Ep 55: Is Goldman Sachs supporting independent advisors? Featuring Richard Lofgren

Episode 55 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). (38:19)

Episode 55 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or Acast.

Episode Summary

Richard Lofgren of Goldman Sachs joins Adam Holt and Derek Notman on whether independent advisors or large established firms are better equipped to serve clients, a question Notman notes he has answered from both sides. The hosts resist the usual framing, pointing out that some of the loudest advocates for independence have a commercial interest in advisors moving, and that plenty of excellent advisors are not independent at all. Their working conclusion is that the answer depends on where the relationship actually sits, because some clients are genuinely loyal to an institution for its continuity rather than to any individual. Lofgren’s operational material is about onboarding, and replacing signature stickers and highlighters with bulk digital transfers. The most pointed stretch concerns complacency, and the risks a comfortable lifestyle practice has never run scenarios against.

What this episode covers

• Whether independence or institutional scale better serves clients, and who benefits from the debate
• Where the client relationship actually sits, and when loyalty attaches to the institution
• Onboarding friction, and what digitizing account transfers frees an advisor to do
• The risks a comfortable practice has never run a scenario against
• Using a large firm’s resources without giving up an independent shop

Full Transcript

Machine-generated transcript of this episode.

Welcome to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast. My name is Adam Holt. And this is Derek Notman. We are your hosts, both veteran advisors and FinTech CEOs who challenge the status quo, question everything and have fun doing it. Hear honest commentary on the challenges facing advisors today. And be part of a community where we can all rethink the profession. Now on to our episode. Derek, who is better equipped to serve clients? The independent financial advisor or the large established companies? Man, that’s an interesting question. Partly because I’ve actually worn both hats. I’ve seen it from both sides. It’s interesting and somewhat controversial. I would say I have my opinions on it though.

There’s this huge push, at least what it appears to be a push of independence. There, obviously there are those that want to promote independence because they can monetize that. There’s consumers that believe that independent advisors are better. But I’ll tell you, man, a lot of these large established companies have been around for a really long time and they’ve done a really good job of staying around for a long time. Right, you don’t do that by accident. And I’ll tell you, I’ve met a lot of great advisors who are not independent. I wonder if there’s maybe like a happy medium between the two where you bring them together maybe.

Well, that’s interesting. It’s funny because as you and I talked to so many financial advisors literally around the world, there has been a desire for the financial advisor who typically owns the relationship to get more, we’ll call it intimacy and recognition that this is my relationship. I’m the reason you’re working with our firm, small or large. You see this in the migration of AUM from large to small companies and then back from independence to wire houses and then insurance BDs to other, I mean, everybody seems to be contemplating the move of their AUM or their book, recognizing that their clients are gonna move. So I think this really comes down to if the relationship resides majority with the advisor, if, because we do know that’s not always true.

Some people are loyal to institutions, large wire houses, right? They want the succession and the security and the certainty of a large institution that goes beyond the individual advisor. It really winds up coming down to capabilities. What are the capabilities of an individual independent advisory group versus a large established investment bank? That’s interesting. So I was just talking with an advisor yesterday who was looking at leaving and going independent and it’s the relationship. Most of the time, your clients don’t really care about the back office stuff. Until they do. About the relationship, but not all of the time. So that the capabilities thing is interesting.

I think you’re onto something there. Well, it may not be us that’s onto something. It might be the guest that we actually interviewed to learn more about what’s happening. So why don’t we take a minute to talk about our guest before we hear him speak. Because I think there’s some really interesting aspects. Both you and I, Derek, were curious about what’s really going on in this move towards one side or the other. Is there a go between? And we actually found Richard Lofgren, who’s actually known pretty well in this space, who’s lived in both spaces. So why don’t you help us get to know Richard, because he’s got a great story.

