Prior Tiburon CEO Summits (2014-2015)
Tiburon has held 47 prior CEO Summits, with the first Tiburon CEO Summit taking place in 2001. Details of Tiburon CEO Summits XIX, XXVIII, XXVII & XXVI are included below; for details of other Tiburon CEO Summits, please click here: Most Recent, 2024-2025, 2022-2023, 2020-2021, 2018-2019, 2016-2017, (2014-2015), 2012-2013, 2010-2011, 2008-2009, 2006-2007, 2004-2005, 2001-2003.
Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX: October 13-14, 2015
Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX was held
October 13-14, 2015, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in San Francisco, CA.
Keynote
Presentation
Tiburon
CEO Summit XXIX featured a keynote presentation by Tiburon
Managing Partner Chip Roame regarding the state of the financial
services industry, focused on the rapid evolution being driven all
across the business value chain. This presentation served as the
backdrop and overview of the entire Tiburon CEO Summit.
Chip
Roame (Managing Partner, Tiburon Strategic Advisors)
Tiburon Strategic Advisors is pleased to provide a summary of the content of its Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX Keynote Presentation. Chip Roame (Managing Partner, Tiburon Strategic Advisors) gave a presentation broadly addressing the state of the financial services industry, with a specific focus on the growing wealth management market.
Charles ("Chip") Roame is the Managing Partner of Tiburon Strategic Advisors and a leading strategic consultant to CEOs, other senior executives, & boards of directors in the banking, insurance, brokerage, & investment management markets. Prior to forming Tiburon in 1998, Mr. Roame served in similar capacities, first as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, and later as a business strategist at The Charles Schwab Corporation. Mr. Roame is quoted daily throughout the media and, due to Tiburon's widely shared research, he may be the most frequently demanded board advisor. His particular expertise is that of corporate strategy for larger financial services firms, designing broad multi-faceted strategies and making trade-offs between alternative businesses, products, & markets.
At Tiburon, Mr. Roame has responsibility for all of the firm's consulting, research, & marketing activities which keeps him on the leading-edge of strategic initiatives in the industry's fastest growing businesses -- mutual funds, exchange traded funds, hedge funds & other alternative investments, financial planning, wealth management services, life insurance, annuities, family office services, online financial services, and the growing independent advisor markets. He has also taken a substantial interest in financial services industry venture capital & private equity opportunities and mergers & acquisitions transactions. At Tiburon, Mr. Roame has led over 1,700 client engagements for over 400 corporate clients since 1998.
Mr. Roame has won numerous awards throughout the consulting and financial services industries, including being named one of the power 25 elite by Investment News, one of the 25 most influential individuals in the advisor business by Investment Advisor magazine, & one of the five experts with the answers by Boomer Market Advisor. Tiburon has also been named one of the fastest growing companies by the San Francisco Business Times in multiple years.
Mr. Roame is frequently sought as a board member by Tiburon client company boards. He presently serves as a board member at Envestnet (NYSE: ENV), as a board member of the parent company of The Edelman Financial Group (Ric Edelman’s business backed by Lee Equity Partners), and as a trustee of the SA mutual funds family which is sponsored by Loring Ward and employs Dimensional Fund Advisors as its sole sub-advisor.
Overview of Tiburon
CEO Summit XXIX Keynote Presentation
The objectives of the Keynote Presentation are
to anchor Tiburon CEO Summit discussion on consumers; offer a broad view of the wealth management industry (with a new theme at each Tiburon CEO Summit), with the theme at Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX being The Six Most Important News Stories; set a discussion agenda for Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX (framing the dozens of “three big points” and introducing 40+ speakers); & address recent strategic activity. The basis of the Tiburon CEO Summit
XXIX
Keynote Presentation was industry developments (“the news”), recent
Tiburon & third-party research findings, the Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX content survey, & Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX guest speaker presentations (and prior presentations).
Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX --> Insights Behind The Six Biggest News Stories
Context Setting: Consumers & Their Money
Consumer households have $38.3 trillion investable assets, $59.4 trillion financial assets, $96.9 trillion total assets, and $85.7 trillion net worth. There are 10.1 million consumer households with over $1.0 million net worth, back above its prior peak of 9.2 million in 2007. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees estimate that ~50%-75% of financial advisor clients are baby boomers. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees believe that baby boomers are not financially ready for retirement. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees continue to believe that the lack of savings is baby boomers’ biggest financial issue. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees expect that more consumers will retire at later ages over the next five years. Baby boomers will liquidate some portion of the $58.6 trillion in retirement plans, personal assets, & small businesses.
The Future Of Wealth Management: The Six Most Important News Stories
Exchange Traded Funds
Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees have repeatedly said that they cannot predict stock market movements. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees increasingly believe that they cannot predict interest rate movements (it took some convincing!). Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees mostly utilize a mix of active & passive portfolio management styles, with the passive-only crowd growing larger than the active-only crowd. Exchange traded funds have gathered $2.1 trillion assets under management, up from $102 billion in 2002. Exchange traded funds have $232 billion net flows, up from $29 billion in 2001. BlackRock is the leading investable assets firm in terms of assets under management with $4.7 trillion, with the three ETF leaders all in the top four. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees increasingly expect that ETFs will surpass mutual funds in net flows over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees expect that ETF market share will broaden in the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees expect that ETF strategists will see huge growth over the next five years (in spite of F-Squared). Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees anticipate that active exchange traded funds will have moderate growth over the next five years. Index mutual funds have gathered $2.1 trillion assets under management, up from $384 billion in 2000. Index mutual funds’ assets under management have been primarily gathered in equity funds. The Vanguard Group has $216 billion net flows, up from $85 billion in 2010. The five largest stock mutual funds are all low cost Vanguard & American Funds mutual funds. The Vanguard Group has gathered over three-quarters on its assets under management in index mutual funds & exchange traded funds. The Vanguard Group has gathered one-third of its assets under management from financial advisors. Dimensional Fund Advisors has gathered $406 billion assets under management, up hugely since 1983. Dimensional Fund Advisors has gathered more than half of its assets under management from financial advisors. Dimensional Fund Advisors’ financial advisor channels business has gathered $165 billion assets under management, up from $13 billion in 2002.
Liquid Alternatives
Liquid alternative funds have gathered $309.2 billion assets under management, up from $174.6 billion in 2012. Liquid alternative funds’ net flows are $3.1 billion, down from their peak of $96.9 billion in 2013. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees have become decidedly less optimistic on liquid alternatives over the next five years. Hedge funds have gathered $2.8 trillion assets under management, up from $491 billion in 2000. Hedge funds have $76.4 billion net flows, up from $23.3 billion in 2000 and -$131.2 billion in 2008. Hedge funds returned 3.3%, down from 9.1% in 2013. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees mostly believe that hedge fund managers do not add value on post fee basis. Hedge funds have not been performing as well as some low cost mutual funds that do some of the same things.
Robo Advisors
There are at least 46 online advice firms. All online advice firms have gathered $217.4 billion assets under management, up from $118.0 billion in 2012. Online advice firms can specifically be defined to include defined contribution plan focused firms & B2C focused firms. Online advice firms’ assets under management are dominated by the defined contribution focused firms. The leading online advice firms are the defined contribution plan focused firms & the large discount brokerage firms & mutual fund companies. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees have become far more aware of the online advice models when asked to name the most impressive. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees have become decidedly optimistic on online advice firms over the next five years. Two-thirds of financial advisors believe that online advice firms will have no or little impact on their business. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that the discount brokerage firms will see moderate growth over the next five years. Motif Investing offers 100 pre-built motifs, up from 50 in 2011.
Break-Away Brokers
Two-thirds of wirehouse & regional broker/dealer brokers who move on their own in any year move to other wirehouses or regional broker/dealers. The bulk of the break-away broker movement really just goes in circles, with brokers moving from one wirehouse to the next for upfront payments. Wells Fargo Advisor Network’s share of financial advisors coming from wirehouses is 65%, compared to 12%-31% at some other leading independent broker/dealers. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that the break-away brokers trend will grow hugely or at least moderately over the next five years. Some have huge predictions for the share of wirehouse brokers who may break-away. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees believe that wirehouses have a neutral or negative future over the next five years.
Independent Advisors
The insurance & independent broker/dealer channels lead the financial advisor channels in terms of number of financial advisors with 74,804 & 67,290. The wirehouse channel leads the financial advisor channels in terms of assets under administration with $5.9 trillion. The five year CAGR of dually registered advisors is 9.0%. Primerica, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, & Wells Fargo Corporation have the most financial advisors. Both the retail and financial advisor support models at both Fidelity Investments & The Charles Schwab Corporation are now amongst the leading financial advisor channel firms. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that LPL financial & The Charles Schwab Corporation have the most impressive financial advisor forces. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that the number of independent advisors will grow the fastest over the next five years. Independent advisors can specifically defined to include independent reps & fee-based financial advisors (RIAs). Independent broker/dealer reps still account for the largest share of independent advisors, although both fee-based financial advisors & dually registered financial advisors are gaining market share. LPL Financial leads the independent reps market in number of financial advisors. LPL Financial also leads the independent broker/dealer market in assets under administration. The Charles Schwab Corporation, Td Ameritrade, & Fidelity Investments are the leading fee-based financial advisor custodians in terms of number of fee-based financial advisor clients, with 7,100, 5,000, & 3,300 respectively. Schwab Advisor Services & Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services are the leading fee-based financial advisor custodians in terms of assets under administration, with $1.1 trillion & $753 billion respectively. TD Ameritrade had a 229% change in fee-based financial advisor assets under custody from 2007-to-2014. Some analysts have huge predictions for the fee-based financial advisor market, with one suggesting 36,900 fee-based financial advisors by 2019. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees have become less optimistic on independent broker/dealers over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees remain very optimistic about custodians over the next five years.
Turnkey Asset Management Programs (TAMPs)
Envestnet has gathered $713.4 billion assets under administration & management, up 800% since 2007. FolioDynamix’s FDx platform has gathered $700 billion assets under administration, up from $445 billion in 2012. Loring Ward Group’s LWI Financial has gathered $13.0 billion assets under management, up from $1.6 billion in 1996. Dimensional Fund Advisors’ Dimensional Fund Advisors (US)’s fee-based financial advisor business’ TAMPs business has gathered $50 billion assets under management, up over 400% since 2005. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees believe that TAMPs will realize huge or at least moderate growth over the next five years.
The Missing News Story: Financial Advisor Bifurcation
Financial Advisor Stagnation
Financial advisor channels firms have 301,126 financial advisors, down from its peak of 339,450 in 2004. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees increasingly think that the number of financial advisors will decrease or at best remain steady over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees believe the role of financial advisors is gaining value to clients, although this view is declining. Tiburon will seek to prove the financial advisor bifurcation; it is possible that a few dozen fee-based financial advisors are driving the markets’ growth. The mutual fund store has 133 offices, up from 73 in 2011. United Capital Financial Partners has 70 offices, up from fourteen in 2007. HighTower Holding has 49 offices, up from twelve in 2011. Edelman Financial Services has 41 offices, up from one in 2005. The Mutual Fund Store serves 37,000 clients, up from 30,000 in 2010. Edelman Financial Services serves 28,000 clients, up from 5,000 in 2003. Fisher Investments’ Private Client Group serves 27,000 private client group clients, up from 12,000 in 2004. Fisher Investments’ Private Client Group manages $35 billion in assets, up from $1 billion in 1997. Edelman Financial Services has gathered $14.9 billion assets under management & administration, up over 400% since 2003. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that United Capital Financial Partners, Edelman Financial Services, & HighTower have the best chance at building nationwide financial advisory business. Edelman Financial Services has $131.9 million assets under management & administration per financial advisor.
Differentiators
Edelman Financial Services’ average client has $522,000 assets under management & administration, up from $380,000 in 2009. Edelman Financial Services has 113 financial advisors, up from nineteen in 2003. Fisher Investments’ investment counselors, vice presidents, account executives, & client operations associates account for over half of its employees. Fisher Investments’ private client group creates over three-quarters of its leads from direct mail and web advertisements. Fisher Investments’ private client group attracts two-thirds of its clients to seminars each year. Edelman Financial Services will conduct over 600 seminars, up from 75 in 2012. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that consumers understand that rising rates will impact investment portfolios, but do not understand the specifics. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that downside protection strategies will experience huge growth over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that the importance of video service will see moderate growth over the next five years. And in a strange twist…financial advisor fees are down…err…up. Financial advisor average fees range from 1.26% to 0.66% based on portfolio size. Fisher Investments’ private client group’s pricing schedule ranges from 1.25% to 1.00%, and the firm uses a blended methodology. Edelman Financial Services’ pricing schedule ranges from 2.00% to 0.50%.
Strategic Activity
Financial Services Industry Venture Capital & Minority Growth Equity Investments
Venture capital firms raised $33.0 billion funds, up 75% since 2010 but down from $85.1 billion in 2000. Venture capital investment reached $48.4 billion, up from $30.0 billion in 2013 but down from its peak of $105.0 billion in 2000. SoFi has raised the most venture capital amongst financial services firms, with $1.2 billion. Wealthfront, Betterment, & Personal Capital Corporation have raised the most venture capital amongst the online advice firms. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that venture capital’s bet on online financial advice will continue at a high or moderate level in 2016.
Financial Services Industry Initial & Secondary Public Offerings
There were 275 initial public offerings in 2014, up from 222 in 2013 but down from its peak of 406 in 2000. Initial public offerings raised $85.3 billion in 2014, up from $54.9 billion in 2013 but down from its peak of $96.9 in 2000. There were 36 initial public offerings in the financial sector in 2014, down from 45 in 2013. Financial services industry public offerings included Worldpay, National Commercial Bank, & Medibank Private. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said financial services industry initial & secondary public offerings will experience moderate growth.
Financial Services Industry & Financial Advisor Mergers & Acquisitions
Financial Services Industry Mergers & Acquisitions
Mergers & acquisitions’ deal value was $3.5 trillion, up from $2.3 trillion. Private equity firms invested $12.0 billion in financial technology firms, up from $4.0 billion in 2013. Financial technology companies Sungard, Advent Software, Russell Investments, & SNL Financial all sold in the last year for large sums. Leading investment management firms mergers & acquisition deals included TIAA-CREF’s acquisition of Nuveen, Santander Asset Management’s Acquisition of Pioneer Global Asset Management, and the pending acquisition of Russell Investments. The leading public brokerage merger & acquisition deal was Stifel Financial Group’s acquisition of Sterne Agee for $150 million. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that financial services firm merger & acquisition activity will increase.
Financial Advisor Mergers & Acquisitions
There were 54 fee-based financial advisors mergers & acquisitions transactions in 2014, up 35% since 2006. There have been $32.6 billion fee-based financial advisors assets under management acquired through mergers & acquisitions transactions in 2014. Hellman & Friedman’s acquisition of Edelman Financial Services was the leading financial advisors acquisition at $14.8 billion. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that the most successful financial advisor aggregators are HighTower & Focus Financial Partners. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that financial advisor consolidation activity will remain steady or accelerate this year. Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX attendees said that roll-up firms will be the most frequent financial advisor acquirer.
Financial Services Industry Valuations & Activists Opportunities
Financial services firms account for 10%+ of the US economy and 20%+ of the Standard & Poor’s 500. Activist funds have gathered $120 billion assets under management. Activist hedge funds have $10.1 billion net flows, up from $3.4 billion in 2005. Carl Icahn & Southeastern are the leading activist investor funds in terms of value of disclosed US equities with $22.3 billion & $18.3 billion. The average net return among activist hedge funds outpaced the total hedge fund universe in both the short & long term. Financial services industry activist fund specific targets include American Realty Capital Partners, LPL Financial Holdings, State Street Corporation, & The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation.
