As CEO and president of Cambridge Investment Research in Fairfield, Iowa, Amy Webber uses her more than 30 years of experience to lead innovation with the support of the rest of the firm's leaders and input from financial professionals themselves.
Webber joined Cambridge in 1998 and has been a prominent voice on important issues like serving next-gen clients and recruiting young advisors, advancing women in the industry, and otherwise championing diversity and inclusion.
She also actively supports regulation changes to boost independent, objective financial advice.
Via email, we asked a series of questions that touched on not only her professional knowledge but what she does off the clock as well.
1. What market indicator, industry statistic, regulatory change or advisor trend are you watching most closely right now, and why?
Amy Webber: There are many. That said, in this competitive environment, any information on the labor market is a priority. It is undeniable that the labor pool is shrinking, and this is particularly challenging in our industry due to the high relationship component.
At Cambridge, in order for us to thrive and preserve our culture, we work to focus on employee satisfaction, understanding the reasons behind any employee attrition, and continuing to innovate.
Much of the solution will lie in our investments in digital transformation. We will look to move more nonvalue-added tasks to a tech solution while maximizing the job skills our candidates and current associates have and use.
We must embrace hiring strategies focused around nontraditional skills and fit versus only experience and constantly reassess employee benefits that help our associates grow and change in order to thrive in today's environment.
All of this also directly correlates to delivering world-class experiences for our clients — our financial professionals — as it remains true that satisfied associates equate to satisfied clients.
2. How has it been changing recently (2021), and how do you expect it to change (2022)?
The demand to focus on employees and change leads us to aggressively seek increased operational efficiency by leveraging tools around continuous improvement and change management. Accelerating specific digital transformative opportunities through initiatives in AI and robotics will also be key.
3. What would you suggest advisors do now or consider doing in the future about it?
Cambridge's digital transformative solutions to achieve increased operational efficiency will extend to our financial professionals, giving them the ability to leverage those solutions within their own organizations.
This will create a preferred path of doing business that, when followed, could significantly impact cost reduction and a higher level of satisfaction. Adapting to change and adopting a preferred path will have the biggest impact on their businesses in the future.
4. Who or what critical source of information do you track, or follow online, to keep up with this or other trends?
On the overall industry landscape, I leverage our industry publications as well as resources from our various regulators and trade organizations. I really value the time I spend learning directly from our financial professionals on what is impacting them and their clients.
On the specific issue of the labor market and related issues, we use the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics along with compensation data from our compensation vendor, Payscale, that integrates Mercer comp data. We augment that with data from Salary.com as needed. I also personally find great value in reading Harvard Business Review and exploring the insights of PwC.com.
5. Are you changing any of your work habits at this stage of the pandemic? Why/why not?