Great story, really interesting guy, nice guy. S. Navy, he’s a captain. And I think with a little bit of luck, he’s going to get a rear admiral here pretty quickly too. Fingers crossed for him. We really appreciate his service to our country, but just such an interesting background. So he’s now over at Goldman Sachs and he’s managing director of something called the Advisory Solutions Group. And it really is interesting, because Goldman Sachs has been around, what, 150 years, give or take, well known around the world. So what are they doing? Why are they doing some things here to support advisors, which I found really interesting.

And some of you may know, there’s this whole thing going on with United Capital that went in and went out, and it’s been in the news. But what’s Goldman up to? And I mean, Richard’s, he’s in the trenches. Actually, they don’t do that in the Navy. They don’t get in the trenches, do they? No, no, he’s deep in the boat. He’s deep in the boat, right? Yeah, that’s right. Well, I guess depending on which unit you’re with. So I have a personal affinity for this because I have Navy history with my family and it was special to talk to him because he spent some time in the wire houses and also went independent with an RIA.

He’s been in the investment world for years and even spent time in private banking. So when he went to Goldman Sachs earlier this year to run that advisory services, it was a really curious move, especially given what’s happening in their RIA channel, as you just mentioned. What is Goldman Sachs doing to capture market share and use the preeminence that they’ve already created? Clearly, as you said, they’ve got name brand recognition globally, but they also have some really unique skills that a lot of advisors don’t have. And so episodically, you got to think of from securitization to lending to illiquid markets and different types of trading desks, they have a lot of really high-end resources that I think many RIAs don’t have and this came up in our conversation.

So let’s hear what he had to say. I continue to passionately believe that the driving force and the driving tenet behind independence is choice. And it’s always going to come down to that. It’s going to be for advisors to make the decision of what types of clients they want to work with, how many clients they want to work with, what wealth bands. It totally supports exactly that whole hypothesis behind the independent advisor. And for us, where we sit, I think is very important as well too, because we sit within global banking and markets. So you sit within the piece of the firm that it’s really about the trade.

And when I say the trade, you’ve got prime brokerage, you’ve got the investment bank, all those pieces that are there. There’s nothing within that group that’s delivering that advice and guidance. It’s about providing solution and strategy. And that’s specific in by design. That is interesting. Richard, what is your unique perspective of the advice market today? Yeah, so Adam, number one, thanks for letting me join today. It’s great to be with you and Dara. When you take a look right now, Pew Research talked about, we’ve got 10,000 baby boomers that are retiring every single day. They’re hitting that age 65. And obviously, retirement’s a different terminology now, but if we use that term of 65, you’ve got 10,000 a day.

So if you think about by 2030, you’re gonna have about 20% of the population or 73 million Americans that are quote, 65 or older. And what’s really, I would say interesting about that fact is that baby boomers now are needing more and more financial advice for really a couple of different reasons. They really wanna make sure that these retirement assets, they’ll last throughout their lifetime. I mean, you could contend that you could spend as many years quote, in retirement as you actually did working. You know, they’ve gotta figure out these complexities around social security and Medicare and any other type of government type of offerings or programs that they’re leveraging.

They’d help with the state tax and planning and anything else that kind of surrounds that. And then the fourth thing is they gotta think about the risks that are associated with aging. So for what my unique proposition, what I think right now is that for those reasons, we’re really in this, I would say continuing to expand environment with regards to advice and guidance and that there’s gonna continue to be probably a greater and greater demand over the course of at least through the age 65 for the tail end of the boomer. So I think there’s not any brighter time to think about becoming an advisor than right now.

We would tend to agree with you. It seems like a pretty exciting time and there’s a ton of opportunity out there given what you’re just talking about. So flip side of the coin though, what would you say is a massive challenge or a missing opportunity that advisors just aren’t addressing or maybe don’t even see coming? Yeah, I mean, part of it’s technology. Even reflecting back on my career, you kept talking about, hey, we’re gonna have online trading back in the late 90s and that’s gonna be the death knell for the financial advisor. Then it was robo, that’s gonna be the death of the advisor. I think the greatest opportunity right now is for financial advisors to think about how can I embrace technology to do things more transparently?