Along with Tiburon's Managing Partner Chip Roame, Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX included speakers Blaine Aikin (CEO, fi360), Anil Arora (CEO, Yodlee), Noreen Beaman (CEO, Brinker Capital), Carol Benz (Managing Principal, Bingham Osborn & Scarborough), Adam Blitz (CEO, Evanston Capital Management), Matt Brown (CEO, CAIS), Rob Brown (Chief Investment Officer, United Capital Financial Advisers), Bruce Cameron (CEO, Berkshire Capital Securities), James Carney (CEO, ByAllAccounts), Jeff Dekko (CEO, Wealth Enhancement Group), Stuart DePina (President, Envestnet Tamarac), Joe Duran (CEO, United Capital), Shannon Eusey (President, Beacon Point Advisors), Ray Ferrara (CEO, ProVise Management Group), Jim Feuille (Partner, Crosslink Capital), Tom Florence (CEO, 361 Capital), Mike Furlong (CEO, Sliced Investing), Stewart Gross (Managing Director, Lightyear Capital), Scott Hanson (Co-CEO, Hanson McClain), Margaret Hartigan (CEO, Marstone), Pete Hess (CEO, Advent Software), Spencer Hoffman (Managing Director, Lovell Minnick Partners), David Jegen (Partner, F Prime Capital), Chris Jones (Chief Investment Officer, Financial Engines), Kunal Kapoor (President, Global Client Solutions Group, Morningstar), Zachary Karabell (Head of Global Strategy, Envestnet), Aaron Klein (CEO, Riskalyze), Jan Kolbusz (Founder, Decimal Software), Bo Lu (CEO, FutureAdvisor), Brad Matthews (CEO, Trizic), Ed Moore (President, Edelman Financial Services), Hans Morris (Managing Partner, Nyca Partners), Patricia Nakache (General Partner, Trinity Ventures), Michael Pinsker (CEO, Docupace Technologies), Eduardo Repetto (Co-CEO, Dimensional Fund Advisors), John Rooney (Managing Principal, Commonwealth Financial Network), Babu Sivadasan (President, Envestnet Retirement Solutions), Bill Sowell (CEO, Sowell Management Services), Hal Strong (Operating Executive, Genstar Capital), Jason Thomas (CEO, Savos Investments), Allen Thorpe (Managing Director, Hellman & Friedman), Jim Tracy (Vice Chairman, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management), Hardeep Walia (CEO, Motif Investing), Amy Webber (President, Cambridge Investment Research), Spencer Williams (CEO, Retirement Clearinghouse), & Bob Worthington (President, Hatteras Funds). Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX also featured the firm's traditional client-centric panel discussions and two networking-based social events.
Blaine Aikin
(CEO, fi360)
Blaine Aikin is CEO of fi360. fi360 is a national and international leader in the field of investment fiduciary responsibility, providing training, web-based analytical tools, and resources for those who manage money on behalf of others. Mr. Aikin is the author of numerous articles on the subjects of fiduciary responsibility and investment management, and the author of the monthly Fiduciary Corner column in InvestmentNews magazine. Upon graduation from Carnegie-Mellon University, Mr. Aikin was selected for the prestigious Presidential Management Intern Program which involved management assignments in the US Department of Treasury and the US Senate. He subsequently served as budget officer for Prince William County, Virginia. Mr. Aikin then entered the private sector in professional financial management. He earned the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designations and served as a principal and chief investment officer of Allegiance Financial Advisors. After providing contract training and consulting services for PNC Financial Services Group, Mr. Aikin became a senior vice president and director of product development and management for PNC Advisors. For several years, he also served as an adjunct faculty member of the College for Financial Planning; providing instruction in investment planning and other subjects leading to the Certified Financial Planner designation.
Mr. Aikin's recent comments have included:
- "For RIAs, the change that would best fit this bill is for the rule [the Department of Labor's proposed fiduciary rule] to more clearly distinguish the special obligations attendant to advice on rollovers versus advice that involves ongoing conflicts of interest associated with variable compensation"
- "The rollover decision is a one-time event and the DOL should craft an exemption designed to handle the point-in-time situation when a fiduciary retirement adviser to a plan is called upon to assist a plan participant with a rollover decision"
- "The SEC exams tend to be thorough and effective; they are just not done often enough"
- "A lot of lobbying money comes from the financial services industry. Congress does not want to lose any power of the purse over the SEC"
- "Advisers who can successfully incorporate digital investment tools into an client-friendly customer experience will surely stand out in the crowded market of advisory services. To construct a successful hybrid model, advisers should be thinking about the human and computer interfaces they have with clients in at least four key aspects: access, consistency, literacy and trust"
Anil Arora
(CEO, Yodlee)
Anil Arora is President & CEO of Yodlee. Under his leadership, Yodlee has been a disruptive catalyst for change in the financial industry by pioneering a unique cloud-based platform. Today, Mr. Arora is helping Yodlee lead the charge for the safe use of global financial data to accelerate innovation and transform the delivery and use of digital financial services. Mr. Arora has extensive experience building some of the world’s most recognized brands at companies like General Mills, Kraft, and Gateway, as well as innovating new market strategies and increasing the lifetime customer value for companies in a variety of industries.
Mr. Arora's recent comments have included:
- “We are in the early innings of our vision to transform financial services by improving and simplifying the lives of anyone with a financial account. As the leading financial cloud platform, there is a massive addressable opportunity to power digital financial solutions for over two billion financial users globally across both financial institutions and internet innovators”
- “Our growth is a function of executing on our stated three key strategies: one, growing our subscription revenue and increasing penetration at existing financial institutions, while adding new customers globally; two, driving user growth and subscription revenue with emerging Internet digital financial service providers who have enormous potential by adding new customers around the globe and with new used cases; three, leveraging our unique big data assets and analytics to further accelerate subscription revenue with existing and new customers. Our subscription revenue is experiencing strong growth driven by all three of these key strategies”
- “The most exciting aspect of our growth opportunity with financial institutions and internet innovators is that we believe that the best is still ahead of us”
- “One interesting example of the power of Yodlee data analytics is how we have worked closely with an innovative food company to develop their marketing strategy based on consumer spending trends. Their chief marketing officer shared with us that they have shifted the majority of their research spending to Yodlee data analytics due to the power of Yodlee data. For us, the data business is additive across the board. It is an incremental revenue opportunity with both existing and entirely new customers and perhaps as important it is sticky”
- “The Yodlee Financial Cloud is uniquely positioned to drive innovation and is transforming digital financial services among Financial Institutions as well as Internet innovators. We are excited about Yodlee's market opportunity, and our recent IPO was a seminal milestone for our company and provides the strategic position to continue to drive growth"
Noreen Beaman
(CEO, Brinker Capital)
Noreen Beaman is CEO of Brinker Capital. Ms. Beaman is responsible for developing and executing the firm’s detailed operating plan and for the oversight of the company’s short and long term strategies. Previously, Ms. Beaman served as the firm’s chief operating officer responsible for policy and oversight of operations, administration, performance, reconciliation, technology, and human resources. Ms. Beaman has more than 25 years of investment experience working with financial advisors and institutional and high net worth investors in strategic planning and investment management. Additionally, she is a member of the firm’s investment, management, and finance committees. As one of Brinker Capital’s original partners, Ms. Beaman previously held a variety of regional and national sales positions at the firm, including new business development and client service in New York and New Jersey. Ms. Beaman is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has been quoted extensively in top financial and advisor media. Prior to joining Brinker Capital, Ms. Beaman was treasurer at Mutual Benefit Capital Companies, a subsidiary of Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company. She also worked at Ernst and Young.
Ms. Beaman's recent comments have included:
- "Failure is probably the best gift someone can give you"
- "One thing we do is hold people accountable. We make sure everyone is in a position to be successful. Then, when you are not successful, we have to have a conversation. You need to hold up your end of the bargain. Sometimes you are not a good culture fit because you do not want to be held accountable, and sometimes you are a great culture fit and we just did not give you the right training, so we will do that. Sometimes you will make a mistake. Life happens. But let us not do it again. One of our mantras is, find it, fix it, prevent it"
- "In our world today, if you are not actively learning every day, you really are not competitive. There is too much going on. I can never know everything going on around me, so I need to know that there are people around me who are learning other things, so we create a more cohesive view"
- "One of the things I keep telling our staff — and this is something I had to do — is that you have to do two jobs before you get the next job. You have to do your job really well and start doing the next job a little bit by, say, raising your hand for a project"
Carol Benz
(Managing Principal, Bingham Osborn & Scarborough)
Carol Benz is Managing Principal of Bingham Osborn & Scarborough. Ms. Benz joined the firm in 2001 and also serves as the firm’s Chief Operating Officer and is responsible for firm management, including finance and reporting, portfolio operations, human resources, compliance, technology, strategic planning, and office administration. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Benz worked for ten years for Barclays Global Investors (currently known as BlackRock) where she managed account operations, domestic operations, international operations, and the data services group and for three years with Ernst & Young as a supervising senior where she worked with insurance, technology, and manufacturing clients. Ms. Benz is currently the vice chair of the Stanford Alumni Association and the treasurer of the San Francisco Ballet Auxiliary.
Ms. Benz's recent comments have included:
- [Coming Soon]
Adam Blitz
(CEO, Evanston Capital Management)
Adam Blitz is CEO of Evanston Capital Management. Mr. Blitz helped establish ECM, joining the firm at inception in 2002. He is a member of ECM's board of managers, investment committee, operating committee, & valuation committee. Mr. Blitz leads all investment research and portfolio management as well as executive firm management. He previously worked in the prime brokerage area at Goldman Sachs, where he was responsible for developing, selling, and managing funding and financing products to offer to hedge funds. He was also employed in the asset management division at Goldman Sachs as a member of the quantitative research group. Mr. Blitz previously served as head trader at AQR Capital Management, a multi-strategy quantitative investment manager. At AQR, he assisted in risk management and strategy research, providing extensive modeling and analysis of strategy and fund-level volatilities and correlations. Mr. Blitz is a member of the board of advisors of Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy.
Mr. Blitz's recent comments have included:
- "Most hedge funds are not any good, but if you can identify talent early, when they are hungry, you have the potential to generate outsized performance"
- "Finding that young talent is always at a premium. You are seeing household name hedge funds becoming big institutions. It might be good for business but not for investors looking for differentiated returns"
- "Our thesis is we do not think that there are a lot of great hedge funds out there"
- "Our goal... is to remind investors to take a holistic look and to evaluate each investment within the context of the full portfolio"
- "There are some managers who buy and hold a position, sometimes for years, for very sound fundamental reasons. During bouts of volatility, you often see hedge fund managers without strong fundamental conviction about the stock sell off, while more fundamental managers tend to ride out the volatility"
Matt Brown
(CEO, CAIS)
Matt Brown is CEO of CAIS. Mr. Brown is responsible for firm strategy, management and business development. He has over twenty-three years of experience in the financial services industry, having worked at firms including Shearson Lehman Brothers, Smith Barney and Brownstone Advisors.
Mr. Brown's recent comments have included:
- "CAIS felt the need to broaden its lineup of structured offerings and have more companies competing against each other to fill an advisor’s order, resulting in better execution and pricing to the end user"
- "We look very carefully at the track record of the lead underwriter’s success and aftermarket performance. The banks we work with have very strong records of success with aftermarket performance of underlying securities"
- "CAIS adds value because we take the advisor’s request for the intended note and can have all of the different banks bid on filling that order, and the best price wins"
- "By having a more open-architecture platform, we are allowing advisors to see different credits of the banks and the pricing they come up with to fill the orders"
- "CAIS is a demand-based platform, and we are seeing a lot of RIAs and broker-dealers effectively utilize structured notes––mainly plain-vanilla ways to get access to indices and the like. But overall, we want to create a better forum for advisors to be able to access these products, and we are trying to lower the cost and increase transparency and education for advisors"
Rob Brown
(Chief Investment Officer, United Capital Financial Advisers)
Rob Brown is Chief Investment Officer of United Capital Financial Advisers. Mr. Brown provides the inspiration, leadership, and experience that enable the United Capital Investment Management department to ensure that advisers are fully supported as they transition to the United Capital investment platform and that they are fully informed on how to use the cutting edge strategies available on the platform to provide customized portfolios for their clients. Mr. Brown is a senior level investment professional with 30 years of experience in portfolio management for large, sophisticated foundations, endowments, pensions, and the ultra-high net worth. Prior to United Capital, he held senior level executive positions with Genworth Financial, SEI, Envestnet, and the CFA Institute where he directed the ongoing development of the educational curriculum for the CFA certification program and its examination. While at Genworth Financial, Mr. Brown served as the chief investment officer directing a $7.5 billion institutional portfolio of domestic and international securities. At SEI, he worked as the managing director of SEI’s research department that supported the wealth management needs of over $300 billion of pension, endowment, and foundation assets under advisement. At Envestnet, Mr. Brown served as the chairman - Investment Policy Committee, executive vice president, and senior managing director - Consulting Division for PMC International (later acquired by Envestnet) where he led the investment decision-making for a $3.3 billion portfolio. Mr. Brown also worked in the public sector where he held the position of chief investment officer for one of our nation’s larger state public pension plans, the $14 billion Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System. Mr. Brown’s publications have appeared in the Journal of Derivatives and Hedge Funds, Journal of Investing, Journal of Investment Consulting, Pensions & Investments, FA Magazine, RIA Central, On Wall Street Magazine, Royal Alliance Associates Sourcebook, Bank Investment Consultant, Investment News Magazine, London Financial Times, Financial Planning, Financial Advisor, and Journal of Financial Planning.
Mr. Brown's recent comments have included:
- "The problem is not lack of opportunity. The problem is not lack of talent. The problem is, not in all cases, but in many cases, the structure of the mutual fund [regarding fund managers underperforming the market]"
- "We have gone to portfolio managers at some of the large-name fund companies in the world, but that is more the exception than the rule for obvious internal business reasons. If a portfolio manager is running a couple mutual funds with $10 billion, does their parent organization have a separate agreement with us where they're sending us their ten best ideas? That is going to be a rare circumstance whether they are going to be comfortable with that"
- "It would be interesting to know how many of the people who actually put their money into (the Voya Corporate Leaders Trust Fund) actually know what it is. In a lot of cases, I bet they do not"
- "Good managers can add an extra one percent to returns over time compared with an index-only strategy"
Bruce Cameron
(CEO, Berkshire Capital Securities)
Bruce Cameron is CEO of Berkshire Capital Securities. Mr. Cameron joined Mr. McEver in establishing Berkshire Capital in 1983 as the first independent investment bank covering the investment management and securities industries. As president and CEO, Mr. Cameron is responsible for the overall development and direction of the firm. Mr. Cameron leads the firm’s new business efforts and is actively involved in advising the firm’s major clients. He is also a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events. From 2005 to 2010 Mr. Cameron was a co-founder and the chairman of the board of directors of Highbury Financial, a publicly traded investment management holding company. Prior to the formation of Berkshire Capital, Mr. Cameron was associate director of Paine Webber Group’s strategic planning group. He began his career at Prudential Insurance Company, working first in the comptroller’s department and then in the planning & coordination group.
Mr. Cameron's recent comments have included:
- "With approximately $5.0 billion of assets under management, a unique suite of attractive investment products and several promising avenues for long-term growth, we are excited to deliver this transaction to our stockholders. We are partnering with a talented management team that is committed to the growth of the business and whose track record of developing innovative investment products and delivering superior investment results will deliver long-term value to both clients and stockholders of ZAIS"
James Carney
(CEO, ByAllAccounts)
James Carney is CEO & co-founder of ByAllAccounts. He and his teams have had a proven track record of effectively building, marketing and selling highly scalable, complex solutions on time and within budget. ByAllAccounts became a subsidiary of Morningstar in 2014. Prior to co-founding ByAllAccounts, Mr. Carney was a co-founder and CEO of Bidder's Edge, the largest online auction portal servicing greater than 500,000 users on a monthly basis with information available on over eight million items on a near real time basis. Company revenue grew in excess of 100% each year with expanding profit margins. Prior to Bidder's Edge, Mr. Carney was a co-founder and CEO of Workgroup Technology, which developed product information management systems for the engineering and manufacturing environments. The company had a successful IPO on the NASDAQ exchange. Previously, Mr. Carney was CEO and co-founder of WSI (a UNIX based system integrator that developed solutions for the engineering market), which was acquired by BOM Nesbitt Burns; and he ran the Northeast Operations for Computervision, the worldwide leading provider of CAD/CAM systems..
