool innovation story. It is infrastructure in motion. When institutions like Goldman move, pay attention to what problem they believe they are solving.

Mentioning artificial intelligence to the graduating class of 2026 has been sure to get you booed. And why not? Fresh graduates have spent the past few years being told about the wonders of AI and watched seniors struggle to get a toehold in the labor market.

Advisory firms need tighter integration between their daily work tools and the CRM at the center of their world. When notes sit siloed from the rest of a firm's data and operations, the chance to deepen team collaboration and sharpen client insights goes with them.

Leading with bad news can feel wrong and even confrontational at some level, but the psychology research supports it, the behavioral finance supports it, the career math supports it, and the clients who stay through multiple cycles apply the final confirmation stamp.

Some people do much better with change than others. It isn’t that they can’t change or they actively resist it. Rather, they experience more fear, more concern and they need more clarity about what the change means to them.

As more individuals turn to non-traditional financial advice — offered through social media, artificial intelligence, or other online services and platforms — advisors will be tasked with fostering a greater sense of trust with the public.

Elon Musk has bucked the trend of industrial conglomerate breakups, including such illustrious companies as General Electric and Honeywell International Inc., and decided to form a somewhat unwieldy company that makes rockets, spacecraft, satellites, antennas, modems and now computer chips. With SpaceX’s purchase of Musk’s xAI in February, the world’s leading space company was married to an AI startup and the X social media platform.

While US financial markets brace for what could be the three biggest initial public offerings ever, most entrepreneurship in the US is headed in the opposite direction: New businesses are shrinking.

Space has evolved from a niche corner of the stock market into an area that offers the potential for diversity and growth. The euphoria around SpaceX’s market entry is driving fresh investor flows into the sector. Since the news of the offering first became public in early December, smaller space and related stocks have soared.

I was in West Texas recently to witness firsthand the emerging practical applications of artificial intelligence. What I saw bolstered my conviction about the technology’s progress and the need to mold it rather than resist the change.

In the race to build the infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence, Alphabet Inc.’s Google has an enviable position: The company has a healthy cloud computing business, makes its own chips, and has struck deals to share them with companies like Anthropic PBC and Meta Platforms Inc.

America is fast becoming a country with two economies: a stagnant one for men and a growing one for women. So far this year, the US has created more than 165,000 private-sector jobs, and 72% of them went to women. To some extent this reflects a structural change in the economy, as growth is in industries more likely to employ women, such as healthcare.

To understand the full impact of AI on advisor productivity, it’s important to look beyond speed alone. The more relevant question is whether efficiency gains are creating meaningful breathing room or simply raising expectations and expanding the scope of work.

I’m all about trying to build bridges and fix things, and I am also a realist. I often tell clients there is a right way, and then there is what you can get done within your environment. I’ll always lean toward the second one.

The College for Financial Planning is a degree-granting institution offering various financial certification programs. It provides graduate degree, non-degree and continuing professional education programs for students. Founded in 1972, today it is part of Kaplan Financial and has trained over 165,000 professionals.

Scalable personalization means saving time while not sacrificing the “secret sauce” that is unique to your practice. Time savings can come from scaling portfolio construction via model portfolios or direct indexing, adding tools or talent to complement strengths, and using technology like AI.

The thinking behind space solar makes some sense: The sun doesn’t always shine on Earth, which means solar panels on the ground aren’t always gathering energy. There are no clouds to block the sun in space, so aside from a couple of times per year around the equinoxes, panels in GEO are constantly bombarded with solar rays.

Sophisticated clients and institutional prospects are already asking wealth management firms about AI governance. The firms with coherent answers are winning trust their competitors cannot buy back quickly.

Gen Z is coming of age in a world very different from that of their parents. Advisors who want to connect with this cohort need be conscious, not only of Gen Z’s biases and unique perspectives, but also of their own preconceptions and tendencies.

Listening is a skill that can be taught, can be learned, and can be practiced. If a client doesn’t think their advisor is really listening to them, they might take that opportunity to find another advisor who does.

SpaceX also is ramping up its spending. The company said in April it’s struck an agreement for the right to acquire artificial intelligence startup Cursor for $60 billion later this year, or to pay $10 billion for the companies’ work together.

There’s no doubt that Amazon will begin to take market share now that it has declared that its third-party logistics business is here to stay. This move allays concerns among potential customers that Amazon’s offerings wouldn’t be permanent or would take a back seat to its own volume during periods of peak freight.

For many high-performing advisory teams, the challenge has never been ambition or capability. The missing ingredient has simply been an operational structure designed to support the level of success they have already surpassed. High-performing teams that tap into this reality strengthen firms from the top down and deliver exceptional service with the systems required to sustain it.

Offloading certain tasks to AI can be appealing, especially for solo advisors (or those operating with a lean team). Used effectively, it can be a time and energy-saver. But as you’re likely aware, AI tools are not perfect — they also tend to produce repetitive, generalized content that may not always resonate with your target audience.

If you read my column, you know I am a proponent of following the SHIFT format. First, get the team together to identify who you want to be as a team and what success looks like to you. Make sure everyone is headed toward the same outcome and cares about the same goals.

A few weeks ago, I sat down at my laptop and built a trading platform. It connects to three financial exchanges. It ingests news from RSS feeds, web searches, Reddit and Twitter.

No one likes that heart-drop feeling of missing an important detail. And yet, this happens all too often when it comes to healthcare planning. Healthcare and health insurance are complex topics. Without an expert or the right resources, it can be very difficult for financial advisors to do on their own.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is no stranger to the stratosphere, and neither is its coming initial public offering.

Volatility, tighter margins, and rising client expectations are prompting many Advisors to reassess whether their current broker-dealer or firm is still the best long-term fit. If you’re considering a transition, in this article we will discuss 10 essential questions to help guide your decision.

Without a clear owner, even the best marketing plans collect dust, while client work takes priority. But during those times when you're laser-focused on serving clients, the marketing that should be growing your practice isn't happening. Ideal prospects are finding someone else. Referral sources go quiet.

As the spring session for my graduate class, Leadership Lab, comes to a close I am in Chicago working with middle management leaders in the financial advisory space on leading teams. It seems appropriate at this time to offer some reminders about simple things you can do to be a better leader for your team.

Every prospect is different. They have different interests, different decision timelines, and different levels of engagement. Treating them all the same because your CRM can't segment effectively is leaving money on the table.

In announcing on Monday that John Ternus would be succeeding Tim Cook as chief executive officer of Apple Inc. this year, the company’s board made it clear: We’re a hardware company and we’re going with the hardware guy.

Would you buy OpenAI’s shares even though the transaction might expose you to a liquidity crunch? SoftBank Group Corp.’s founder Masayoshi Son did just that.

Choosing when to invest is one of the most important factors influencing your retirement security. The best time to start building retirement savings is after your first paycheck. Starting that early allows you to maximize how much time you have to save and how much time those dollars have to grow, thanks to compounding interest.

What makes recessions so harmful to workers is the freezing of movement. The gears of the labor market — gears that are constantly shuffling workers from job to job to unemployment to job again — slow to a crawl.

Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI, said at a finance conference in October 2023 that he and his “CEO friends” were running a betting pool on when the first one-person billion-dollar company would be created thanks to artificial intelligence.

When I teach my graduate classes in leadership, we talk about the essence of motivation. Even the best leaders cannot motivate other people to do something. They can create an environment within which the person becomes self-motivated. But motivation is intrinsic.

Economic conditions are set to be even rockier in 2026, as the US-Israel war with Iran has set inflation on a continued upward trajectory and further rankled markets. Even if there were a de-escalation in the conflict, a domino effect has begun.

A strong professional network does far more than provide camaraderie. It’s a growth engine, a source of expertise, a safety net, and often a long-term competitive advantage. The path forward might not be another software upgrade or marketing campaign — it might simply begin with finding the right peer group.

Over 6,537 trading days from 2000 through 2025, about 27% fall into the pure beta category. That 27% is sitting in every trailing return anyone’s ever used to evaluate an active manager, quietly diluting the signal.

In essence, the IPO is an acknowledgement that the ChatGPT-maker, which just raised $122 billion from investors at a valuation of $852 billion, needs what seems to be an endless amount of money to fund its race for artificial general intelligence.