What can I automate that are perhaps some inefficiencies or pain points in my practice? And how can I get that speed to market? I can either stay speed in delivering advice and guidance to my client or speed to actually employ an investment. So I think the advisors that either choose not to embrace technology or say not for me, never gonna happen or those advisors that are unaware of that technology, I think that they’re gonna be behind their peers out there and perhaps they might miss an opportunity to either grow their practice or perhaps do a better job in delivering advice and guidance for that end client.

It almost sounds like the death of the advisor would be self-inflicted. Dirk, I think that’s true. Those that choose not to embrace progress or at least be better educated around that, I think they probably are. They could be signaling their career warning lights blinking on the dashboard, so to speak. We’ve had a lot of people talk about how tech is the great frontier and how they’re gonna techify and robify and their own practices. I’ve heard plenty of comments back that those that choose to compete with technology are basically destined to be replaced by the same technology that they installed, right? This classic question of what is GPT gonna mean for the next phase of advice, but those that use it to accelerate or elevate the human aspect of advice are really going to double down on what really matters.

Given that, what action steps do you think we should and other advisors listening should start thinking about today? Yeah, I think about some of the pain points that you’ve got. I’ll take just the example of account opening. For those of us that have been around a while, we were very adept at using Sign Here stickers and the yellow highlighters to open up accounts. And for us specifically, as we think about bringing advisor onto our platform, the ability for us to use what you could consider a bulk onboarding tool to happen, the ability to transfer accounts on without spending a lot of time with the yellow highlighters and digitize that to reduce your not in good order for those of us that are a member of NYGO, to be able to reduce that, that creates efficiency for the marketplace and it really allows an advisor to focus on having those rich and fruitful discussions with the client as opposed to saying, Mrs.

Smith, I need you to sign here and here and flip that over and sign here and here. That to me, I think it allows the advisor to spend the time doing what perhaps they really got in the business to do, which was to really sit with those clients and help them solve problems. You bring back some bad memories with the NYGOs. Yeah, I do. I think I’m going to leave out the tube system as well too, for those of us that remember the pneumatic tubes and shooting tickets back to the wire rooms. The technology’s certainly changed. Well, just a little bit. Obviously the rate of change has increased and you’ve been doing this for some time now, so you’ve seen things happen faster and faster.

Given your perspective though, do you think that there’s anything that really should be more debated or at least heard by our community that maybe isn’t being talked about? Again, I’m going to come back to my technology piece. Again, the robo in technology is going to be the death knell for advisors. And as I continue to think about it, think that technology, at least today, could be wrong and maybe get there. It can’t empathize. It doesn’t have a motion. And when we think about what’s going on right now, particularly at times when people will hire an advisor, it’s really around a number of functions. They’ve either got a distribution, they’ve got a death, there’s some type of disability, there’s some type of adolive that’s perhaps emotional that’s created this need for advice and for guidance.

And so while technology might be able to provide the analytics behind portfolio construction or maybe stock selection or some other type of discussion with regards to that vehicle, it’s not going to be able to empathize and fit with that client and understand and talk through why do you feel that way? Why is this important to you? How do you feel about money? Again, I think we could ask a chat GPT or Siri, how do I feel or how are you feeling today? And they’re going to say, I don’t understand the question. I tried that with Alexa and she just gives you weird responses. Yeah, she turned on Taylor Swift for you.

That’s right. And she ordered you some tissues. That’s great from the Amazon. It’s interesting that the empathy conversation keeps coming up and we’re excited to hear that because we recognize the last frontier of humanity truly is in our ability to connect, to communicate and to help people make decisions along this journey. Because at the end of the day, financial advice is all about helping people make better decisions, not perfect decisions, just decisions, because that’s a big step for many people in the first place, right? Getting out of the procrastination or just we’ll call it the ignorance mode. I’m curious because a lot of people don’t know that you have a decorated history in the US Navy and we’re really excited to hear after 30 years you’ve been nominated for rear admiral.