Mr. Carney's recent comments have included:
- "Since June, three separate clients have told us they compared Morningstar’s ByAllAcounts with Quovo and ByAllAccounts had superior data quality and consistency"
- "Thousands of firms and more than 40 redistributors rely on us to aggregate more than $1 trillion in investor assets from more than 12,000 sources every day. Clearly technology is important, and we continue to invest in technology to provide a great experience for our clients. Since becoming part of Morningstar, we have added Morningstar asset classes and security information that is not available through any other aggregator. In the end, it is all about the data and the client experience"
- “We are focused on super high-quality transactions. Yodlee is more consumer based. We are not competing day to day"
Jeff Dekko
(CEO, Wealth Enhancement Group)
Jeff Dekko is CEO of Wealth Enhancement Group. Mr. Dekko has more than twenty years of business experience in marketing, technology, operations and finance. Mr. Dekko began his career with General Mills, where he served in a variety of marketing management positions including Wheaties, Cheerios, International and New Product Development. In 1994 he joined Recovery Engineering, where he was instrumental in the developing the firm from a small public company to a national brand (PUR). During his time with the firm, he was involved in several secondary offerings and the sale of the company to Procter & Gamble. After the sale, he supported a small technology company in completing an equity financing by two PE firms and two strategic firms: HP and Novell. He bought Wealth Enhancement Group in 2003 with two outside partners. The company focused on organic growth and quadrupled assets in five years. Since 2007, he has led the company in two sale processes: 2007 to Norwest Equity Partners and 2015 to Lightyear Capital while simultaneously increasing employee ownership participants by 800%. While the firm primarily grows from a marketing driven model, Wealth Enhancement Group is actively pursuing acquisitions for geographic reach, and has completed several in recent years. Mr. Dekko is active on a number of United States Ski Association (USSA) boards and various committees.
Mr. Dekko's recent comments have included:
- "We thank Norwest Equity Partners for being such supportive and collaborative partners with us over the years. We achieved a great deal of growth and success together. We're excited about carrying that momentum forward into our new relationship with Lightyear Capital, which will allow us to continue to deliver consistent growth in new markets as we build our firm into a top national wealth management and financial planning brand"
- "Strategically, we are looking to partner with firms that have demonstrated a commitment to growth and see value in integrating with our proprietary marketing capabilities for new client development and creating efficiencies by utilizing our centralized platform to gain investment management, planning and administrative leverage"
- "Over the last eighteen months we started to pursue acquisitions, but the strategy is different from the aggregators. It is about an integration of services, not just the split on profit and then running the business autonomously. We have one RIA and a centralized investment management group. Unless you integrate, you cannot get that efficiency"
Stuart DePina
(President, Envestnet Tamarac)
Stuart DePina is President of Envestnet Tamarac. Mr. DePina manages the long-term growth strategy of Tamarac. His balanced leadership is rooted in deep financial experience and the belief that a solid organization is built on customer focus, commitment and thoughtful business practices. Mr. DePina's professional history is distinguished by leadership roles in guiding firms through various stages of development including initial public offerings and acquisitions. Most recently, Mr. DePina served as CEO for Who's Calling, a web-based application that uniquely measured online and traditional direct marketing performance, where he succeeded in doubling the company's revenue base and drove profitability. He served as president and CEO of xSides Corporation, a developer of trusted computing and digital rights management technology. He was chief financial officer for Ticketmaster Corporation, and a partner in the big four firm of KPMG, where he provided consulting and assurance services to a number of clients in the firms' financial services practice.
Mr. DePina's recent comments have included:
- "For years they [Advent Software] said, bundling is not a smart strategy; it is better to be great at one thing. They are right but that one thing is a platform"
- "The number of RIA firms embracing Envestnet Tamarac's Advisor Xi solution continues to climb because we help them more efficiently serve their clients and in the process help build more profitable businesses. Advisors who have migrated to Advisor Xi stay there, which is why we have had a 97% client renewal rate for more than five years running while continuing to grow our client base with both large and small firms"
- "What we do is designed for a more scalable solution for advisors including proposal generation, research, rebalancing, reporting etc. All that plumbing is there but it’s not what the end investor sees. This Upside technology is the last mile and it allows us to offer the full spectrum"
Joe Duran
(CEO, United Capital)
Joe Duran is CEO and Founding Partner of United Capital, the nation’s first and largest financial life management company. A proven entrepreneur, investor, best-selling author and sought after industry speaker, Mr. Duran previously built Centurion Capital, creating a nationwide investment platform that was successfully sold to General Electric Financial (GE) and renamed GE Private Asset management, where he served as president. Since he started the firm in 2005, United Capital has been one of the fastest growing and most innovative companies in the industry. Bringing together top advisors, behavioral economics, and a suite of digital tools, United Capital has revolutionized how people interact with their financial life. United Capital currently manages over $15 billion in client assets and advises on $7 billion in plan assets. The firm has over seventy locations and 600 employees. United Capital has financial backing from Bessemer Venture Partners, Sageview Capital and Grail Partners. Mr. Duran is a renowned industry visionary with featured columns in both Investment News and Time magazine’s Money.com. He is a frequent contributor to CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg and PBS and appears regularly in both traditional and online media. Mr. Duran is a recipient of a prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2015 and the Schwab Pacesetter Impact award. His most recent book, The Money Code: Improve Your Entire Financial Life Right Now, achieved best seller status on both the New York Times and USA Today lists.
Mr. Duran's recent comments have included:
- "Our goal is to become the largest financial life management platform in the country. We want to be the first billion-dollar brand in financial life management"
- "We used to call it wealth management like everyone else…but nobody understands what that means anymore. Everybody calls themselves wealth managers in our industry"
- "A financial life is not about money. It is about one’s entire life; all our industry talks about…is money"
- "Every major turning point is about having to make a trade-off. The thing that people remembered was that life was a choice; they could not have it all"
- “We are very big relative to any independent advisory firms. We do not have a lot of peers. We are large enough to make a difference, large enough to have a voice and be heard”
Shannon Eusey
(President, Beacon Point Advisors)
Shannon Eusey is the President of Beacon Pointe Advisors and a member of Beacon Pointe’s Investment Committee. Ms. Eusey is a member of the CNBC Financial Advisor Council and is very passionate about financial education. She is a founding member of the catchy finance-based educational email subscription program known as The Sense and Beacon Pointe's Women's Advisory Institute. Prior to launching Beacon Pointe, Ms. Eusey served as senior managing director and portfolio manager at Roxbury Capital Management. She was in charge of the socially responsible investments for several years at Roxbury. Ms. Eusey serves on the board of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) for the Orange County chapter, serves on the UCI Athletic Fund Board and is currently an adjunct professor for the UCI Merage School of Business. She also serves on the Children’s Hospital of Orange County Professional Advisory Committee and the Investment Committee of Sisters of St. Joseph in Orange.
Ms. Eusey's recent comments have included:
- "We are in the sixth year of a bull market, valuations are at historic highs, and we have uncertainty about the economy and interest rates. I think we will continue to see a lot of volatility"
- "Men [advisors] are talking to women [clients] the way they talk to men, and that is not going to work"
- "As it stands today, our director of marketing, female. Our director of research, female. Our director of planning, female. Our CFO, female. It just so happens that that is how the firm was built out because of the qualifications of the women. As we look at it today, 65% of our firm roughly is female, which is really different from the industry"
- “The conversation tends to be a little bit different when thereis a woman in the room. It [having more women in the firm] has allowed us to bring more women clients to the table, or spouses of clients to the table"
- "Diversity of degree and education is extremely important, and we promote whatever educational path people want to go down. We are huge proponents of education. We have somebody who is studying for their divorce degree in financial planning, and somebody who is studying for the CAIA [chartered alternative investment analyst]"
Ray Ferrara
(CEO, ProVise Management Group)
Ray Ferrara is CEO of ProVise Management Group. Mr. Ferrara brings four decades of experience to ProVise. He has served on the board of directors for CFP Board of Standards (chair 2014), the Financial Planning Association (FPA), Institute of Certified Financial Planners (ICFP) and National Advisor's Trust Company (NATC). He is active in the community and serves on the board of directors of Eckerd Youth Alternatives, Morton Plant Mease Healthcare, BayCare Health System, and the University of Maryland College Park Foundation, and has served on the board of directors for the West Central Florida Council Boy Scouts of America and the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Ferrara has been a featured speaker for many organizations, as well as at business conferences throughout the United States. For over ten years, he hosted radio's Talking Money and authored several articles, videos, and CDs on various financial topics including living trusts, IRAs, college financial aid, asset protection, estate planning, and Section 529 plans. Ray has been quoted in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal; The New York Times; USA TODAY; Bloomberg News; Investor Business Daily; Tampa Bay Times; Tampa Tribune; and Business Week. Mr. Ferrara was featured as one of America's best financial planners in the book Secrets of the Wealth Makers and is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Tampa Bay Chapter of the FPA.
Mr. Ferrara's recent comments have included:
- "When most people hear the words financial planner, they immediately assume that what is really meant is investment advisor. We place the emphasis on integrated financial planning and view investment management, retirement planning, estate planning, asset protection, etc. as subsets of financial planning"
- "Vanguard's rock-bottom fee absolutely should cause [financial-planning firms] to justify to the client the extra expense of what they are doing"
- "It is very concerning the lack of literacy that people have. It is not taught in our schools and where it is taught, it is not taught as well as it could be. We need to raise public awareness"
- "The biggest lesson I have learned is to listen to the wisdom of the board and not hear echoes of your own voice in your head. The collective wisdom is the voice that needs to be heard. On boards it is hard sometimes to listen, but that is what I try to do. But I have found with the boards, especially with non-profits, the right people seem to be in the room at the right time"
- "I have been a CFP for 24 years and I think it’s helped from the standpoint of continuing education. It forces me to remain current with what is happening and apply new thoughts and ideas to solutions that I deliver to client"
Jim Feuille
(Partner, Crosslink Capital)
Jim Feuille is a Partner at Crosslink Capital. Mr. Feuille is a member of Crosslink’s venture team, focusing on investments in digital media & internet services, financial technology, and software & business services. Mr. Feuille joined Crosslink in 2002, bringing 20 years of technology investment banking and management experience to the firm. Mr. Feuille’s prior positions included global head of technology investment banking at UBS, where he built a powerful global technology investment banking practice from scratch, chief operating officer at Volpe Brown Whelan & Company, where he ran all aspects of the firm’s investment banking and brokerage operations and led the firm to record growth in revenue and market share prior to its acquisition by Prudential, and head of technology investment banking at Robertson Stephens, where he built the technology investment banking team into a leadership position in the industry. Mr. Feuille's board seats have included Chime, DevonWay, Global Analytics, NWP Services, Pandora, Personal Capital, & Reltio.
Mr. Feuille's recent comments have included:
- "The data-driven applications and data management market is exploding, and Reltio is poised to play a major role. Reltio is the first company in this arena to put tailored data-driven applications into the hands of business users, with the data management compliance and discipline that IT requires"
- "We believe Chime has the opportunity be a leader in payments and a trusted financial services brand for both young adults and the broader population"
Tom Florence
(CEO, 361 Capital)
Tom Florence is CEO & President of 361 Capital, responsible for the general management of the firm. He has over 29 years of experience in the financial services industry having been exposed to all facets including investment management, sales and marketing, operations, and general business management. Mr. Florence began his career at Merrill Lynch in equity capital markets before moving on to investment management in the wealth management group. He then spent many years at Fidelity Investments where he was an officer in the Institutional Services Company. After Fidelity, Mr. Florence was a managing director at Morningstar, and on the six person executive management committee which had responsibility for general oversight of the company. While there, he founded and was president of Morningstar Investments Services, a registered investment advisor managing mutual fund portfolios for advisors and their clients. After Morningstar, Mr. Florence was an owner and a managing partner of Dividend Capital Group, a real estate investment management company. In addition, he was co-founder and president of Dividend Capital Investments, a registered investment advisor managing portfolios of real estate securities. Mr. Florence has been on the board of trustees at two mutual fund companies including the Janus Mutual Funds. He has been a frequent industry speaker and a guest lecturer at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.
Mr. Florence's recent comments have included:
- "In many of the strategies in alternatives, there is capacity constraint and there are already examples in the marketplace where funds have taken on a lot of capacity because they are very good marketing machines. The returns have decreased and, in the end, it has not been a good thing for the investors. At 361 we are very focused on capacity and making sure we limit capacity within our funds"
- "Long/short equity is the largest category in Morningstar’s classification of alternative mutual funds, but there is currently a shortage of quality funds with track records. By partnering with a proven manager like Analytic Investors, we are able to meet a real need in the marketplace"
- "Macroeconomic issues and concerns about volatility are pushing investors into liquid alternative mutual funds. Individual investors are seeking out liquid alternatives because they are less expensive than hedge funds, yet offer much greater transparency and liquidity"
Mike Furlong
(CEO, Sliced Investing)
Mike Furlong is CEO of Sliced Investing.
Mr. Furlong's recent comments have included:
- --
Stewart Gross
(Managing Director, Lightyear Capital)
Stewart Gross is a Managing Director at Lightyear Capital and a member of the investment committee. Prior to joining Lightyear in 2005, Mr. Gross spent seventeen years at Warburg Pincus, where he was a partner and member of the operating committee. Mr. Gross began his career as an investment banking analyst in mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley. Mr. Gross is a board member of Lightyear portfolio companies Alegeus Technologies, RidgeWorth Investments and Wealth Enhancement Group and a former board member of Cetera. Mr. Gross is a trustee of Boys and Girls Harbor and a director of the New York City Partnership Foundation.
Mr. Gross' recent comments have included:
- [Coming Soon]
Scott Hanson
(Co-CEO, Hanson McClain)
Scott Hanson is Co-CEO of Hanson McClain. Mr. Hanson is also a senior partner and founding principal of Hanson McClain. Mr. Hanson has been named to Barron’s list of the Top 100 Independent Wealth Advisors in America for 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, and has been listed as one of the 25 most influential people in the financial services industry nationwide. Mr. Hanson has been a guest on both Fox News and Fox Business, has appeared on Closing Bell, and has provided commentary for numerous print and digital outlets, including CNBC.com, The Wall Street Journal,The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. The author of Money Matters: Essential Tips and Tools for Building Financial Peace of Mind, and the co-author of Investment Advisor Marketing, for twenty years Mr. Hanson has co-hosted Money Matters, a weekly call-in talk radio program that airs on KFBK 1530, Sacramento’s largest AM station. Mr. Hanson is the 2011 winner of the Salvation Army’s Spirit of Caring Award.
Mr. Hanson's recent comments have included:
- "The retirement system in the United States is in chaos. Government retirement vehicles are grossly underfunded, most companies have dropped their defined benefit pension plans, and for those fortunate enough to have a 401K, the savings and investments are at the mercy of their employer's plan administrator. Our nation's approach to retirement is ripe for change, and it would be inspiring to see the president or Congress offer some viable alternatives"
- "Rather than merely tinkering with our current system, I think it is time for drastic measures. I believe the time is right to decouple retirement savings from our employers"
- "Does it really make any sense to tie our retirement savings to our employers? Our employers already provide our wages and, in most cases, our health coverage, as well. Why have employers been cast in the position of not only telling their workers how to invest their retirement dollars but of serving as the retirement-plan administrators as well? The entire approach is not only absurd, it also begs the question: when did we become so fragile?"
- "The downside of 401K plans is that the current system does not allow an employee any freedom. It does not allow the employee to invest his or her own saved dollars how he or she sees fit. Instead, employers throw together a limited menu of investment options, and the employee is left with very little choice. There is no option to choose a favorite investment company or a trusted relative or friend, nor is there the option of hiring an advisor. Let us be frank, here: when it comes to modern retirement plans, you and I are pretty much at the mercy of our employers"
- "It is time we allow the people who are actually saving for their own retirement to decide what is best for themselves. It is time to limit the power and influence of the employer, the Department of Labor and our elected officials. It is time to place the control of our futures, and of our retirements, back in the quite capable hands of the American people"
Margaret Hartigan
(CEO, Marstone)
Margaret Hartigan is CEO of Marstone. Inspired to create a financial services site that not only addressed the primary needs of investors, but enabled them to recast their relationship with money and investments in a manner they never dreamed possible, Ms. Hartigan conceived Marstone. Prior to Marstone, Ms. Hartigan was a top quintile financial advisor for ten years in the Global Wealth Management Group at Merrill Lynch. Her practice was split between New York and San Francisco and her clients were comprised of high net worth individuals and Fortune 1000 companies. She is a former trustee of Sonoma Academy in Santa Rosa, California, and an active leader in the alumni and major development efforts at Brown University and Phillips Exeter Academy..
