About This Episode
Next Mile Episode 125: Why Wealth Tech Still Feels Broken with Multiple guests. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
with Multiple guests · December 30, 2025
Next Mile Episode 125: Why Wealth Tech Still Feels Broken with Multiple guests. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
[music] Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Next Mile. Thank you so much for spending some time with us and happy new year to you. We wanted to share with you a special episode where we take insights from multiple of our previous guests and we compile their insights around a single topic. This is the type of compilation episode you've come to love from Next Mile.
We know that your client's needs, they're ever evolving. And in this first clip, Jeremy Nelson, the president of Element Wealth, is going to share how those needs have evolved and how his firm has used technology to evolve with them. So, here's Jeremy. I think back to when I started 21 years ago now.
It was still largely a commission-based industry. RAAS were there weren't many of them, >> right? >> Feebased accounts like there weren't many. Most things were still commissionbased and what we have to do for clients is so much more complex now, right?
we have to get involved with Roth conversion calculations and tax optimization and portfolio management and you know all the stuff that we do insurance needs all these things right and so the only way to be efficient in that is technology right because you've got to have the technology for the onboarding the portfolio management the financial planning risk analytics all those things Right? And by putting that at the center of our business, right, operationally, it enables us to handle more and more clients, right? And you know, the reality is like we don't bill by the hour. And so for us to be efficient in our business and grow it, we have to use that technology to be able to take on more clients and that's what continues growth.
>> Is there any piece of technology specifically that you feel like has helped you accomplish that the most and see that principle come to life? Well, I will say the one piece of technology that I have used for a very very long time is actually a financial planning software that helps us show people everything in one place and bring everything to life right in front of their eyes. So that helps. Then now as an RAIA you know our core technology hub right that everything integrates into we're multicustodial right so we have three custodians that we work with everything flows into a hub and so you know all the compliance portfolio trading all that kind of stuff comes in that's the piece that enables us to scale the operations of our business and then the client-f facing piece really is that financial planning software thank Thank you, Jeremy, for sharing your perspective on how technology needs to adapt to better serve clients.
Jeremy also shared how the firm found that they would need to integrate their data into one central location. Here's Art Embaric from Paragon Wealth. He's the CEO at Paragon and he elaborates on that same concept. He shares how having all of your data in one central location can remove the bottlenecks that get in the way of advisors.
Here's Art. I think early on as we were building, you know, we've we had our first, I would say, large integration in 2020 with the merger in of a firm called RLP into Paragon. And you know, my partner who is the head adviser for that business uh would probably tell you that that integration, it took probably a good 12 months for that integration to happen. And obviously what we focused on over the last few years is bringing on not only better technology but more human capital.
Now we have uh someone who runs integration and transitions for us. We have teams of people that come in when firms integrate into the firm to make sure all of their data and their CRM is transferring over. Make sure any investment models that they have are coming into our technology. all of these things that admittedly we didn't have back then.
That has been something that has been a real emphasis for us over the last I would say two to three years. and obviously allowed us to grow more and transition more businesses into the firm since we have the >> Yeah, I I think about that a lot where, you know, outside of our industry, I have quite a few friends in like the manufacturing, you know, world and whatever. And and so I know more about that than I care to admit. And, you know, one of the big things in manufacturing is is about finding the bottleneck, right?
And it's like the bottleneck's always moving in your process. Sometimes it's raw materials, sometimes it's, you know, whatever, right? And I think that for most firms that transitioning of an adviser, you know, from recruiting them or acquiring them is the bottleneck for most because it's just so hard to kind of process all of that. So I I think it's cool to hear you say you're investing in trying to reduce or get rid of that bottleneck as much as you can.
Yeah. And I and I think a big mistake and you know talked about that transition in 2020 and a big mistake there was because there were bottlenecks then that takes away from the adviser and the advisory and and the last thing you want when an adviser advisory team is making a transition is for them to be bogged down in the operational side of things. You want them spending time with their clients talking about the enhancements their offerings that that you bring to the table now that you're part of the larger organization. You want to be making them feel comfortable with the transition you're having.
The last thing you want to have to be worrying about as an adviser is transitioning your data from one CRM to another or from one portfolio management tool to another or one financial planning tool to another. And it's obviously not it's not your expertise either as a financial adviser. So you're not going to not only you're not going to be very good at it, but it's taking away from time that you should be spending on other things in particular your clients. >> Thank you Art for sharing how having your data in one central place can remove the bottlenecks that face adviserss and allow them to focus on providing the best service for clients.
This podcast is brought to you by Turncast. We make gamechanging content for fintech and financial services companies. Learn more at turncast. com.
>> Hey Next Mile listeners, Jessica here from Milemarker. You know, we talk a lot about reaching that next mile in your business journey, but let's be for real for just a sec. If you're an adviser, how much time are you spending wrestling with data instead of actually advising your clients? I've worked firsthand with tons of adviserss over the years, helping them achieve real success and breakthrough growth.