So we wish you the best of luck and we were pulling for Congress to make that right decision. So thank you for your service from all of us at Rethink. But I’m really curious, coming from a military family myself, what can you take from your service and leadership there and apply it to the financial advice marketplace today? I’m just curious. Yeah, I know. And Adam, I know you’ve got a Navy background as well too. So thanks for, thanks to your family, yours and service as well. When you look at, you can really draw some parallels with any type of military operation that it really comes down to planning.

Planning is such an important component of whatever activity that happened. And the decisioning process around creating a plan really comes down to doctrine and then it comes down to the reps and sets and the experience. That’s how you make a decision. And one of the things that I’ve learned throughout my military career and I’ve heard over and over again from regardless of what branch of the military, which way of folks that are flying airplanes or driving ships or submarines or tanks or whatever, the fact that as good as your plan is, the enemy always gets a vote. And so it’s an understanding that you’re not a perfect plan, that even as good as you are in as much time that you spend doing it, the enemy always gets a vote.

I think that’s very analogous to anybody within the financial services arena. And you think about perhaps catalysts that we’ve had or incidents that have happened. None of us forecast that 9-11 happened. None of us could specifically put a marker on, hey, when Orange County, we’re gonna have the Missile Bond crisis that happened in the late 90s. We didn’t know exactly what date that was gonna happen or even that the housing crisis in 2008 and the Great Recession, so to speak. None of that was able to be forecasted with any degree of precision. The advisors that did the best job were the ones that said, hey, we need to have a little bit of slack in the portfolio.

We need to have a little bit of a hedge here. We need to make this plan here. Really, when I think about it, there’s a lot of similarities there in the planning process and that all of us from a day-to-day basis, we don’t know what’s gonna happen day-to-day in the markets and that’s the enemy, so to speak. They always get a vote. So, Adam, how do you feel about what he just had to say there? Really great conversation. There was a lot packed in there, Derek, and it was interesting to hear someone at Goldman Sachs, I would not have always thought this, talk about empathy and advice delivery and technology when I think in my own ignorance, I tend to think of Goldman Sachs as kind of floating in the clouds, this massive investment bank, and I was really encouraged to hear that.

You’re exactly right. They’re lucky to have him there running that division and just being part of that community, no question about it, and I love his angle coming from his military background as well. It’s spot on from what he’s saying there. We’ll dig into some of these points here in a second. What was funny though, is that his point about the enemy always gets a vote in planning, made me think a lot about my kid’s football team that he’s on and all this stuff that they do. A lot of analogies there, you could push that to almost any sport now, I guess, any competitive sport.

Did you hear that part there? He said, though, it comes down to the planning, the doctrine, the reps and sets. I don’t know if anybody caught that. He said the reps and sets, almost like it’s about the practice to make muscle memory, to practice your plan, to execute it again, again, and again, and again. Why? Because when the enemy gets a vote, you don’t have time to think. You’re either prepared or you can react. And I think the case that he’s making here is that those that plan and then plan to succeed and then keep practicing their trade and doing the habits and the behaviors that support the plan, right?

You see the military guys out there practicing all the time. They’re running through scenarios just for that event. That event may never happen, but they’re practiced and ready so that it’s not a total, oh my gosh, it’s the first time we’ve ever practiced this. They’re doing fire drills constantly. I think that’s a really interesting aspect to financial planning because I’ve been a big fan of asking clients, what’s your plan to deal with this? And you find that most people don’t. In fact, many advisors don’t have a lot of calamity planning already in their back pocket. What are you gonna do when this happens? Because it’s inevitable, isn’t it?

Life happens. The prepared party is more likely to survive, frankly. That’s the key. Definitely, yeah. So practice makes perfect. There’s a ton of different ways you can say it. And I’m really glad that he mentioned it because it holds true for the work that advisors do and even the companies that support advisors all day long. Very true. What did you take away? I really liked his saying about technology. And he talked a couple different things about it. He made one comment about how tech ignorance is a career warning light. And some advisors may not want to acknowledge this, to be honest. You’re cruising, you’re doing all right.