Ms. Hartigan's recent comments have included:
- "We need more tools to automate and scale our businesses. These businesses are hard to scale. Any tool to help the stay connected with clients I think is beneficial"
- "We are not here to disrupt advisors at all and is why we launched into the institutional space first. Marstone will educate investors through design"
- "There is a belief that the robo advisor will disintermediate traditional advisors from the planning process, but that is not true"
- "There are 50,000 fewer advisors in the industry today then in 2008. We need technology simply to handle the wealth transfer. This is why robo-advisors will complement, rather than replace, traditional advisors. Finance is intimidating for the majority of Americans, so they want the personal relationship, but it’s not a scalable business if it is purely human-driven. Technology devoid of humanity will not win"
- "Technological advancements have forever shifted consumer behavior, redefined our expectations of the companies we do business with, and fundamentally altered how we communicate with the world. Combining humanity with technology and design will result in deeper client engagement, retention and recruitment"
Pete Hess
(CEO,
Advent Software)
Pete Hess is CEO of Advent Software. Mr. Hess is responsible for vision, strategy, & execution across the firm’s global business. Prior to his appointment to CEO, Mr. Hess served as the company's president for three and a half years, with responsibility for strategy, sales, marketing, services, & product teams worldwide. Mr. Hess has been with Advent Software since 1994 and has held a variety of positions in the company, including executive vice president and general manager of the company's largest businesses, and, previously, vice president of sales and vice president of marketing.
Mr. Hess' recent comments have included:
- "We have seen movement away from internally developed technology toward outsourced solutions. Among wirehouses this has been an interesting trend"
- “The client space has certainly been evolving a lot more quickly in the last five years than it had previously. If you look at the buy side and go back ten or fifteen years ago, you had mostly traditional asset managers who serviced high net worth institutional clients around the globe. What you see today is a lot more specialization in the buy-side landscape. You have dedicated hedge funds, dedicated, traditional asset managers, & people who manage mutual funds and long-only investment portfolios”
- “From the 1990s until about 2009, we saw a lot of firms that were single product specialists. Since the market crisis, it seems that a lot of those firms are now diversifying into other products, which has created an opportunity for Advent Software”
- "We did not want to force the wrong system on the wrong client. That decision was the right decision long-term. And we feel really good about the fit of the products that we are rolling out to our clients"
- “I am really thrilled. We had to earn the trust of the marketplace back and we are making good progress"
Spencer Hoffman
(Managing Director, Lovell Minnick Partners)
Spencer Hoffman is Managing Director of Lovell Minnick Partners. Mr. Hoffman is a member of Lovell Minnick Partners' investment committee, joining the firm in 2007. Prior to joining LMP, Mr. Hoffman was a principal at Safeguard Scientifics, a publicly-traded growth capital investor, where he completed over 20 private equity and public transactions. Prior to pursuing his MBA, Spencer was the manager of corporate affairs at MicroStrategy, and also was in the global investment banking group at Merrill Lynch & Company. He is a member of the board of directors of HD Vest Financial Services, Worldwide Facilities, and is a member of the executive committee and former co-president of the Wharton Private Equity & Venture Capital Association. Prior board positions include ALPS Holdings and Leerink Swann Holdings.
Mr. Hoffman's recent comments have included:
- "HD Vest’s brand, combined with its track record of growth and client service, firmly establishes the company’s leadership in providing financial advice through the tax professional market. HD Vest’s continued focus on tax professionals, and the specific needs they and their clients have, create a differentiated platform that we believe will thrive for years to come"
David Jegen
(Partner, F Prime Capital)
David Jegen is a Partner with F Prime Capital, the venture capital firm affiliated with the owners of Fidelity Investments, formerly part of Devonshire Investors. He has led investments in Cloudant (acquired by IBM), Kensho, FutureAdvisor (acquired by BlackRock), peerTransfer, Tradier and Eris Exchange. Mr. Jegen was a co-founder of Sensoria, and vice president of Product at Into Networks, a Fidelity Ventures and Venrock-backed company acquired by Softricity, now part of Microsoft. Most recently, Mr. Jegen was a senior executive at Cisco Systems. He held early positions with JP Morgan & Company and The Boston Consulting Group. In 2014 Mr. Jegen co-founded FinTech Sandbox, a nonprofit that serves FinTech entrepreneurs by aggregating data and infrastructure for free during a startup’s development phase, backed by leading institutions like ThomsonReuters, FactSet, Yodlee, Amazon, S&PCapitalIQ and Fidelity Investments.
Mr. Jegen's recent comments have included:
- "FinTech entrepreneurs have a unique problem, which is the high cost of data to help them build applications. They raise $2 million of venture capital funding, and then spend $100,000 of it buying market data from Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters. Or they show up to customers, who say, nice app, but it has not been tested on robust data sets. We think that is a problem we can help solve"
- "Bankers will get direct feedback and much more frequent feedback from the startups in the Sandbox using their data. So if they value that proximity and ability to go in and talk to the founders of those companies, we will be able to give them that "
Chris Jones
(Chief Investment Officer, Financial Engines)
Chris Jones is Chief Investment Officer of Financial Engines.
Mr. Jones' recent comments have included:
- --
Kunal Kapoor
(President, Global Client Solutions Group, Morningstar)
Kunal Kapoor is President of the Global Client Solutions Group at Morningstar.
Mr. Kapoor's recent comments have included:
- [Coming Soon]
Zachary Karabell
(Head of Global Strategy, Envestnet)
Zachary Karabell is Head of Global Strategy at Envestnet. Mr. Karabell helps shape and communicate Envestnet's investment perspective and deep research capabilities to clients and the media alike, acts as portfolio manager of the Ascent funds, and advises the PMC Investment Committee in connection with PMC's portfolio solutions. He also consults with the senior management of Envestnet on corporate strategy, branding, and market position. Mr. Karabell is President of River Twice Research, a consulting company. Previously, he was executive vice president, chief economist, and head of marketing at Fred Alger Management, a New York-based investment firm. He was also president of Fred Alger & Company, a broker-dealer; portfolio manager of the China-U.S. Growth Fund (CHUSX); and executive vice president of Alger's Spectra Funds, a no-load family of mutual funds that managed the Spectra Green Fund. At Alger, he oversaw the creation, launch, and marketing of several funds, led corporate strategy for strategic acquisitions, and represented the firm at public forums and in the media. Mr. Karabell has taught at several leading universities, including Harvard and Dartmouth, and has written widely on economics, investing, history, and international relations. He is the author of twelve books and sits on the board of the New America Foundation and the Carnegie Council on Ethics. In 2003, the World Economic Forum designated him a Global Leader for Tomorrow. He is a senior advisor for BSR, a membership organization that works with global corporations on issues of sustainability. As a commentator, Mr. Karabell is a contributing editor and regular columnist for Politico, and he previously penned the weekly column The Edgy Optimist for Slate, Reuters, & The Atlantic. He is a commentator on CNBC and MSNBC, contributing editor for The Daily Beast, and writes for such publications as The Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Barron's.
Mr. Karabell's recent comments have included:
- “Many, many Americans are concerned about stagnant wages. But more to the point, they are concerned about whether their income can meet their needs. If everyone’s income stayed about the same but the costs of living went down, it wouldn’t matter if incomes were stagnant – or at least it should not. There is substantial evidence that many of life’s necessities are getting either cheaper or not getting any more expensive”
- “The only thing that is clear about employment and wages, therefore, is the following: jobs in the United States are relatively plentiful but well-paying jobs are less so. And you had better pick a job in a rising rather than a declining sector, or you are screwed. Wages are booming for jobs that are attached to the evolving technology-infused economy of tomorrow; they are not booming and may be contracting for anything that can be done by almost anyone. As a result, wages may rise somewhat, but only because they are rising well above inflation for some and not much in real terms for most”
- “In the waning moments of 2014, something happened that had been a long-time coming but seemed it might never arrive: the public mood in America shifted, ever so slightly yet significantly, from negativity and pessimism about the arc of the economy to something approximately hope about the future”
- “United States stocks are now modestly positive for the year (the S&P 500 is up just shy of 1.5% as of February 12), while global equities are for the first time in a long while outperforming considerably. The lack of panic in the face of volatility and the modest start should be seen as quite positive signs. Equities are not galloping too far ahead, and fear seems as much in check as euphoria. That equilibrium rarely lasts, so we should use it well to position and tweak”
- “Active versus passive. No, it is not a debate to stir the passions of the public, but in the world of investing and deciding how to gain exposure to sectors, it is a rivalry up there with the Hatfields versus the McCoys, the North versus the South, the Yankees and the Red Sox... in truth, however, while the polarized positions speaks to different groups of managers battling for fund flows and for the upper hand in a market debate, most investors are best served not by an either-or approach. Instead, placing select bets on select active managers can and likely should be combined with select positions in select passive funds”
Aaron Klein
(CEO, Riskalyze)
Aaron’s career has largely been at the intersection of finance and technology. As Co-Founder and CEO at Riskalyze, he led the company to twice being named one of the world’s top 10 most innovative companies in finance by Fast Company Magazine. Today, 90 Riskalyzers serve thousands of advisors who manage over $90 billion on the platform. In his spare time, Mr. Klein serves as a Sierra College Trustee, and co-founded a school project for orphans and vulnerable kids in Ethiopia. He has been honored by Investment News as one of the industry’s top 40 Under 40 executives.
Mr. Klein's recent comments have included:
- "Advisors today are spending 50, 60, 70 basis points on their clients’ money trying to manually manage the money and provide all of that client service. What Is incredible about Autopilot is that for 25 basis points that advisor gets to put all of their hassles of their business on autopilot – the trading; the rebalancing; the client-service calls, you know, the pedestrian client-service calls to liquidiate some money, withdraw some money, and transfer some money in. They get to put all of that on autopilot, and they get to get back to focusing on their clients and running their business”
- "The Autopilot platform is pretty unique in its ability to democratize access to advice, because, it really gives advisors the ability to profitably serve clients large and small"
- "When advisors have gone in to advise on a 401K plan they [are] usually … only focusing on the 5% of participants who have a lot of outside assets, but, with the Autopilot platform that advisor can profitably serve every single plan participant, which means every one of them is going to get higher quality advice overall. We think that is really important for advisors"
- "We went from the denial stage where advisors refused to believe it would affect their business to the alarmist stage, which we are in now, where suddenly they believe they have to become robo-advisors to survive. But we cannot out-robo the robo-advisors. In the race to depersonalize the investor experience, the venture capital-backed money will win"
- "Advisors say they want simplicity, and then they send us requests on a monthly basis to make it more complicated. We simply say no, because at the end of the day they still want simplicity, and it is something they love us for”
Jan Kolbusz
(Founder, Decimal Software)
Jan Kolbusz is Founder of Decimal Software, the world's first patented, cloud-based financial services platform to provide a seamless end-to-end solution for offering customer driven advice and fulfilment to a mass market across all personal financial product types. After beginning his career leading technology developments in health, Mr. Kolbusz moved to financial services where he pioneered industry leading portfolio administration service, Asgard.
Mr. Kolbusz' recent comments have included:
- Existing trusted product providers with the ability to add online robo-advice with zero operational overhead is the real game changer”
- “The combination of robo-advisor ease and convenience coupled with existing trusted brands and products is everything the majority of consumers will ever need”
- “Consumers need to feel an advisor is instantly on hand even though they do not want to have to call on it”
- "The contestable market for holistic advice is not where the growth is at present. The market that is not getting advice is those who want it online and with instant responses, with phone support an option"
- "When an advisor generates a piece of advice automatically out of Decimal it is totally produced from inside the system, it is all captured in a database – there is no word processor in sight. So a compliance officer can absolutely see in real time what has been done"
Brad Matthews
(CEO, Trizic)
Brad Matthews is CEO of Trizic. Mr. Matthews has extensive investment management expertise and a penchant for technology innovation. Prior to founding Trizic, Mr. Matthews was a private banker with JP Morgan where his clients included hedge funds, sports teams, and high net worth individuals—including seven billionaires. He has also worked for Citi Private Bank, Barclays, and Bear Stearns. He has ten years of experience in investing and risk management, financial planning, and structured finance. Mr. Matthews holds FINRA Series 7 & 66 licenses.
Mr. Matthews' recent comments have included:
- "We treated our foreign team like Spock. All logic, zero emotion. When you treat people like robots, you do not inspire outstanding work, convey your vision, or instill passion"
- "A decade is a long time to get used to a global economy. Nonetheless, a Silicon Valley tech company, capable of easily knowing better, fell into the momentary trap of treating offshore people like machinery for the same reason you might: You are busy; it is easier to believe that clearly-worded commands solve everything. I get all that. But when it comes to building something awesome, you flat out need people who care deeply about you and your vision"
- "Is it over for the direct-to-consumer robo advisor? It is sure starting to look that way, despite the phenomenal success of the early robo advisors"
- "The biggest financial firms simply have too many financial resources and technology know-how to allow upstarts -- well-funded though they may be -- to undermine what has become a core business and earnings stream. As the largest banks, brokerages, wirehouses and asset managers begin offering digital investment advisory services, they will blunt the threat from stand-alone robo advisors and maintain their existing, significant market share. That is bad news for most of the robo advisors, whose business models are predicated on taking market share from the industry’s established players"
- "If the robo advisor is such a good idea, why have the biggest firms been slow to embraced it? It is true the largest financial institutions have been caught off guard by the success of the early robo advisors. That is normal when innovation disrupts the status quo. Change often surprises the incumbents. To their credit, the industry has moved quickly beyond whether a robo advisor is a good idea. They’re now true believers. It’s just a matter of implementation. Many of the largest players are convinced not only because of the early robo advisors, but because of the success of institutional players such as Charles Schwab"
Ed Moore
(President, Edelman Financial Services)
Mr. Moore is a Certified Financial Planner practitioner and has been helping clients achieve their goals for 30 years. He joined Ric Edelman 25 years ago as the 6th employee of Edelman Financial Services. Working side-by-side with Mr. Edelman ever since, Mr. Moore has been a key contributor to Edelman’s amazing growth through the years, and he is responsible for all financial advisory, client service and operations functions for the firm, which now has 120 planners in 41 offices and 500 employees. He has served as EFS President since 1996.
Mr. Moore's recent comments have included:
- “The organic growth of Edelman Financial Services is unprecedented. In 2009, we had 25 financial planners in the Washington, DC area managing $4.5 billion for 10,000 clients. Six years later, we have 120 planners in 41 offices coast-to-coast, managing $14 billion for 28,000 clients. And we have built a foundation that will allow us to accelerate our growth trajectory”
- “Financial education has been the key to our success. We reach consumers through radio, television, print, digital and seminars. By demonstrating our abilities and approach to personal finance, many of those whom we have educated turn to Edelman Financial for help with their finances”
Hans Morris
(Managing Partner, Nyca Partners)
Hans Morris is Managing Partner of Nyca Partners. Mr. Morris is a director of portfolio companies Lending Club, Payoneer and Cardworks. Previously, he was managing director at General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm, where he continues to serve as a director for KCG. From 2007-2009, Mr. Morris was president of Visa while it completed its reorganization and 2008 IPO, which remains one of the largest in history. He was at Citigroup and its predecessors for 27 years in various roles, including CFO of the institutional businesses, COO of the investment bank, and head of the financial services group.