But I keep seeing the same roadblock everywhere. Brilliant advisers stuck spending hours pulling reports from their different systems, trying to create meaningful client presentations and struggling to get a clear picture of their firm's growth. Does this sound familiar? Here's what I've learned.
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Instead of guessing about your firm's performance, imagine having realtime insights that help you make strategic decisions. If you are ready to stop being held back by your data and start using it to fuel your growth, I'd love to have a conversation with you. We're offering Next Mile listeners a complimentary consultation to explore exactly how we can help you transform [music] your advisory practice. Don't let outdated processes keep you from reaching that next mile in your firm's growth.
Visit milemarker. co and mention the Next Mile podcast and I'll personally make sure to get the insights you need to take control of your data and scale your practice because your time should be spent building your business, not buried in spreadsheets. In the next clip, one of our previous guests who prides themselves on having unreasonable hospitality is Kylie Felker. She's the president at Foster Victor.
And in this clip, Kylie shares how to make room for unscalable personal touches for clients and how efficient technology makes room for that unreasonable hospitality. Shout out Will Gada. Here's Kylie. >> Twoish, maybe even three decades ago, you called in to your broker and you placed a trade.
And so, I think there was this need to be available. Clients were used to being able to call people and place those trades. Now obviously most of that is digitized but I think the industry in general has set a standard that clients need to be able to get a hold of the person managing their money. It might be because they want to place a trade or maybe it's because they need to withdraw a sum of money or maybe the best situation they have money they want to deposit.
So I think it's the ability to be available for clients and what that looks like for us is now there's a lot of things that are automated. There's a lot of things that are very quick and people are very likely to email versus call, but we still want to be available and make sure we're providing same day service so that if they want to deposit that next $10 million check, we're here for them. >> I love that. Hopefully you're getting a lot of $10 million checks deposited, too, by the way.
>> I was making it. I was putting it out into the world, making it happen. [laughter] >> That's awesome. Uh, and then I know you were inspired probably like a lot of us by the book Unreasonable Hospitality by Wada because just as a side note, I noticed he's speaking at like half of the industry conferences this year.
So, something clicked with unreasonable hospitality in this industry, but I know you were probably early to it being a foodie, being somebody who probably cares about a great restaurant experience and trying to model that. Talk to me about how that's impacted the firm a little bit. >> Well, I think I'd be remiss not to talk about our book club. So, one of the things that's really hard, I think, for any business that's been around is to instill your core values.
When we picked our core values, it was probably year two of the business. So, there was eight or 10 of us sitting around a table saying, "Hey, these resonate with us. " Now, if you're coming into the business in year eight, why are those core values our core values? Yes, they make sense, but why?
And so as the executive team, we basically said if we could pick a book that helped us define what that core value mean to us and why and then have that conversation with anybody who wanted to be part of it on the team, but also definitely anybody who was new to the team. It would be really meaningful and kind of a a different way to get exposure to that. So we're in year two now. Um but basically each of us pick a book.
So there's three books a year and the whole team gets a copy of the book. I think pretty much the whole team reads them every time, but then we sit down and we have an hourong conversation. And so Paul actually picked Unreasonable Hospitality. It was a clear winner.
I think because Will's obviously a great writer, but it's also something we all relate to. We've all been to a restaurant and had a really good experience and we've all been to a restaurant and had a really bad experience. And so I think that for us, it was relatable. It was, you know, an easy read.
And then I think it already felt consistent with a lot of the things we're doing internally. gave us some great ideas as to how we can enhance some of our service offerings and and from there it was really easy to implement some great things. >> That's awesome. Was there is there anything from the book specifically that stood out to you that was like I know there's a lot of good things, but there was there one like nugget or anything that Kylie was like I'm taking that I'm latching on to it and I'm I'm like pulling that into my life and my business.
>> I think one of the things that we try really hard is just celebrate successes. And so if we know a client is going to be here and it's their birthday, we're going to have something waiting for that client, right? if they're here on their birthday, they should have maybe a cake or a cupcake or one time we actually had all of our team go in and sing happy birthday to a client. How do you celebrate people when you're in those moments?
A celebration. That's something that we've always tried to do, but that book really reminded me those are core memories for people and you can be a little part of making them possible. >> I love that. I also found while we were doing the research for this too along those lines that if you have a client that will retire, everyone in the office will sign a congratulations note or they'll provide some sort of congratulations note and then it gets delivered to the client.
Is that delivered cuz they come in for a retirement meeting with the firm? Are you mailing those out? Are you, you know, doing something? And then how do you scale something like that?