Oh, that check engine light just came on. But you know what? Nothing feels off. So I’m gonna keep driving for a while. It should be okay. And I think that’s exactly spot on about that ignorance because this will happen. Technology is taking over. What the consumer wants is taking over. And you can’t be afraid of it. You have to embrace it. But this is why you should embrace it because at the end of the day, it’s never going to replace us because tech has no empathy. I loved that comment from him and it makes total, total sense. I don’t know, what did you pull away?

You know, I’m just listening to you talk about it and I’m wondering how do you combine the two? If there are advisors out there and there’s enough of them, they may not be listening to this podcast, but I’m sure we all know who they are. Those that have been, we’ll call it conveniently happy and satisfied with their firms operating the way they always have. Money’s coming in, the markets are doing okay. Clients aren’t leaving. You still have plenty of golf time. Okay, great. You create a lifestyle business. Congratulations, that’s great. Is that complacency, which several other guests have talked about, it’s okay, it’s fine, it’s not broken yet.

What is the enemy of that complacency that’s gonna have a vote? And when you least expect it, and are you gonna have the desire to fight and retool if a next technology disruption comes in or marginalization or God forbid, a health situation for a lead advisor comes in and there’s no succession plan, it’s not broken. What are those enemies of the success of that status quo that maybe a lot of advisors are not maybe thinking about or running through scenario analysis on? I think you said one of them already is succession planning. We know there’s a massive gap there. And think about it, if you’re an advisor who’s been around, maybe that check engine light’s on but things are still running smooth, is your successor advisor gonna be interested in buying a practice that has warning lights?

And no technology. And no technology, right? Eh, that’s gonna be a push where if they’re gonna buy it, they’re gonna pay a lot less for it. Oh yeah. So I think that’s a big one. And then the other one, the other enemy, which we really shouldn’t call them an enemy, but it’s the consumer. What do they want? You know, like if you’re starting to slow down or you can’t provide that digital experience or digital first experience that they’re looking for, these guys with the check engine lights, they’re still renting movies at Blockbuster. The consumer wants Netflix. How much longer are you gonna force like, and maybe Blockbuster is gonna try to get into some of that, but it’s not really working.

So how long is that gonna last before the consumer says, forget it. We’re done with Blockbuster. We’re going to this other one now. Well, I mean, just like me, I don’t have a VHS anymore. So we might be getting by. I think a lot of advisors are getting by in relationship currency. They’ve been with me forever. I got loyalty, I listen, I’m empathetic. I don’t wanna use technology. I’m still yellow padding. Or I basically have some technology and it’s good enough. Clients are not complaining. But I have to say, I just went through with actually a future guest from JD Power shared some really interesting data that the next generation is really asking for human role, but more digital service, more digital planning.

And the reality is that I think that the X gen, we’ve mentioned this before, the Y gen and Z are gonna start helping their parents, the baby boomers start managing their money and they’re not gonna wanna manage it the way their grandparents manage it or their parents manage it. They’re gonna wanna have access because they’re gonna wanna be efficient. And so this real kind of push towards efficiency, portals, transparency is gonna be obvious. And I think it’s gonna disrupt a lot of advisors who have been happy with their X millions of AUM and a bunch of loyal customers that always buy from them because they’re not gonna wind up being the decision makers anymore.

It’s gonna wind up being the spouses in many cases that kind of retain the interest in the long-term decisions. Am I gonna be with you for the next 20 years? So I think succession just keeps coming up again and again, technology assigned with it. Now, we started this program actually talking about whether the independent can actually go toe to toe with the big firm. In the beginning, we expected to learn more about what Goldman Sachs specifically was delivering to this marketplace. But then of course, as we rolled this out, they announced that they were letting go to creative planning their large unit that you mentioned in the beginning.