Mr. Morris' recent comments have included:
- "The ability to transfer money on social media with just a hashtag is revolutionary for the financial technology sector – a space ripe for disruption"
- "Global financial services companies require the right application of technology, compliance and regulatory rigor, while also creating a compelling user experience. Payoneer continues to show it can excel in all of these areas, and continues to innovate and create compelling solutions for companies that need to make lots of payments or get paid in lots of places. It is a great leadership team, with a big vision, and I am excited to be part of it"
- "SigFig sees the extraordinary opportunity to marry scalable automated investment advising with mainstream financial institutions and their millions of customers who need easy access to high quality, affordable advice. Our model at Nyca consists of investing both our time and money in what we believe in. We believe in SigFig’s mission and are excited to be a part of their journey"
- "Technology advances in the consumer space have been breathtaking but in the institutional world, bank desktops are still dominated by legacy software. Banks clearly want to accelerate the development of financial applications, and OpenFin provides the technology to enable that to happen"
- "Unless you are a really big company, making cross-border B2B payments is a shockingly bad experience. Businesses pay opaque fees, and neither the recipient nor the payer has any idea when the payment will be credited. Align Commerce has low fees, real-time tracking, and complete transparency on foreign exchange costs. We invest in companies with innovative solutions to big problems in financial services. This is central to our business model, and Align accomplishes just that"
Patricia Nakache
(General Partner, Trinity Ventures)
Patricia Nakache is General Partner of Trinity Ventures. Since joining Trinity Ventures in 1999, Ms. Nakache has focused on funding companies launching innovative Internet services around fundamental business or consumer needs. Her passion is partnering with entrepreneurs to nail their value proposition and develop a scalable business model. Ms. Nakache has active investments in BeachMint, Care.Com, Kixeye, PayScale, Ruby Ribbon, and ThredUp, and was previously involved with Affinity Labs (acquired by Monster Worldwide), LoopNet (LOOP), MyNewPlace (acquired by RealPage) and Sabrix (acquired by Thomson Reuters, TRI). Prior to Trinity Ventures, Ms. Nakache worked at McKinsey & Company, helping enterprises in technology, financial services and retailing identify and address their strategic and operational issues. Previously, she also contributed to FORTUNE magazine and other publications on management best practices in technology companies. Ms. Nakache is a member of the Stanford Business School Trust Investment Committee.
Ms. Nakache's recent comments have included:
- "There is an ironic, philosophical gap between the creative idealism of the startup industry and the investors who fund them. Our industry, with its insatiable appetite for ideas that will change the world, is stuck in a traditional paradigm that does a regrettable disservice to the industry it claims to support"
- "Your career is a marathon, not a sprint. As you balance work and family, it may take you a little longer to achieve leadership roles than your male counterparts, but stay in the game and you will accomplish your goals"
- "Another constant source of hope: the next generation. Millennials are the most passionate, value-driven and brand-savvy people the industry has known. They display stalwart loyalty to brands that share their own values. They are also the most diverse generation in US history, so naturally, diversity is important to them"
- "The most successful female entrepreneurs are recruiting buy-in to their mission and culture"
- "I sincerely hope that millennials will apply their unique ethos to their funding strategies and career decisions. I hope they seek out and partner with venture capitalists who share their same values about gender diversity, who are unafraid to invest in woman-led startups, and who have women on staff throughout their ranks. I hope they will embrace the diversity that helps to define their generation"
Michael Pinsker
(CEO, Docupace Technologies)
Michael Pinsker is CEO of Docupace Technologies. Mr. Pinsker grew up in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, where he studied math from a very young age. In 1991, when he emigrated to the United States, he turned that talent in mathematics towards focusing on technology and software development. Through projects with clients as diverse as Datamax Technologies, Unisys, and Paramount Pictures, Mr. Pinsker tested different workflow solutions and imaging strategies. This background and expertise led him to found Docupace Technologies in 2002, focusing on bringing those workflow solutions to the financial services arena in a unique software as a service model. By launching this innovative approach to workflow issues, Mr. Pinsker and Docupace hoped to provide the highest level of support and service at a reasonable price to truly make straight-through processing a reality for offices of any size.
Mr. Pinsker's recent comments have included:
- "Docupace is dedicated to providing high quality, enterprise-class solutions for financial service firms. We have identified a need for complimentary cyber-security services that can be offered to firms of all sizes without diluting the service offering due to economic constraints. Together with Security Snapshot, we are excited to launch this new initiative to fill this critical need"
- "Our vision for the industry and overall solutions we can provide is perfectly aligned. We consider RCS Capital a perfect partner for us in future stages of our growth"
- "We are enhancing the depth and breadth of our ePACS productivity suite to bring added value to our current customers and the financial services industry at-large. Each of these new solutions leverages the strength and power of the ePACS technology platform, while addressing long-standing challenges for financial services firms"
- "Last month, when it was announced that Pershing LLC (Pershing) had selected SIGNiX as the digital signature solution to be integrated into NetX360, we were extremely excited at Docupace. If Pershing's decision to move towards e-signatures was not a seismic shift in the industry moving toward STP, then I am not sure what is. This provides credibility that Straight-Through Processing is having a profound impact on the way the industry is progressing"
- "Docupace is very excited to partner with JP Turner and leverage the efficiencies of the Docupace STP Network for all of their advisors"
Eduardo Repetto
(Co-CEO, Dimensional Fund Advisors)
Eduardo Repetto is Co-CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors. Mr. Repetto also serves as Co-Chief Investment Officer. He provides oversight across the investment, client service, marketing, and operational functions of the firm. Mr. Repetto is a director of both Dimensional Fund Advisors and the Dimensional US Mutual Funds and a member of the Investment Committee and Investment Policy Committee. He joined the firm in 2000.
Mr. Repetto's recent comments have included:
- "The moment you say index, you are telling the world you are going to be trading on this particular day. If you have zero flexibility when you trade, it is going to cost you money"
- "I think people have been a bit disappointed by stock picking so people are trying to move away from it"
- "Advisors are increasingly interested in moving towards making rational decisions based on very sound academic research, and that is what we provide"
- "Momentum factors last for a shorter period than value factors. When that downward momentum decays, if the stock is still a good value, we will consider buying"
- "We like to track the data on everything, so we can create a history, which could be useful if things change"
John Rooney
(Managing Principal, Commonwealth Financial Network)
John Rooney is Managing Principal of Commonwealth Financial Network. Mr. Rooney came to Commonwealth in 1988 after spending five years as a vice president at Moseley Securities in Boston. Arriving to work in the product department, Mr. Rooney handled mutual funds, many partnerships, commodities, variable annuities, qualified plans, and individual issues. Over time, he has helped engineer the growth of not only the product department but also Commonwealth as a whole and is relied upon by all parties for his advice and perspective on the direction of the firm. Mr. Rooney opened and now manages Commonwealth’s west coast office in San Diego. He has been a guest on numerous television shows and nationally syndicated radio programs. He also holds FINRA Series 7, 24, 63, and 65 securities registrations.
Mr. Rooney's recent comments have included:
- "We have seen that our most successful inroads are through companies that are experiencing significant shifts in their business models or their ownership structure or organization"
- "With variable annuities, the contracts are more expensive and the riders are less attractive. It is more difficult for advisers to do 1035 variable annuity exchanges, and the new business is not as attractive"
Babu Sivadasan is President of Envestnet Retirement Solutions. Mr. Sivadasan has a distinguished record working with entrepreneurs, turning their ideas into innovative companies, and delivering solutions for Fortune 500 companies. He has extensive experience in global software delivery models and coordination of engineering activities across geographically distributed groups. He also is experienced in leading architecture, design, and development for large projects. For the past fifteen years, his focus has been on the internet and e-commerce application, and he has acted as a lead architect and programmer for Hewlett-Packard, where he worked on building a Java Virtual machine and an embedded application delivery platform. He was also the founding technology officer for several start-up companies, including Stamps.Com. Mr. Sivadasan has also worked as a technology consultant for application infrastructure companies like Quest Software and financial services companies like Discover Card.
Mr. Sivadasan's recent comments have included:
- “Envestnet provides advisors with flexible, efficient, and scalable access to intellectual capital from more than 60 institutional managers through the Envestnet Fund Strategist Network. We are offering a similar service for retirement plan advisors"
- "The ERS Fund Strategist Network enables us to provide the independent, unbiased fiduciary oversight and support that retirement plan sponsors, broker-dealers, and advisors are seeking. Given the adoption of the fiduciary standard and prudent investment practices in the retirement industry, we believe the Network can help broker-dealers, banks and trusts, and retirement advisors to truly act in the best interests of plan sponsors and participants"
- "Startup Village must be commented for its vibrant environment and the opportunities it was providing to youngsters and for bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Kerala"
Bill Sowell
(CEO, Sowell Management Services)
Bill Sowell is CEO & President of Sowell Management Services. Mr. Sowell began his career in the financial services industry in 1990 where he quickly became a top producer within the industry. In 1995, Mr. Sowell began a fee-only practice now known as Sowell Management Services, which services some of the top independent broker/dealers in the United States. As CEO and a member of the firm’s Investment Committee, Mr. Sowell’s primary role is to oversee sustainable and continued growth for the firm, regulatory compliance and public relations. He has series 7, 24, 51, 63 and 66 securities licenses as well as his life, health & disability insurance license. Mr. Sowell has strong roots in the community and has served as past president of the Rotary Club of Little Rock and is a Paul Harris Fellow. He served on the board of directors and also as past chair of Leadership Greater Little Rock and supported the Youth Leadership Institute and numerous other nonprofit organizations.
Mr. Sowell's recent comments have included:
- [Coming Soon]
Hal Strong
(Operating Executive, Genstar Capital)
Hal Strong is Operating Executive of Genstar Capital. Mr. Strong is responsible for expanding Genstar’s financial services practice, in particular in the areas of asset management, wealth management and financial technology. Mr. Strong serves as a director of Altegris, Asset International, and AssetMark. Prior to joining Genstar, Mr. Strong was most recently vice chairman of Russell Investments, where he helped build Russell into a global investment company with $250 billion in assets under management serving individual, institutional and advisor clients in more than 40 countries. During Mr. Strong’s eighteen-year career at Russell, he also served as Russell’s chief operating officer, chief financial officer, head of alternative investments and head of investment banking, having founded the latter two businesses at Russell. Mr. Strong has nearly 30 years of experience in the asset management and investment banking industries, beginning his career in the investment banking division of Salomon Brothers in New York.
Mr. Strong's recent comments have included:
- [Coming Soon]
Jason Thomas
(CEO, Savos Investments)
Jason Thomas is CEO & Chief Investment Officer of Savos Investments, a division of AssetMark. He is responsible for the leadership and oversight of the Savos investment platform and the strategic direction of the division. Mr. Thomas joined Savos Investments in December 2014. Previously, he was the CEO of Portfolio Design Labs, a company he founded to provide next generation risk measurement and management to investment advisors and institutional investors. Prior to that, he was the chief investment officer of Aspiriant, the leading independent wealth management firm in the U.S. with $8 billion in assets under management and advisement. Mr. Thomas began his career at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Mr. Thomas' recent comments have included:
- “We believe wealth is reliably created only through participation in profitable economic activity. Risk is unavoidable, but take it intelligently”
- “Because so much of the total wealth generated by a bull market comes at the very end of the cycle, reallocating away from equities due to client concerns about the current market environment can be a very costly strategy”
- “Remember that both advisors and clients evaluate their entire experience; we sometimes forget that an individual’s feelings are integral to the investment process”
- “Like Billy Beane [the general manager of the Oakland A’s], Savos’ job is to build a championship team. When we build a stock portfolio, our goal is to combine companies with appealing individual characteristics that also complement the other holdings”
- “Embrace volatility and look for undervalued areas of the market; for example, our research has indicated a significant current opportunity in high yield municipal bonds”
Allen Thorpe
(Managing Director, Hellman & Friedman)
Allen Thorpe is a Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman. He leads the firm’s New York office and focuses on the healthcare and financial services sectors. Mr. Thorpe is a Director of Pharmaceutical Product Development, and Emdeon, and is a member of the Advisory Board of Grosvenor Capital Management Holdings. He was formerly a director of LPL Financial (LPLA), Artisan Partners Asset Management (APAM), Mitchell International, Gartmore Investment Management Limited, Mondrian Investment Partners Limited, Vertafore, Activant Solutions, and Sheridan Holdings. Prior to H&F, Mr. Thorpe was a vice president with Pacific Equity Partners in Australia and was a manager at Bain & Company. Mr. Thorpe also currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the NYU Langone Medical Center and the Advisory Council of the Stanford Center on Longevity.
Mr. Thorpe's recent comments have included:
- "We are proud to have been part of Sheridan’s successful growth and transformation over the last seven years, and we look forward to the promising union of AMSURG and Sheridan. As an ongoing significant shareholder of the combined company, we are confident in the growth and expansion prospects of the new AMSURG and the opportunities we see for continued equity value creation"
Jim Tracy
(Vice Chairman, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management)
Jim Tracy is Vice Chairman and a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. Prior to his current role, Mr. Tracy was the director of Consulting Group Wealth Advisory Solutions. This organization included the Consulting Group, Graystone Consulting, Financial Planning Solutions, the Wealth Planning Centers, The Family Wealth Director Program, Philanthropic Programs and Impact Investing Initiatives. Consulting Group is one of the nation’s leading providers of investment consulting and managed money services. Under Mr. Tracy’s leadership the Consulting Group has grown to over $823 billion in advisory solutions and has achieved #1 market share leadership every year. Mr. Tracy was also formerly the director of national sales and business development for the Global Wealth Management Division of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, responsible for national sales, business development and professional development. Mr. Tracy has served the firm in many leadership roles and has been with Morgan Stanley Wealth Management since 1988. In addition, Mr. Tracy was formerly the chairman of MMI (Managed Money Institute). Mr. Tracy has over 30 years of industry experience. He has held multiple roles that have progressed him through his career. He served as a financial advisor, branch manager and regional director, all helping him gain perspective on serving clients and developing an understanding of the importance of the advisor/client relationship. Outside his efforts at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Mr. Tracy has contributed numerous articles, presentations, workshops and has been a featured speaker on trends and innovations in the financial services industry. He currently serves on the board of Marietta College. In addition, Mr. Tracy is a solid supporter of the Special Olympics Organization and has been a contributor on multiple levels for the past twenty years.
Mr. Tracy's recent comments have included:
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Hardeep Walia
(CEO, Motif Investing)
Hardeep Walia is CEO of Motif Investing. Mr. Walia co-founded Motif Investing to create an intuitive way to invest conceptually. He spent more than six years at Microsoft, where he was general manager of the company's enterprise services business, and prior to that was a director of corporate development and strategy, helping to oversee Microsoft's investments and acquisitions. He started his career at The Boston Consulting Group. He holds Series 7, 63 and 24 licenses in the securities industry, is an active member of FINRA's Small-Firm Advisory Board, serves on FINRA's Technology Advisory Committee and contributes frequently to Bloomberg TV, CNBC, Fox Business and Forbes.
Mr. Walia's recent comments have included:
- "With interest rates poised to rise over the next few years, a large allocation to bonds, especially now, may result in significant capital loss"
- "It [changing interest rates] hits every aspect of your daily life, from student loans to adjustable rates on your mortgage to your credit card debt, so you want to be very careful, making sure you understand the impact"
- "If you think the Fed will indeed say yes to a rate hike in September, then you may want to take some of your allocation from your bond funds that are heavily exposed in a negative way to interest-rate increases"
- "We have always been passionate about building a highly intuitive trading platform and now we are extending that attention to single stock trading with real-time dollar-based trading. Most investors think of trading in terms of whole dollars -- with Motif you no longer have to settle for rounding up to whole shares, you can trade any dollar amount that you want"
- "It (Swell) is a way of getting market returns. You are investing in your retirement, your education and yourself personally and, while you are doing that, Pacific Life is doing something remarkable. I do not know of another fund that is investing 20% of its revenues to doing good"
Amy Webber
(President, Cambridge Investment Research)
Amy Webber is President of Cambridge Investment Research. With over 25 years of experience, Ms. Webber’s commitment to independent rep-advisors is demonstrated in her passion for delivering high level, personal service and leading management solutions. Her personal interest lies with continually refining the independent broker-dealer model to best support the next generation of independent advisors – including creating innovative programs such as the Cambridge Source outsourcing program and the Cambridge Next Step internship program. Ms. Webber serves as vice chair for the 2015 Financial Services Institute Board (FSI), an advocacy organization for independent broker-dealers and their affiliated independent financial advisors. In 2012 and 2014, Ms. Webber was recognized as a member of the IA 25 by Investment Advisor magazine and in 2011, 2010, and 2009 as one of the Top 50 in wealth management by Wealth Manager.
