Artificial intelligence emerged as a dominant topic throughout this week’s Technology Tools for Today Conference, one of the largest gatherings in the advisor technology industry.
Publisher and organizer Joel Bruckenstein opened up this year’s event at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas with the key themes of organic growth and how AI is playing a transformative role in reshaping financial advisory services.
The conversation, with 22 sessions featuring AI, wasn’t just about the technology itself but rather how AI can serve as an enabler for advisors to optimize efficiency, enhance client and advisor experiences and ultimately fuel firm growth.
First Up, Data
The conference’s first session, hosted by Invent, emphasized that data is at the heart of the next major industry transformation: For AI to work, it is dependent on the underlying data that supports it.
With $124 trillion in assets under management available in the United States and 53 million people relying on financial advisors, optimizing back-office operations is imperative, according to Invent CEO Oleg Tishkavich.
“The current advisor-to-back-office staff ratio of 1 to 1 in RIAs and 1 to 2.4 in wirehouses needs to be reset dramatically if more investors are to receive advice,” he said.
Tishkevich pointed to recent Gartner research suggesting that, over the next five years, the industry will transition away from stand-alone tech stacks and evolve toward a unified data store in which applications, analytics and AI are integrated.
This evolution is expected to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs and drive scalability, he noted.
To build on this, Invent has created the “Invent Store” where advisors can own their data and deploy their preferred apps from vendors who have built on Invent’s data lake to create customizable advisor and client experiences.
Platforms in Focus
Several AI platforms were featured, including Zeplyn. CEO Era Jain showcased the firm’s AI-driven platform, highlighting that AI tools can generate 20% to 30% time savings for advisors, with many firms expected to define and refine their AI strategies in 2025.
(Zeplyn’s latest launch introduced over 15 new practice management features, enhancing compliance, client engagement and operational efficiency.)
“Firms leveraging Zeplyn report 12-plus hours of weekly time savings, allowing advisors to refocus on growth,” she noted.
Joining Jain on stage were Trevor Chuna, CTO of Sequoia Financial Group, a $20 billion RIA with over 150 advisors, along with Janise Brooks from PAX Financial Group. As early adopters of AI with Zeplyn, these two firms detailed how to get started with AI and to remove some common misconceptions.
“While we know that AI is revolutionizing efficiency, it has sparked concerns about the loss of human touch,” Brooks said.
“However, what we are seeing is the actual opposite of that as these AI tools are actually enhancing advisor-client relationships," she added. "Rather than replacing human interaction, AI is eliminating administrative burdens, enabling our advisors to focus on meaningful engagements.
“While we thought that clients might object to being recorded by the AI, they actually were so impressed with the meeting summaries and actionable insights generated, that they expressed great appreciation for the change in our process,” Brooks explained.
Personalized Advising
Another key theme at T3 was greater personalization of advisory services and the continued demand for goals-based investing. A key example was Nebo Wealth making waves with its Enterprise Solutions platform, designed to provide goals-based investing tools for large advisor networks, turnkey asset management programs and wealth management firms.
The platform’s open architecture enables integration with existing systems, improving personalized scalability and efficiency.
Key innovations include a goals-based Model Selector, which analyzes client inputs to recommend optimal portfolios by linking financial plans to portfolio models. The modeling product is helping advisors better tailor their portfolio construction among the numerous models on their platforms.
Extra Topics
One of the biggest industry disruptions discussed at the conference was the impending shutdown of Morningstar’s portfolio management platform, Morningstar Office.
With Black Diamond holding the pole position based on the two companies working together to create a streamlined migration path with preferred pricing, this development created a surge in demand for solutions as advisors sought new platforms to replace their existing Morningstar systems.
The market response was immediate, with all of the major portfolio management systems vying to attract advisors searching for alternatives.
Along these disruption lines, another industry shakeup was the discussion surrounding custodians, with TradePMR’s acquisition by Robinhood drawing considerable attention. TradePMR, a premier T3 sponsor, hosted Steve Quirk, chief brokerage officer of Robinhood, on the main stage.
Quirk opened his remarks by reflecting on Charles Schwab’s acquisition of TD Ameritrade announced in 2019, describing the era that followed as a “dark period” for technology due to TD Ameritrade’s shuttering its popular open architecture platform known for incubating innovative startups.
He noted, however, that Robinhood’s partnership with TradePMR aims to "light it up" by eliminating the inefficiencies associated with acquisitions and outdated tech stacks.
Overall, the conference made one thing clear: AI is not replacing advisors; it’s empowering them. The next era of financial advisory services will be defined by intelligent automation, seamless data integration and personalized scalability.
Firms are moving toward an ecosystem in which AI, business intelligence and client experience converge to drive sustainable growth.
Timothy D. Welsh is the founder and CEO of Nexus Strategy, a consulting firm to the wealth management industry.
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