That was an RIA unit. What was interesting to learn was that Richard told us that his entire unit is all about delivering the services typically garnered for the highest net worth in investors to the independent advisor. Let’s talk about that for a second. I found that really fascinating, especially in light of the departure from United Capital. And I don’t know of how Richard exactly worded it, but basically, you can remain an independent and he believes in the independent space clearly. He’s been in it himself. But now Goldman is saying, instead of only serving the highest of the highest net worth, you can plug into our environment, our resources, our brand.

So if you have a customer, you’re an independent shop. You’re a $50 million RIA and all of a sudden you have a $50 million client walk in the door. And you’re like, oh crap, how do I deal with concentrated stock positions? Or I can’t do this on my own. But I have a partnership with Goldman Sachs and I can go in here and we can solve this problem for you. That’s huge. I think that’s really, really cool to be able to do that, but maintain your independence. Bringing the cache of the Goldman Sachs armory to bear when you need it, but still retaining independence is actually a real big deal.

Huge. I mean, maybe this is the bad analogy, but that’s like literally Zelinsky coming to the United States and say, hey, I need some weapons. Can I bring you in? I’m trying to make it military, right? Oh, I got you. We’re a small independent nation. We’re having some issues with one of these other countries that isn’t playing so nice. And we need help to solve this problem. You know what? Our friend over in the United States, let’s go get some help from them. That’s right. That I can totally see. It’s a good analogy. I like how you tied that all into the military stuff. That’s what I do.

I think this is the first time anyone has ever connected financial planning, advice, independence, and NATO together. You heard it here first, folks. That’s right. And why not? Well, look, we need to make it something people understand. I think as an independent, we really cherish our independence and our brand and the fact that we can do or write our own ticket. And that’s an important entrepreneurial aspect to what I think you and I have been comfortable and a lot of the listeners here have done, whether we have affiliation with larger companies or not. What’s interesting to hear though, and it was a bit of irony to me because when I heard Richard say this, the way I thought about it was, wait a minute, the kings of securitization, Goldman Sachs, have actually figured out a way to securitize their own special sauce.

The special sauce that they typically have for the ultra high net worth is these concentrated positions. I need a trading desk that can liquidate $100 million worth of this family-owned business, but it’s gonna destroy the market if we don’t do it right, I need caps and collars with an option strategy for that’s way outside of my broker dealers league. To be able to bring in securitization as well as lending around a position, that’s things that I don’t say only Goldman Sachs can do, but that’s what they’re known for. And so being able to tell my client who is exiting a large business, I could bring this team in and still retain the relationship and the control is really interesting and basically outsource this aspect that we joked between ourselves that is Goldman Sachs becoming a SaaS.

Goldman Sachs as a service is a funny analogy here, which I think is it’s endemic of where I think a lot of companies are going. Do something great, make it accessible to everybody. Make it accessible, yep, 100%. So to the question at the beginning of the episode, which one’s better? It’s actually both, it’s blending the two together. Well, the fact that that’s available today, marketplace of services is really unbelievable and I think you’re gonna see more and more of this. So really cool aspect. So what are the things that advisors can do? Let’s make it actionable. What do you think they can do? Well, let’s see here.

I’m gonna start with my last one first because this is a really simple one and I’ve doubled down on this a lot of times, but find tech that actually helps you do more of the advising stuff that you want to do. As you referenced the JD Power guest that we’re gonna have on, clients want more human elements, but they want it digitally enhanced. Maybe that’s the right way to put it. So find tech that helps you do that. What else do you think? Got it, so yours is the tech advice engagement and digital engagement. 100%. Okay, mine was you have a plan for your clients, you’re their advocate.