Ms. Webber's recent comments have included:
- "We have 80% of advisors now using our corporate RIA. Ten years ago, that number [was] the opposite. The regulatory climate is crazy. Three of our largest [independent] RIAs had the SEC show up at their doors in the last eighteen months. They had no fun [with] their audits"
- “We call them [Cambridge's three branches doing over $20 million in revenue] the B-Ds inside a B-D. They are successful organizations that add a lot of value to advisors who join. They are growing, and definitely here to stay"
- "Richer deals [recruiting deals at around 35% to 40% of annual production] may be a product of smaller pipelines, and firms do not feel they can back off"
- "It does feel that fee-based advisors are moving less and our business is more highly geared toward fee-based"
- "I do not think it is reasonable to assume that someone working under a suitability standard is a crook, and they should not have to tell a client they are. It is unfortunate that the policymakers are reading too much into what a regulation can do in the real world. Both sides can come to the table to do what is right for the client"
Spencer Williams
(CEO, Retirement Clearinghouse)
Spencer Williams is President, CEO and Founder of Retirement Clearinghouse. Prior to joining Retirement Clearinghouse, Mr. Williams served in a number of senior executive roles at MassMutual Financial Group, and as a retirement services executive at Federated Investors. Mr. Williams is registered with the NASD as a General Securities Principal and General Securities Representative.
Mr. Williams' recent comments have included:
- "Polled investors have good reason not to have high confidence in their retirement readiness. Many Americans unintentionally deplete their retirement savings by making three costly mistakes during their working lives: leaving 401K accounts behind when changing jobs; cashing out retirement savings accounts prematurely; & not informing prior employers' retirement plan record-keepers about address changes"
- "Our research demonstrates that if you change jobs and leave behind a 401K balance for the first time at age 25, and repeat this practice, by age 65 you will have paid more than $30,000 in unnecessary administrative fees"
- "Consolidating balances at the point when you switch employers ensures that you avoid the temptation to cash out, and saves you money you would lose on fees (and future earnings on compound interest) from multiple accounts. In addition, if all of your retirement savings balances are in your current employer's plan, then you can rest assured that your assets will not be unilaterally rolled over or cashed out (and you don't have to be bothered with calls to multiple plan record-keepers if you move"
- "Account consolidation benefits all parties in the retirement system—plan participants, sponsors, record-keepers and other service providers. More plan sponsors are promoting and facilitating roll-ins of accounts as a cost-effective way to improve plan performance metrics, as well as retirement outcomes for participants. As this trend gains further momentum, the benefits become more obvious to the industry"
- "We are proud to have helped so many retirement plan sponsors and participants achieve better long-term outcomes. We look forward to enabling more employers and employees around the country to experience the benefits of automated retirement savings portability and account consolidation"
Bob Worthington
(President, Hatteras Funds)
Bob Worthington is President of Hatteras Funds. Mr. Worthington oversees the investment and portfolio management teams of Hatteras Funds. Additionally, he serves on the investment committees for various investment funds including the Hatteras Alternative Mutual Funds. Prior to joining Hatteras, Mr. Worthington was a managing director at JPMorgan Asset Management. His previous investment management experience includes president of Undiscovered Managers, and principal and senior vice president of the Burridge Group. For the first ten years of his career, Mr. Worthington held various corporate finance positions with Mellon Bank, Nikko Securities, Bankers Trust, and Westpac Banking.
Mr. Worthington's recent comments have included:
- "That adoption [of public funds] has been slow so far, but that could increase over the next three to five years. Part of that is are they going to be convinced that you can achieve a suitable risk return objective in that liquid format"
- "What it [the rise of liquid alternatives] has done for the industry, is it has started to bring down fees... it is providing a much higher model of transparency... and of course you have liquidity. That is a good thing"
Attendees
Tiburon is pleased to announce that the following 187 Tiburon clients attended Tiburon CEO Summit XXIX:
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Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII: April 7-8, 2015 Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII was held April 7-8, 2015, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel (Battery Park) in New York, NY. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII officially started at 7:45am on Tuesday, April 7, 2015, included a group dinner that night and finished at 12:00pm on Wednesday, April 8, 2015. 228 senior industry executives took two days out of their busy schedules to participate. There were over twenty sessions. Along with Tiburon's Managing Partner Chip Roame, Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII included speakers Mark Casady (CEO, LPL Financial Holdings & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), Don Phillips (Managing Director, Morningstar & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), Mike Alfred (CEO, BrightScope), Anil Arora (CEO, Yodlee), Jud Bergman (CEO, Envestnet), Marty Bicknell (CEO, Mariner Holdings), Brad Bernstein (Partner, FTV Capital), Tom Bradley (President, Retail Distribution, TD Ameritrade), Roy Burns (Managing Director, TA Associates), Bob Caruso (Chairman, Impact Republic), Todd Clarke (CEO, CLS Investments), Gil Crawford (CEO, MicroVest Capital Management), Tim Draper (Founding Partner, Draper, Fisher, & Jurvetson), Ric Edelman (CEO, Edelman Financial Services), Tad Edwards (CEO, Benjamin Edwards & Company), Bob Glovsky (Vice Chairman, The Colony Group), Alexandra Lebenthal (CEO, Lebenthal Holdings), Jim Lockhart (Vice Chairman, WL Ross & Company), Steve Lockshin (Founder, Convergent Wealth Advisors), Erica McGinnis (CEO, AIG Advisor Group), Joe Mrak (CEO, FolioDynamix), John Patterson (CEO, NextCapital), Lowell Putnam (CEO, Quovo), Andrew Rudd (CEO, Advisor Software), Scott Ryles (Chief Operating Officer, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, & Byers and Managing Partner, Echelon Capital Strategies), Mike Sha (CEO, SigFig), Jay Sidhu (CEO, Customers Bancorp), Jon Stein (CEO, Betterment), John Streur (CEO, Calvert Investments), John Taft (CEO, RBC Wealth Management US), Frank Trotter (Chairman, EverBank Global Markets), Edmond Walters (CEO, eMoney Advisor), Mike Weil (CEO, RCS Capital Corporation), & John Wotowicz (CEO, inStream Solutions). Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII also featured the firm's traditional client-centric panel discussions and two networking-based social events. Tiburon
CEO Summit XXVIII featured a keynote presentation by Tiburon
Managing Partner Chip Roame regarding the state of the financial
services industry, focused on the rapid evolution being driven all
across the business value chain. This presentation served as the
backdrop and overview of the entire Tiburon CEO Summit..
Chip Roame (Managing Partner, Tiburon Strategic Advisors) Tiburon Strategic Advisors is pleased to provide a summary of the content of its Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII Keynote Presentation. Chip Roame (Managing Partner, Tiburon Strategic Advisors) kicked off Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII with a presentation broadly addressing the state of the financial services industry, with a specific focus on the growing wealth management market. Charles ("Chip") Roame is the Managing Partner of Tiburon Strategic Advisors and a leading strategic consultant to CEOs, other senior executives, & boards of directors in the banking, insurance, brokerage, & investment management markets. Prior to forming Tiburon in 1998, Mr. Roame served in similar capacities, first as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, and later as a business strategist at The Charles Schwab Corporation. Mr. Roame is quoted daily throughout the media and, due to Tiburon's widely shared research, he may be the most frequently demanded board advisor. His particular expertise is that of corporate strategy for larger financial services firms, designing broad multi-faceted strategies and making trade-offs between alternative businesses, products, & markets. At Tiburon, Mr. Roame has responsibility for all of the firm's consulting, research, & marketing activities which keeps him on the leading-edge of strategic initiatives in the industry's fastest growing businesses -- mutual funds, exchange traded funds, hedge funds & other alternative investments, financial planning, wealth management services, life insurance, annuities, family office services, online financial services, and the growing independent advisor markets. He has also taken a substantial interest in financial services industry venture capital & private equity opportunities and mergers & acquisitions transactions. At Tiburon, Mr. Roame has led over 1,700 client engagements for over 400 corporate clients since 1998. Mr. Roame has won numerous awards throughout the consulting and financial services industries, including being named one of the power 25 elite by Investment News, one of the 25 most influential individuals in the advisor business by Investment Advisor magazine, & one of the five experts with the answers by Boomer Market Advisor. Tiburon has also been named one of the fastest growing companies by the San Francisco Business Times in multiple years. Mr. Roame is frequently sought as a board member by Tiburon client company boards. He presently serves as a board member at Envestnet (NYSE: ENV), as a board member of the parent company of The Edelman Financial Group (Ric Edelman’s business backed by Lee Equity Partners), and as a trustee of the SA mutual funds family which is sponsored by Loring Ward and employs Dimensional Fund Advisors as its sole sub-advisor. Overview of Tiburon
CEO Summit XXVIII Keynote Presentation Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII --> The Five Most Important Trends
Consumer Wealth Consumer households have $37.9 trillion investable assets, $58.7 trillion financial assets, $94.1 trillion total assets, and $79.9 trillion of net worth. There are 1,826 consumer households with over $1.0 billion net worth, up from 140 in 1987. The United States & Canada’s billionaires control 37% of billionaire wealth. There are 142,000 consumer households with over $25 million net worth, back above its prior peak of 122,000 in 2006. There are 1.2 million consumer households with over $5.0 million net worth, back above its prior peak of 1.1 million in 2006. There are 10.1 million consumer households with over $1.0 million net worth, back above its prior peak of 9.2 million in 2007. Baby Boomer Retirement Situation & Financial Issues Two-thirds of baby boomers are not confident that they will have enough money to live comfortably during retirement. Over half of consumers over age 55 have less than $100,000 of savings. Two-thirds of private sector workers have access to retirement plans through their jobs. Over half of private sector workers who have access to retirement plans through work do not participate. 59 million consumers are collecting social security, down from 62 million in 2012 but up from 34 million in 2006. The average retired worker can expect to receive approximately $1,294 per month from social security, up almost 50% since 2004. Female retiree (age 65) life expectancy is 88.8 years, up from 84.0 in 1980. Male retiree (age 65) life expectancy is 86.6, up from 80.0 in 1980. The likelihood that consumers will spend 30 or more years in retirement is growing, especially among affluent households. Baby Boomer Responses The average expected retirement age among non-retirees is 66, up from 63 in 2003. The average actual retirement age among retirees is 62, up from 59 in 2003. The labor force participation rate for workers age 65-69 has been steadily increasing since 1992. Baby boomers will liquidate some portion of the $46.2 trillion in retirement plans, personal assets, & small businesses. Trend #1: Financial Advisor Business 2.0: Managed Accounts, The Fiduciary Standard, Break-Away Brokers, & Outsourcing There are 301,126 financial advisors across all channels, down from 338,909 in 2005. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees increasingly think that the number of financial advisors will stay steady or even decline further over the next five years. The insurance & independent broker/dealer channels lead the financial advisor channels in terms of number of financial advisors with 74,804 & 67,290. The wirehouse channel leads the financial advisor channels in terms of assets under administration with $5.9 trillion. The wirehouse channel leads the financial advisor channels in average financial advisor assets under administration. Both the retail and financial advisor support models at both Fidelity Investments & The Charles Schwab Corporation are now amongst the leading financial advisor channel firms. Fidelity Investments has $5.1 trillion assets under administration, up over 200% since 2003. Fiduciary Standard There are 10.6 million managed accounts, up 65% since 2009. The Great…and Very Slow…Migration to Independence Independent advisors have steadily been growing as a channel at the expense of the wirehouses & regional broker/dealers. The five year CAGR of dually registered advisors is 9.0%. Independent advisors have been a little less successful at capturing assets under administration from the wirehouses & regional broker/dealers. The insurance industry has the highest five-year CAGR of assets under management at 17.3%. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that the number of independent advisors will grow the fastest over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees mostly believe that wirehouses have a neutral or negative future over the next five years, that the break-away brokers trend will increase or at least remain steady over the next five years, & that independent broker/dealers have a positive or at least neutral future. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that custodians have a positive or at least neutral future nearly every time. The Charles Schwab Corporation, TD Ameritrade, & Fidelity Investments are the leading fee-based financial advisor custodians in terms of number of fee-based financial advisor clients, with 7,000, 4,700, & 3,300 respectively. The Charles Schwab Corporation & Fidelity Investments are the leading fee-based financial advisor custodians in terms of assets under administration, with $1.1 trillion & $753 billion respectively. TD Ameritrade had a 229% change in RIA assets under custody from 2007 to 2014. Financial Services Industry Outsourcing Mr. Roame stated that, “the independent advisor model is entirely different than when it emerged in the 1950s-1990s. Technology & outsourcing will transform the way investment products are allowing financial advisors to deliver better financial advice.” The majority of senior leaders at wealth management firms believe that a more consistent service delivery model would lead to improvement in client satisfaction. The majority of senior leaders at wealth management firms believe that a more consistent service delivery model would lead to improvement of firm profitability. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees believe that TAMPs use will increase or at least remain steady over the next five years. Trend #2: Investment Products 2.0: Open-End Mutual Funds, Product Price Pressure, Indexing, & Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) Exchange traded funds, mutual funds, & variable annuities have substantial flows of $100-$200 billion each. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that they personally own open-end mutual funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), money market funds, & individual securities. Open-End Mutual Funds Open-end mutual funds assets under management have reached $11.6 trillion, up slightly from $11.1 trillion in 2013. The largest 25 mutual fund complexes hold 53% of the total net mutual fund assets. The Vanguard Group is the leading mutual fund group in terms of assets under management with $3.0 trillion. The Vanguard Group & Fidelity Investments are the leading open-end mutual fund groups in terms of market share with 15.8% & 9.5% respectively. The Vanguard Group has gathered over three-quarters on its assets under management in index mutual funds & exchange traded funds. The Vanguard Group has gathered one-third of its assets under management from financial advisors. The Vanguard Group has $216 billion net flows, up from $85 billion in 2010. The five largest stock mutual funds are all low cost Vanguard & American Funds mutual funds. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees mostly believe that US open-end mutual funds will stagnate over the next five years, with a growing segment who expects them to decline. Product Price Pressure US stocks average annual expense ratio is highest in actively managed mutual funds at 1.33%. Taxable bonds average annual expense ratio is highest in actively managed mutual funds at 1.01%. Institutional & exchange traded funds had the most estimated net flows with $259.3 billion & $188.5 billion respectively. Indexing Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI, XXVII, & XXVIII attendees said that they cannot predict stock market movements - although the experts group is growing. Nearly half of Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees believe that one can predict interest rate movements (really?). Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees mostly utilize a mix of active & passive portfolio management styles, with substantial segments at either end. Index mutual funds have gathered $1.7 trillion assets under management, up from $602 billion in 2008. Index mutual funds’ assets under management have been primarily gathered in equity funds. Index equity mutual funds have gathered $1.4 trillion assets under management, up from $481 billion in 2008. Index equity mutual funds & exchange traded funds account for 35% of equity mutual fund & exchange traded fund assets under management, up from 19% in 2007. Index bond & hybrid mutual funds have gathered $306 billion assets under management, up from $121 billion in 2008. Actively managed funds lost $444 billion from 2012-to-2014 while passively managed funds added $1.1 trillion. Actively managed stock funds lost $73.6 billion from 2010-to-2014 while passively stock managed funds added $208.8 billion. Just under half (47%) of large-cap us stock funds beat the standard & poor's 500 between 1994 & 2013. The percentage of actively managed funds that outperformed the standard & poor's 500 was highest from 2000-2008 at 63%. 2014 has been a poor year for active managers and even the winners may not persist. Exchange Traded Funds Exchange traded funds have gathered $2.1 trillion assets under management, up from $102 billion in 2002. Exchange traded funds have $232 billion net flows, up from $29 billion in 2001. Blackrock holds the largest market share for global exchange traded funds at 37.2%, down from 47.4% in 2009. iShares had $102.4 billion global exchange traded fund flows, compared to the vanguard group at $88.0 billion & state street global advisors at $41.2 billion. RIAs are more likely to use ETFs, with about 12% of client portfolios allocated to the vehicle, compared to 6.5% for financial advisors at the wirehouses & IBDs. Global fixed income exchange traded funds have $92.0 billion net flows, up 200% since 2008. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees increasingly believe that exchange traded funds have replaced passive mutual funds. Financial advisors believe that the expected change in the use of exchange traded funds in the next three years will either increase or stay the same. Alternative Investments (Hedge Funds) Mr. Roame stated that, “alternative investments are over hyped & not living up to promise; hedge funds excluding top tier & excluding activists are poor expensive performers…good business; bad investment; real opportunity is private equity & real estate (“alts”).” Reported hirings of alternatives managers have outpaced those of traditional managers in four of the past five years. Private equity accounted for the largest percentage of alternatives hires in the past five years. High net worth investors are putting more money into alternative investments, real estate, & foreign investments. Almost half of financial advisors recommend alternative investments to many of their clients. Almost half of large RIA firms and one-quarter of actively growing RIA firms intend to increase their use of alternatives over the next three years. Hedge funds have gathered $2.8 trillion assets under management, up from $1.6 trillion in 2009. HFRI fund weighted composite returned 3.3%, down from 9.1% in 2013. Hedge funds made a 5.6% return from ten years ending in January 2015, compared to stocks & bonds portfolios at 6.6%. CALPERS' hedge fund program generated 7.1% returns in the last fiscal year, far below its 18.4% overall return and 24.8% global equities return. CALPERS hedge fund investments returned just 7.1%, compared with a 12.5% return for the vanguard balanced index fund. About two-thirds of CALPERS' equity portfolio will now be passively managed in low-cost index funds. CALPERS is gaining support for its decision to eliminate hedge fund investments from their pension fund. Lack of transparency, high fees, & lack of liquidity are the leading reasons financial advisors do not recommend hedge funds to their clients. Almost three-quarters of single family offices invested in private equity in 2014, up from 53.2% in 2013. Liquid Alternative Investments Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that exchange traded funds & open-end mutual funds will be the preferred package for alternative investments over the next five years. Liquid alternative funds have gathered $154 billion assets under management, up from $10 billion in 2004. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said liquid alternatives will experience moderate or huge growth over the next five years. Trend #3: The New Base Line: Online Brokers & Advice Two-thirds of consumers claim to utilize a financial advisor in some way, with over half positioning themselves as delegators. Nearly 30% of high net worth investors identify as self-directed investors. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that online banking, online advice firms, & online financial planning will have the highest retail advice channel growth rates. Online Brokerage Firms Over half of consumers said they look for low trading commissions when choosing an online broker. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that they personally have self-serve (online brokerage) investment accounts. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that the discount brokerage trend will grow over the next five years. The Charles Schwab Corporation has gathered $2.5 trillion assets under administration, up 150% since 2003. The Charles Schwab Corporation now consistently generates over three-quarters of its revenues from asset management & administration fees and net interest revenues. The Charles Schwab Corporation’s investor services accounts for 55% of assets under administration & 46% of net new assets under administration, and generates 77% of its revenue. Online Advice Firms There are at least 37 online advice firms. Online advice firms have gathered $29.5 billion assets under management, up from $12.3 billion in 2013. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees have become far more aware of the online advice models when asked to name the most impressive. The Vanguard Group has joined long-term leaders Financial Engines & Morningstar as one of the largest online advice firms with $10.1 billion assets under management. The Vanguard Group’s personal advisor services unit has quickly gathered $10.1 billion assets under management, up from $0.8 billion in 2013. Some have huge predictions for online advice firms. Two-thirds of financial advisors believe that online advice firms will have no or little impact on their business. Only 3% of financial advisors offer online advice services to clients, and only 11% plan to offer online advice services to clients in the next twelve months (and in a strange twist…financial advisor fees are down…err…up). Trend #4: Financial Advisors Value 2.0 Financial Advisor Multi-Channel Offerings Mr. Roame stated that, “channels are unifying; there is no longer a clear divide between online & physical. Managing the online, mobile, & physical experience is key to success. Multi-channel offerings providing the right balance of technology and access to professionals will win. Traditional advice models and online advice models will converge near where discount brokerage firms are positioned today. Examples include Vanguard & Schwab robo offerings; Learnvest & Personal Capital Corporation (with available financial advisors); & Betterment Institutional.” Financial Planning & Insurance Mr. Roame stated that, “clients have every right to expect personalized institutional quality portfolio management plus financial planning financial planning will be the distinguishing feature for financial advisors vis-à-vis online advice firms.” Over half of divorce attorneys agree that there has been an increase in the number of prenuptial agreements during the past three years. 529 plans have gathered $245 billion assets under management, up from $10 billion in 2002. 57% of adults own life insurance, down from 64% in 1960. Donor advised funds have gathered $53.7 billion assets under management, up from $44.9 billion in 2012. Trend #5: Epilogue… Demographic Shifts: Women & Millenials Mr. Roame stated that, “women & millenials are going to change everything over the next 40 years, including sales & marketing strategies, investment management strategies, and client service strategies. They are big segments, they do not value traditional financial advisors, they are not intimidated by investing, they feel marginalized, and they are going to inherit your clients’ money soon!” Financial Services Industry Target Markets Women will receive 70% of inheritances and this will continue to be true for the next 40 years. 92% of women become the primary decision maker at some point in their lives. Women value the opinions of financial advisors more than men when they are picking mutual funds. More than one-quarter of millenials would get a second opinion before taking a financial advisor’s advice. Almost half of millenials believe that they spend a lot of time researching alternatives before making major purchase decisions. Almost half of millenials need to fully understand all the different options & outcomes before feeling in control of a situation. Financial Services Industry Sales & Marketing Strategies Financial services industry sales & marketing is the key to selling a business for a substantial price. Mr. Roame stated that, “equity firms will pay for differentiated client acquisition models with repeatability and cost efficiency”. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that Hightower, The Edelman Financial Group, & United Capital Financial Partners have the best chance at building a nationwide financial advisory business. Edelman Financial Services will conduct over 600 seminars, up from 75 in 2012. Digital advertising expenditure accounted for 27% of total advertising spend in 2015. Almost three-quarters of consumers choose online customer reviews as their second most trusted source of information. Financial Services Industry Client Service Strategies Almost 30% of female investors are unhappy with their financial advisors. Almost three-quarters of women fire their financial advisor within one year of being widowed or divorced. Over half of millennial clients surveyed expressed that they would like to have video meetings with their financial advisor. Socially Responsible Investing & Impact Investing Mr. Roame stated that, “women & millenials want investments that integrate environmental, social, & governance (ESG) factors.” Socially responsible investing & impact investing has gathered $6.6 trillion assets under management, up from $3.7 trillion in 2012. Over half of consumers agree that it is important to take ethical, social, or religious convictions into account when investing. Over three-quarters of investment managers stated that they offered more socially responsible investing & impact investing products because of client demand. Some investors are not yet incorporating ethical, social, & governance factors because they are unsure of their worth. As an aside…returns of stocks with high environmental, social, & governance ratings have lagged those of vice stocks. Financial Services Industry Staffing & Compensation Strategies Women now hold 22% of the senior management positions worldwide, up slightly from 19% in 2004. Apple & Facebook have the highest share of women amongst technology companies in senior positions at 28% and 23%. Women fill just 6% of the partner level positions at venture capital firms, down from 10% in 1999. About 20% of the partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers are women. Women hold more than half of all jobs in banking & investment management, but only 2% of all CEO jobs. Almost one-quarter of millenials have decided to avoid the financial services sector due to mistrust in the industry. Only 10% of millenials in the financial services industry plan to stay in their current job for the long term, compared to an average of 18% across all industries. Conclusions Financial Services Industry Mergers & Acquisitions Mergers & acquisitions’ deal value was $3.5 trillion, up from $2.3 trillion. Financial services mergers & acquisitions amounted to $72.2 billion in 2014. Leading investment management firms mergers & acquisition deals included TIAA-CREF’s acquisition of Nuveen and the pending acquisition of Russell Investments. There have been dozens of community bank mergers & acquisitions deals. The leading retail bank mergers & acquisition deal was Royal Bank Of Canada’s acquisition of City National Corporation for $5.4 billion. There have been dozens of community bank mergers & acquisitions deals. The leading public insurance & brokerage merger & acquisition deal was Aviva’s acquisition of Friends Life for $8.8 billion. There were 54 fee-based financial advisors mergers & acquisitions transactions in 2014, up 35% since 2006. There have been $32.6 billion fee-based financial advisors assets under management acquired through mergers & acquisitions transactions in 2014. Other fee-based financial advisors & roll-up firms continue to account for almost all fee-based financial advisors mergers & acquisition transactions. AMG’s acquisition of Baker Street Advisors and Genstar Capital’s acquisition of Mercer Advisors were the leading financial advisors acquisitions at $6.0 billion each. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that the most successful financial advisor aggregators are Hightower, Focus Financial Partners, & Edelman Financial Services. Financial technology companies Advent Software, eMoney Advisor, Learnvest, FolioDynamix, & NorthStar Financial Services Group all sold in the last six months for large sums. Tiburon Fundamental View: Financial Services Industry Investing Financial Services Industry Venture Capital Venture capital firms raised $33.0 billion funds, up 75% since 2010 but down from $85.1 billion in 2000. Venture capital investment reached $48.4 billion, up from $30.0 billion in 2013 but down from its peak of $105.0 billion in 2000. Biotechnology therapeutics & data management services were the leading business sectors in terms of total investments with $2.9 billion & $2.5 billion respectively. Uber Technologies was the leading venture capital recipient at $3.2 billion. SoFi, Square, Stripe, & Dataminr raised the most venture capital amongst financial services firms, with $130-$200 million each. Wealthfront, Betterment, & Personal Capital Corporation have raised the most venture capital amongst the online advice firms. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that venture capital’s bet on online financial advice will continue in 2015. Financial Services Industry Private Equity Private equity funds raised $266 billion, up 12% from 2013. Private equity announced deal values were $29.0 billion in the 1q/15, down 50% since 1q/14. Private equity firms invested $12.0 billion in financial technology firms, up from $4.0 billion in 2013. Financial services industry private equity investments have included Springleaf Holdings acquisition of Onemain Financial for $4.3 billion. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII attendees said that private equity independent financial advisor distribution will continue in 2015. Financial Services Industry Public Offerings There were 275 initial public offerings in 2014, up from 222 in 2013 but down from its peak of 406 in 2000. Proceeds for initial public offerings reached $85.3 billion in 2014, up from $54.9 billion in 2013 but down from its peak of $96.9 in 2000. Alibaba Group Holding was the top initial pubic offerings of 2014 in terms of total value with $25.0 billion. There were 36 initial public offerings in the financial sector in 2014, down from 45 in 2013. Financial services industry public offerings included National Commercial Bank & Medibank Private. Financial Services Industry Activists Opportunities Activist funds have gathered $120 billion assets under management. Activist hedge funds have $10.1 billion net flows, up from $3.4 billion in 2005. Carl Icahn & Southeastern are the leading activist investor funds in terms of value of disclosed us equities with $22.3 billion & $18.3 billion. The average net return among activist hedge funds outpaced the total hedge fund universe in both the short & long term. Financial services firms account for 10%+ of the US economy and 20%+ of the Standard & Poor’s 500. Fortress Investment Group & Wisdomtree Investments are the leading investment management firms in terms of enterprise value-to-assets under management at 6.5% & 4.7% respectively. Financial Engines & Wisdomtree Investments are the leading investment management firms in terms of price-to-earnings ratio at 52.0x & 30.0x respectively. A surging US currency is steering investors toward sectors that have the least foreign exposure. Financial services industry activist fund specific targets include American Realty Capital Partners, Harvard Illinois Bancorp, The Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation, & Yahoo. Along with Tiburon's Managing Partner Chip Roame, Tiburon CEO Summit XXVIII included speakers Mark Casady (CEO, LPL Financial Holdings & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), Don Phillips (Managing Director, Morningstar & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), Mike Alfred (CEO, BrightScope), Anil Arora (CEO, Yodlee), Jud Bergman (CEO, Envestnet), Marty Bicknell (CEO, Mariner Holdings), Brad Bernstein (Partner, FTV Capital), Tom Bradley (President, Retail Distribution, TD Ameritrade), Roy Burns (Managing Director, TA Associates), Bob Caruso (Chairman, Impact Republic), Todd Clarke (CEO, CLS Investments), Gil Crawford (CEO, MicroVest Capital Management), Tim Draper (Founding Partner, Draper, Fisher, & Jurvetson), Ric Edelman (CEO, Edelman Financial Services), Tad Edwards (CEO, Benjamin Edwards & Company), Bob Glovsky (Vice Chairman, The Colony Group), Alexandra Lebenthal (CEO, Lebenthal Holdings), Jim Lockhart (Vice Chairman, WL Ross & Company), Steve Lockshin (Founder, Convergent Wealth Advisors), Erica McGinnis (CEO, AIG Advisor Group), Joe Mrak (CEO, FolioDynamix), John Patterson (CEO, NextCapital), Lowell Putnam (CEO, Quovo), Andrew Rudd (CEO, Advisor Software), Scott Ryles (Chief Operating Officer, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, & Byers and Managing Partner, Echelon Capital Strategies), Mike Sha (CEO, SigFig), Jay Sidhu (CEO, Customers Bancorp), Jon Stein (CEO, Betterment), John Streur (CEO, Calvert Investments), John Taft (CEO, RBC Wealth Management US), Frank Trotter (Chairman, EverBank Global Markets), Edmond Walters (CEO, eMoney Advisor), Mike Weil (CEO, RCS Capital Corporation), & John Wotowicz (CEO, inStream Solutions). Mark
Casady Mark Casady is Chairman and CEO of LPL Financial Holdings. Before joining the firm in 2002, Mr. Casady was managing director of the mutual funds group at Deutsche Asset Management, Americas (formerly Scudder Investments). He was also a member of the Scudder, Stevens, & Clark board of directors and management committee. Prior to Scudder Investments, Mr. Casady held roles at Concord Financial Group and Northern Trust. Mr. Casady serves on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (FINRA) board of governors and is former chairman and a current board member of the Insured Retirement Institute. Mr. Casady also previously served on the executive committee of the Investment Company Institute board of governors. Mr. Casady was recognized as the financial executive of the year by DePaul University College of Commerce in 2007 and was also named one of the top 50 financial professionals by Irish American magazine in 1999. Mr. Casady was inducted into the Redefining Investment Strategy Education Hall of Fame by the University of Dayton in 2008. Mr. Casady's recent comments have included:
Don
Phillips Don Phillips is a Managing Director at Morningstar. Previously Mr. Phillips oversaw the firm’s global fund, equity, & credit research. He has also served on the company’s board of directors since 1999. Mr. Phillips joined Morningstar in 1986 as the company’s first mutual fund analyst and soon became editor of its flagship publication, Morningstar Mutual Funds, establishing the editorial voice for which the company is best known. Mr. Phillips helped to develop the Morningstar Style Box, the Morningstar Rating, and other distinctive proprietary Morningstar innovations that have become industry standards. Mr. Phillips' recent comments have included:
Mike Alfred Mike Alfred is CEO of BrightScope. Mr. Alfred is responsible for the
strategic vision and leadership of the company. Previously, Mr. Alfred was the
co-founder and portfolio manager of Alfred Capital Management, an independent
registered investment firm located in La Jolla, CA. He has been a financial
advisor and portfolio manager since 2003. Mr. Alfred is a dynamic thinker
capable of developing and implementing cutting-edge business models and
effective marketing strategies. He is also a proven relationship builder who
excels at establishing key partnerships. A noted and quoted 401k and financial
expert, Mr. Alfred has appeared on CNBC, ABC News, Fox Business News, National
Public Radio, and in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard
Business Review, USA Today, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, Reuters, Fast
Company, Inc, Wired, US News & World Report, CNN/Money Magazine,
SmartMoney, theStreet.com, Kiplinger, Pensions & Investments, Employee
Benefit Adviser, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The San Diego Business Journal, &
many others. Mr. Alfred and his brother, BrightScope president Ryan Alfred,
teach financial literacy to grade school and high school students. In addition,
he mentors other aspiring entrepreneurs both informally and through organizations
like the Founder Institute. He is a member of the board of directors at CONNECT
and the San Diego Software Industry Council.