Right. I'm, you know, I'm sure you've got lots of clients. I mean, I I know people aren't retiring every single day, but those, you know, kind of personal touches, you know, are not the most scalable and efficient things in the world. >> They are not.
And I don't think there's any way to make them super efficient, but they sure are fun. I actually just signed a stack of cards this morning. Everything from I think there was a retirement card in there. There was definitely some birthday cards.
There was a couple of thank you cards and unfortunately a couple of uh sympathy cards. So I think part of it is just we have two client coordinators and that is one of their main focuses is to make sure our clients feel loved. So if I see somebody's having surgery, you know, I'm shooting those people a note and the client coordinators are preparing something or if a client mentions I'm getting ready to retire, obviously we're putting a calendar reminder and those people are making sure a card gets sent. So I think it's systems.
Yes, I think we have a lot of workflows to make it possible, but also we have two people that are dedicated to that and truly get joy from those little touches and they're really really good at it and it's fun to buy gifts for people. So, there's that. [laughter] >> That's cool. I like that.
I actually think and we can start to talk a little bit about technology with this question because I know that that's something that fits in because I want to talk about growth. I want to talk about technology. There's a lot I want to cover and we're going to run out of time so we might have to have you back on. One thing I'm finding a little bit in a lot of these conversations is AI is becoming so prevalent as all of these other things are becoming prevalent.
The idea that I'm very bullish on is that AI is not going to replace us working with clients or anything, but it's going to get all of the efficient stuff out of the way so that we can do the inefficient stuff like the cards, like the personal touches, because that's what's actually going to matter is those core memories, is that stuff that you create rather than just the nuts and bolts. I say that as a little bit of waxing poetically, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that a little bit of, you know, I almost love that you led by saying it's not efficient, but that's actually the whole point. Everybody does the efficient stuff well. What makes us different is the fact that we'll actually do the inefficient stuff for the clients that makes them realize, oh, they went out of their way to do this for me.
>> Yeah, I mean, ditto everything you just said. I totally agree. I think the inefficiencies are something that we all whether it's an Excel worksheet that we are still using formulas to um manipulate. Those kind of things are are what I think AI replaces or great technology.
I think the relationships are what you want to have time to focus on. And so yeah, I love what you said. I'm bullish on it, too. And I'm and I'm optimistic that technology integrators are really considering how to put thoughtful tasks in place that replace some of the things that we've been doing for decades and we just didn't even think they could be done better.
I think there's a real opportunity in our industry especially and I think that's why you've seen the rise of fintech. >> Thank you Kylie for sharing how technology can enable team members to provide worldclass service. Terry Pum, the co-founder of Innovative Wealthb Building, shares what he looks for when assessing technology. Terry shares in this next clip how centralizing data has improved their impact, efficiency, and effectiveness.
>> We're called innovative wealth building for a reason. We're always out there assessing the environment. We're always out there testing new things. And for us, it's all about impact, efficiency, effectiveness.
We have tools in place now where if someone wants to on board with us and become a client, we can click a button, send them a link, they fill out the data, it autopopulates an app, and it can be ready to go in 2 minutes. Like, it doesn't take 10 or 20 minutes anymore. It could be done in one or two minutes. With the financial health assessment we're about to roll out, people can fill out this form.
It'll automate and pass the data somewhere that will then populate a PDF and will give them scores from A to F about their debt to income ratio, their savings rate, their all sorts of other important financial topics. So we are always looking for ways to streamline what we're doing from meeting assistance to recap email summarization to just financial planning and single sign on and and passing data from one place to the next. We're doing everything that we can to streamline the process internally and then also with our clients. And then the last thing I would mention, we were using a tool to gather data that was a bit clunky.
We then switched to ShareFile and I've had clients tell me, "This is so much better. This is so much easier. " >> And as an independent firm, our responsibility is to make life as good as we can for our clients and our employees. So, we take that super seriously.
So, we're always looking for how do we get more impactful, more efficient, and uh more effective. Thank you, Terry, for sharing how to consider new technology tools while keeping impact, efficiency, and effectiveness as a focus. At Milearker, we believe wealth management firms should own their data and control their future. And you do that by centralizing all of your data into one place, like many of these guests shared.
So, if you're looking to make your technology work harder for you, whether that means keeping pace with the evolving landscape and client expectations or freeing up your advisors to focus on best serving their clients, let's talk. You can reach us at connectmarker. co or myommarker. co.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this special episode and thanks again to our amazing guests for their incredible insights. Jeremy Nelson, Art and Beric, Kylie Felker, and Terry Parm. We appreciate you. The show would be nothing without our awesome guests.
That's been another episode of Next Mile, everybody. Please make sure you click follow or subscribe wherever you're paying attention to this. And if you'd be kind enough to leave us a review so other people can find the show, we'd be very grateful. But until the next episode, enjoy every mile and happy new year.
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