What I took away from this is wondering who is the enemy of your plan that you put together for the client? Because remember they have a vote, but is it markets, is it inflation, is it taxes, is it family, is it health? For both the advisor as well as the client. So thinking about second order consequences of the plan that we’ve made, where are the reasons it’ll fail? And try to defend against that, right? Get the bunkers ready for those scenarios. Not that they’re gonna happen, but if they do, you’re gonna be happy you’re prepared. You know, this makes me think of this. This isn’t a plug for you, but I’m gonna give you kudos anyways, is that you guys built that, what do you call it, signals in AssetMap.

And that is one of those things where you can actually plan for things that haven’t happened yet and be aware of them. Which is, that’s exactly what it sounds like you’re saying here. Figure out how many enemies there are if you can and try to address as much of those as possible. Yeah, that’s right. That’s being a true advocate, being thoughtful. By the way, isn’t that what empathy is? Take yourself out of your perspective and putting yourselves in someone else’s. If that means future pacing their plan and saying, gosh, if we had a long-term care event right here, this would just disrupt the whole thing.

So let’s make sure we have a decision around it. Yes or no, not maybe, or not nothing. We’re just, we’re making decisions around what we’re gonna protect because we can’t do everything. Anything else that you have to share? No, I think we kind of talked about this a bit already, but you can leverage resources that are out there, including Goldman Sachs, to help put you on a pedestal, make sure your clients are happy with you and maybe your independent shop but still having the resources of some larger established brands to help you when you need it. I think that’s pretty cool. Awesome, all right. Well, thank you, Richard.

We really appreciate you and your service. Again, we have our fingers crossed from Congress. Yeah, promotion to Rear Admiral. I mean, he deserves it. That’s pretty awesome. All right, well, let’s take it to our community question. You wanna give us this one that came in on LinkedIn? Yeah, this is a, it’s an interesting question. I almost was in a little bit of a debate with the guy initially. So this is Ivan up in Ontario. And we were having some dialogue and he, well, here’s what he said. Coming from an institution, most of us are just given the tools to use and we adjust. I know how that feels.

I think a lot of us have been there. And then he says, you probably know best with like a little laughy emoji thing of a jigger. Anyways, but it could also be the same since. That’s your technical description of an emoji with a smiley face. Okay. But it could also be the same situation where some people prefer iPhone versus an Android. By the way, iPhones are apples. So apples are for eating. So, you know, you know, where I stand, but apples keep the doctor away. Yeah, right. This has turned out to be the longest answer to community question. It’s actually not even answered. Well, I’m going to continue on.

We’re going to get through this. Okay, go ahead. All right. So some people prefer the iPhone versus Android if enough tools can be bundled into one solution. So Ivan is a newer advisor. He’s got a tech background. He says, out of my ignorance, looking at the advisor tech stack, I’m wondering if we can ever have an all in one app for advisors. What do you think? I said, no, almost instantly. Why? I said, because we have something called the human element. Advisors are different. The way we like to plan is different. The way we like to communicate and engage with our clients is different. The way our clients like to engage with us is different.

So if you force everybody into one app, you’ve got a million and one different shapes of people, but you’re making them all turn into one shape. It’s just never going to work. So that was my answer. Can we get closer by having integrations and better integrations? Yeah. But that was my initial response. What do you think? Well, I’m just wondering, why don’t we only have just one restaurant? One restaurant chain. Bingo. There you go. Let’s just choose one of them. What do you want? Chick-fil-A or McDonald’s? You can choose one or the other two. They’re going to be the standard. I want McDonald’s. Okay. All right.

That’s it. You can only do that. And it’s the same thing, right? Now, the interesting thing is in the industry, as you and I know, in tech, there are several companies attempting to do this because there’s so much aggravation around the integration. And can’t I just have one tool that does everything? I put the data in once and everything is updated. And invariably what happens as builders of tech that we have learned is no one perspective team company can meet the needs of everybody. Impossible. In one specific solution. So inevitably what happens is that a new innovation or disruption comes out. It’s not in the core tool.