Mr. Alfred's recent comments have included:
Anil Arora Anil Arora is President & CEO of Yodlee. Under his leadership, Yodlee has been a disruptive catalyst for change in the financial industry by pioneering a unique cloud-based platform. Today, Mr. Arora is helping Yodlee lead the charge for the safe use of global financial data to accelerate innovation and transform the delivery and use of digital financial services. Mr. Arora has extensive experience building some of the world’s most recognized brands at companies like General Mills, Kraft, and Gateway, as well as innovating new market strategies and increasing the lifetime customer value for companies in a variety of industries. Mr. Arora's recent comments have included:
Jud
Bergman Jud Bergman is Chairman and CEO of Envestnet. Mr. Bergman is responsible for leading the Envestnet organization, and focused on guiding the company’s strategy, as well as organizational and business development. Under his guidance the firm has become the largest wealth management platform for independent financial advisers. Prior to founding Envestnet, Mr. Bergman was the managing director, Nuveen Mutual Funds, for Nuveen Investments. In this role he was responsible for the profitable growth of Nuveen’s mutual fund business and was a member of Nuveen’s Investment Management Committee. From 1992 to 1997, Mr. Bergman directed Nuveen’s Corporate Development activity, where he initiated the development of Nuveen’s separately managed account business and helped guide the firm’s expansion into a diversified investment manager beyond municipal investments. Mr. Bergman's recent comments have included:
Brad Bernstein Brad Bernstein is a Partner at FTV Capital. He joined FTV Capital in 2003 and is the head of the firm’s New York office. Mr. Bernstein has seventeen years of private equity experience. Prior to FTV Capital, he was a partner at Oak Hill Capital Management and its predecessors where he managed the business and financial services group. Mr. Bernstein began his private equity career with Patricof & Company Ventures and started his professional career in the investment banking division of Merrill Lynch in New York. Mr. Bernstein's recent comments have included:
Marty Bicknell Marty Bicknell is the CEO of Mariner Holdings, the parent company of Mariner Wealth Advisors and Montage Investments. He serves on the board of directors for all of Mariner Holdings’ subsidiaries. Prior to forming the firm in 2006, Mr. Bicknell was senior vice president of investments at A.G. Edwards & Sons, where he led a staff of professional financial consultants in providing customized wealth management solutions for public and private corporations, high-net- worth individuals and their families, and charitable organizations. Mr. Bicknell has provided counseling on a wide range of financial matters to small- and medium-sized businesses. As a recognized leader in the field of financial problem-solving for companies and their executives, Mr. Bicknell has been a valuable resource for other successful entrepreneurs. He has extensive personal and professional experience in the realm of closely held family businesses and the unique complexities within those types of organizations. From strategic planning for long-term goals, to succession planning and wealth transfer, he brings with him a breadth of knowledge that encourages creative thought and visionary solutions. Mr. Bicknell serves on the board of directors for the Catholic Foundation of Northeast Kansas, the American Royal, the KU Advancement Board for the University of Kansas Medical Center, and on the MRIGlobal Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and is a board member for the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City. He is also involved in supporting several organizations through his sponsorship and committee participation, including Marillac, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), KU Med Cancer Care and Youth Entrepreneurs. Barron’s has ranked Mr. Bicknell and the teams at Mariner among the top financial advisors nationally for the past few years, including as the #1 advisor in the state of Kansas for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Mr. Bicknell's recent comments have included:
Tom
Bradley (President, Retail Distribution, TD Ameritrade)
Tom Bradley is President of Retail Distribution at TD Ameritrade. Mr. Bradley’s responsibilities include the company's branch network, marketing, investor service and sales call centers, guidance solutions, investment products and investor education businesses. He also serves as a member of the company's senior operating committee, which shapes the strategic focus of the organization. Mr. Bradley has nearly three decades of experience in the financial services industry, starting as a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual Life and RW Baird & Company. He joined TD Waterhouse in 1986 and continued with the firm until it merged with Ameritrade in 2006 to form TD Ameritrade. At TD Waterhouse he was responsible for correspondent clearing and capital markets businesses, and he also launched what is now known as TD Ameritrade Institutional1, supporting independent registered investment advisors (RIAs). In his most recent role, as president of TD Ameritrade Institutional, Mr. Bradley was responsible for all business functions, including independent RIA services segment and corporate services business. Over his tenure, he built a reputation for his advocacy efforts particularly with respect to those issues impacting RIAs. Mr. Bradley was recently awarded the 2013 Pioneers in Financial Services Award by William Paterson University's Cotsakos College of Business. In 2011 he was named one of the 25 most influential people in the RIA community by Investment Advisor magazine, an honor he received in 2004, 2006 and 2009 as well. He was named Visionary of the Year by Texas Tech University’s Division of Personal Financial Planning in 2008. The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) also recognized Mr. Bradley with the 2006 Special Achievement Award. Mr. Bradley's recent comments have included:
Roy Burns Roy Burns is a Managing Director of TA Associates, where he focuses on investments in high growth financial and business services companies with an emphasis on technology and service providers in investment management and electronic payments. Mr. Burns serves on the Board of Directors of NorthStar Financial Services (pending closing), BluePay Processing, Stadion Money Management and First Eagle Investment Management (observer). He formerly served on the Boards of Dealer Tire and K2 Advisors. Prior to joining TA Associates, Mr. Burns was in equity investments at Davidson Kempner Partners and in high yield & leveraged finance for Banc of America Securities. Mr. Burns' recent comments have included:
Bob Caruso Bob Caruso is Chairman of Impact Republic, an investment and brand
management firm. Prior to founding Impact Republic, Mr. Caruso was a managing
partner and president of Select Equity Group, an employee-owned registered
investment adviser managing in excess of $10.0 billion in client funds. Prior
to that, Mr. Caruso was a managing partner, chief operating officer and a
member of the board of directors of Highbridge Capital Management and
co-managed the sale of Highbridge Capital Management to JP Morgan Chase &
Company in late 2004. Prior to Highbridge Capital Management, Mr. Caruso was a
managing director, chief financial officer, and treasurer of Robertson
Stephens, a San Francisco based global investment bank. He is on the board of trustees
of Saint Joseph’s University, the Princeton Healthcare System, & the
McCarter Theater Center. Mr. Caruso is also the founder and chairman of The
Kantian Foundation, a private non-profit foundation focusing on impact
investing. Mr. Caruso's recent comments have included:
Todd Clarke Todd Clarke is CEO of CLS Investments. Mr. Clarke joined CLS Investments in 1992 as a wholesaler. Before becoming CEO, Mr. Clarke also held positions as sales manager, executive vice president of sales and marketing, and president. In his current role, Mr. Clarke is responsible for overseeing all aspects of sales and marketing, portfolio management, and business development. Outside CLS Investments, Mr. Clarke participates in the TDAmeritrade Advisory Panel as and has served as a Millard Public Schools Foundation board member. Mr. Clarke's recent comments have included:
Gil Crawford Gil Crawford is CEO of MicroVest Capital Management. Mr. Crawford has held this position since its founding in 2003. This has included the launch of MicroVest I, LP, the first commercial private equity vehicle focused on microfinance in North America and seven other vehicles. Mr. Crawford has over 25 years of experience with microfinance institutions and capital markets across the globe. Prior to the founding of MicroVest Capital Management, Mr. Crawford worked for the Latin American Financial Markets Division at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and focused on investments in microfinance institutions. Prior to joining the IFC, Mr. Crawford created and ran Seed Capital Development Fund which focused on in creating financial instruments and attracting funds to capitalize emerging markets microfinance institutions. Prior to that, Mr. Crawford was the assistant project director for Africa Venture Capital Project, designed to create risk capital firms in Africa. Mr. Crawford received his bank training at Chase Manhattan Bank after working in Africa for the Red Cross and State Department. Mr. Crawford was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS from 2010 to 2014. He serves on the boards of Lumni and the Tunisian American Enterprise Fund, which began operating in July 2013, SFC a Sub-Saharan SME finance corporation and he is also an independent director of American Capital Senior Finance.
Mr. Crawford's recent comments have included:
Tim
Draper Mr. Draper's recent comments have included:
Ric
Edelman Ric Edelman is Chairman and CEO of Edelman Financial Services, which manages $14.4 billion for 26,000 clients, with 41 offices coast-to-coast. Mr. Edelman has been ranked three times the #1 Independent Financial Advisor in the nation by Barron’s. Mr. Edelman has hosted a weekly national radio show for the last 24 years; his weekly television show on PBS is in its fourth season and now airs throughout Asia; and he is a #1 New York Times bestselling author who has published eight books on personal finance. In 2013, RIABiz.Com named Mr. Edelman one of the ten most influential figures in the investment advisory field. Mr. Edelman is a member of Research magazine’s Financial Advisor Hall of Fame and the CNBC Digital Financial Advisors Council, and in 2015 he was named Distinguished Lecturer at Rowan University. He serves on volunteer boards for the Boys and Girls Clubs and Wolf Trap Foundation. His firm has won more than 100 business, advisory, communication and community service awards. Mr. Edelman is an Investment Advisor Representative offering advisory services through EFS. He is a registered Principal of (and offers securities through) Sanders Morris Harris, an affiliated broker/dealer, member FINRA/SIPC. Mr. Edelman's recent comments have included:
Tad Edwards Tad Edwards is CEO of Benjamin Edwards & Company. Mr. Edwards founded
Benjamin Edwards & Company in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.
He envisioned a private, entrepreneurial firm, dedicated to providing informed
investment advice, in a high-touch, service-oriented atmosphere, focused on
clients and helping them meet their financial goals. Since then, Mr. Edwards
and his team have worked to bring his vision to life. Just five years after
opening its first branch, the firm has 49 offices, in 24 states, nearly 200
financial advisors, and 425 total employees. Prior to founding Benjamin Edwards
& Company, Mr. Edwards worked for AG Edwards, a firm founded by his
great-great-grandfather. He started out in the company’s personnel department
in 1977 and later worked with clients as a financial advisor and eventually a
branch manager. Mr. Edwards moved to the firm’s corporate headquarters as a
regional manager, and later as the director of the sales & marketing
division. As division director, he assumed responsibility for a number of core
functions including the fixed income and NASDAQ trading desks, equity research,
private client services, investment advisory programs & services,
syndicate, & corporate communications. Mr. Edwards also served on the
boards of directors for AG Edwards and its brokerage subsidiary, AG Edwards
& Sons. In 1998, he was named vice chairman of the holding company board
and appointed president of the brokerage in 2001. He was also a member of the
firm's executive committee. In 2002, Mr. Edwards returned to branch management
and remained on the brokerage board.
Mr. Edwards' recent comments have included:
Alexandra Lebenthal Alexandra Lebenthal is CEO of Lebenthal Holdings, a firm that was founded by her grandparents as a municipal bond specialist in 1925. Ms. Lebenthal joined the company in 1988 and became CEO in 1995. She remained at the firm after its sale in 2001 and started it anew in 2006 as a woman-owned firm specializing in capital markets & wealth management. Ms. Lebenthal was named one of Crain's New York Business' 100 most influential women in New York City business and one of Wealth Manager magazine's top 50 women in wealth management in 2009. Lebenthal Holdings was also one of Crain's New York top women owned companies in 2011. Ms. Lebenthal is a CNBC contributor. Her novel The Recessionistas was sold to USA Networks. She is co-founder of the Women's Executive Circle, a group of high-profile Jewish women who mentor other women under the auspices of United Jewish Appeal. She is also on the Board of the Committee of 200 and the WIE Network.
Ms. Lebenthal's recent comments have included:
Jim Lockhart
Mr. Lockhart's recent comments have included:
Steve Lockshin Steve Lockshin is Founder of Convergent Wealth Advisors. Mr. Lockshin helped pioneer the independent advisory industry when he founded what eventually became Convergent Wealth Advisors in 1994 (Convergent Wealth Advisors was formed in 2007 when Lydian Wealth Management was acquired by City National Bank). Under Mr. Lockshin’s leadership Convergent Wealth Advisors became one of the nation’s leading wealth management firms, providing investors with objective advice, flexible investment solutions, and complete transparency. Mr. Lockshin is also founder and principal of Advice Period. Mr. Lockshin is widely known for his contemporary approach to wealth advisory as well as his estate planning knowledge and is a frequent speaker on both topics. He recently memorialized his concerns about conflicts of interest in the industry in his guide for consumers, Get Wise to Your Advisor. Mr. Lockshin plays an active role at Betterment Institutional where he is focused on enabling advisors to more efficiently operate their businesses and better serve their clients. Mr. Lockshin has received many industry accolades, including being ranked by Barron’s as the top financial advisor in California for the past two consecutive years. He ranked second on the Barron’s top 100 financial advisors list in 2013, his third straight year as one of the top three advisors in the nation. In 2010, Washingtonian magazine named Mr. Lockshin as one of the top financial advisors in the Washington, DC area. He is a champion for the fiduciary standard and consumer education in financial services. In 2012, in an attempt to unify the industry by providing a simple set of standards for consumers, Mr. Lockshin helped launch Advizent. Mr. Lockshin has been a member of the Young Presidents Organization since 1998.
Mr. Lockshin's recent comments have included:
Erica McGinnis Erica McGinnis is CEO & President of AIG Advisor Group, one of the nation’s largest networks of independent broker-dealers. Ms. McGinnis is responsible for the management of more than 800 employees, who serve the needs of over 6,000 total licensed advisors affiliated with FSC Securities Corporation, Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial and Woodbury Financial. As President and CEO of AIG Advisor Group, she is also responsible for defining the strategy and driving the growth and innovation that has positioned AIG Advisor Group as the premier open-architecture firm in the independent advisor channel. Ms. McGinnis began her career in 1993 in Minneapolis with IDS Financial Services (known today as Ameriprise Financial) where she held various positions in operations, training and compliance. In 2001 she moved to Wells Fargo Investments, then to Charles Schwab before joining AIG Advisor Group in 2004. Ms. McGinnis’ first position with AIG Advisor Group was as the director of branch exams where she was responsible for consolidating each of the broker-dealer exam teams into one network department. She later took on additional responsibilities to lead the Policy Development and Compliance Training & Education teams. In 2008, AIG Advisor Group decided to separate the supervision functions from sales management. McGinnis led that organizational effort and managed the AIG Advisor Group Supervision organization for just over four years. In January 2013, Ms. McGinnis was named AIG Advisor Group’s chief compliance officer. She assumed her current role in October of 2013.
Ms. McGinnis' recent comments have included:
Joe Mrak Joe Mrak is CEO of FolioDynamix. Mr. Mrak has
led the company’s growth from its inception in 2007 to its current position as
a fast-growing leader and innovator in the wealth management industry. With twenty
years in the industry, Mr. Mrak is an established thought leader and
entrepreneur known for his vision and ability to evolve technology and
investment products to meet the dynamic needs of leaders in the industry. The
modular, seamless, and scalable technology platform of FolioDynamix is quickly
becoming the modern-day platform of choice for firms seeking to grow and lead
in the new era of wealth management. Prior to launching FolioDynamix, Mr. Mrak
co-founded Placemark Investments, the pioneer in overlay management and
standards bearer in delivering highly customized account solutions. He also
served as general manager of BISYS Wealth Solutions, now owned by Citigroup,
and headed up product strategy for CheckFree Investment Services, now Fiserv,
where he led product development for CheckFree APL. Mr. Mrak is an established
authority in investment program design, wealth management technology, business
process best practices, and front, middle, & back-office operations. Mr.
Mrak started his career working for top consulting firms including AT Kearney
and Ernst & Young, where he served as a financial services strategy
consultant and gained critical insights into the complexities of the financial
services industry.
Mr. Mrak's recent comments have included:
John Patterson John Patterson is CEO of NextCapital. NextCapital is a leading provider of 401(k) managed accounts services and investor portfolio management solutions seeking to help investors organize, analyze, optimize and manage their entire portfolio holistically. Mr. Patterson has been delivering enterprise solutions for the asset management industry for eighteen years. Mr. Patterson's recent comments have included:
Lowell Putnam Lowell Putnam is CEO of Quovo, an investment insights company that empowers investors by reimagining elite portfolio analytics as one simple, intelligent platform. Quovo's proprietary technology combines big data horsepower with elegant simplicity, enabling investors of any size or sophistication level to make smarter investment decisions. Mr. Putnam previously worked at Lehman Brothers. Mr. Putnam's recent comments have included:
Andrew
Rudd Andrew Rudd is CEO of Advisor Software, which he founded in 1995 to deliver world class analytics to the retail financial services market. He is an expert in asset allocation, modern portfolio theory, risk management, and performance measurement. Mr. Rudd is also a co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Barra, Inc., where he served as CEO from 1984 to 1999. He is the co-author of two industry-leading books on institutional investing: Modern Portfolio Theory: The Principles of Investment Management, and Option Pricing. Mr. Rudd was also professor of finance and operations research at Cornell University. In addition, he has written numerous journal articles and research papers on a wide range of domestic and international investment practices and theories. Mr. