Tech Execs Warn of 'Consumer-ification of Wealth Business'

Made in 2002, the film previewed new technologies, such as "gesture-based computing," holograms and personalized advertising based on facial and optical recognition, which are now becoming realities.

To help advisors get a sense of how their future clients will be looking to interact with them, Fava pointed out that "Gen Z never had a desktop computer and grew up streaming content on mobile devices — not on cable or on TV." As a result, this future generation will demand video interactions and alternative communication methods via holograms vs. face-to-face meetings.

On Fava's list of items that will quickly become obsolete from tech innovation are keyboards and computer monitors, along with steering wheels and garages — as autonomous vehicles and ride sharing become pervasive; also, remote controls and thermostats are going the way of the buggy whip due to smart homes.

Human Capital Meanwhile, at the Pershing Elite Summit conference, organizers took a different approach to helping advisors better manage their businesses by focusing on human capital issues.

Pershing Advisor Solutions CEO Mark Tibergien shared his considerable wisdom on helping advisors attract and retain top talent by becoming "an employer of choice."

"The ability to create career paths in advisory firms is the missing link in hiring practices in order to truly create an enduring business," he said. "The past success of the industry means that for the first time, there are now more employees than owners. However, over one-third of advisors will either retire or sell their businesses in the next 10 years." Thus, after a decade, over two-thirds of the industry should be millennials, though the industry currently is not set up to attract and retain this demographic, he said.

This is why he and the CFP Board of Standards' Center for Financial Planning are developing a white paper to propose solutions to this looming demographic crisis. "According to our research, the reasons people don't come to our industry are that they did not study finance in school, so they don't think they are a fit; the industry has a bad reputation; and the pervasive perception that being an advisor is a sales job and that the industry doesn't develop people — there is no career path," he explained.

To solve these problems, Tibergien suggests, firms should create new roles that can provide staff with professional development and increasing responsibilities. But firms must be the right size to pull this off. "When new people join firms, they need to be allowed to be high impact learners, not high impact workers, so they can gradually evolve to become the future leaders."

Bringing this point home in person was Rianka Dorsainville, a highly acclaimed and award-winning innovator in financial planning of the virtual practice Your Greatest Contribution. "I'm what is known as a 'triple minority' — young, of color and female. I didn't set out to be an entrepreneur and didn't want to own my own business, but I had to in order to work with my target client segment," she said during her presentation.

Dorsainville has successfully set up her business to offer virtual fee-based advice by only meeting clients via video and charging an annual retainer fee. Today, she has a growing wait list.

She also is active in educating the industry about how to best attract and retain a younger, more diverse workforce by sharing her personal story and journey, as well as by being an advocate and role model for minority and female leaders through her podcast series, "2050 Trailblazers."

She and other speakers at these two recent conferences provided actionable information and deep insights into the key inputs that will drive the advisory firm of the future — a unique combination of technology and human talent.

To learn more about what went on at these executive events, check out the many tweets on the #BlackDiamond and #EliteAdvisor hashtags on Twitter.

Timothy D. Welsh, CFP® is president, CEO and founder of Nexus Strategy, LLC, a leading consulting firm to the wealth management industry and can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NexusStrategy.