Everybody starts saying, hey, can that integrate? And everybody who’s on the single platform is now dealing with a legacy platform that’s not up to date. And then they frustrated and they go and they buy all the newest stuff and then it’s all disconnected again. So there’s this cycle of going out and getting all the best stuff independently and then trying to cobble it together. And then there’s a reaction to that. No, that’s not good. Let’s just go create one platform. And then that doesn’t work. And this is like silly cycle. So I think I agree with you 100%. There are arguments for a single core, let’s say CRM that has core execution function built into it.

I’d really like to see that. There’s a couple of companies that are doing that. Orion’s examples. Investnet is one. I think advice on is another. There’s several out there that are trying to create most of the all in one. Not all of it, but most of it. And then you just tack on the satellites that you really need that serve your practice and that are fully ideally integrated. They don’t have to be integrated. So I just, as much as it’s a panacea, Derek and Ivan, I just don’t see it happening like that. Yeah. In a vacuum, I get it from like a convenience and simplicity standpoint, but it just won’t happen.

Well, you know what I just realized? Ivan actually asked something really important. He did say the iPhone or the Android. The question is, can there be a single operating system with all of the unique apps that a client or an advisor can then choose to put in, but it all talks on the same platform. That would be interesting, but we would all have to agree to that common platform. That client experience. And that is, I would be really surprised if anybody would pull that off. Boy, that would be interesting. I mean, yeah. How do you build the Apple or Android version of FinTech financial services that?

With a thousand apps on it. At least. Well, at least, yeah. Cause everybody’s got a different way of doing it. Yeah. But if it all talked to each other, how insane would that be? And throw compliance, data privacy in there on top of all of it. So super interesting question. So, okay, maybe there’s a far chance that someday something like that can happen, but otherwise, no, I think it’s always gonna be up to the individuals and creating experiences that they like. I mean, like when I went independent, I had full carte blanche. I could do whatever I want. Right? Right. And my tech stack’s different than the next one.

Right, but you still have to cobble it together. I mean, the reality is that we’re all still trying to make sure we can communicate with each other. APIs, I think, are the big universal equalizer on this whole discussion. But I do think unless there’s a regulatory push to say everybody needs to be on the same platform and it’s a requirement of doing business for compliance or regulatory, I just, I think there’s a lot of aspirational vision, which will be interesting if anybody can pull it off. So. Yeah. Great question. Thank you, Ivan. Thank you, Ivan. All right, with that, why don’t we let our subscribers know what to do?

That’s right, you’re a subscriber, aren’t you? Do I subscribe to this podcast? Not you. I’m not talking to you. My wife, she just told me that she listened like two or three episodes all at once recently. So I know we’re getting a couple of downloads, at least. She missed you, huh? Yeah, she’s gone right now. She’s not even here. So she’s just listening to us. She’s traveling and listening to you while she travels. You know what, she’s very kind. I’m glad that she’s very nice to you. I’m sure she’s not listening to you. She’s catching up on the Netflix that you don’t like to watch.

She totally is, right? Yeah, getting a break from the husband. That’s true. Well, listen, thank you so much, of course, to our guest, Richard Lofgren from Goldman Sachs. And thank you, Ivan, for taking the time to write that out on LinkedIn. We always appreciate that. You know, look, we challenge everyone here to put something in motion that you just heard, right? This is a mentorship podcast, Eric. We hope that there was something in here today that just forced you to either rethink your current practice or imagine what could be and what’s possible. We hope that you share this episode with someone who would appreciate it, who’s also very much like you and wants to grow.

And leave us a review, a great review. Great review. A really great, in multiple places. Like we’d like you to each spend an hour leaving reviews today. So just make sure you get out there. One full hour of your time. You know, that’s something that you can put in motion. You just heard it here, go do it. That’s not selfish at all. Not at all. Well, we appreciate everyone. Great chatting with you today, Adam. Thanks, man. You got it, thanks. See you on the next one. See you, buddy. Thank you for listening to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast with Holt and Notman. Be sure to subscribe now and join the ongoing conversation.

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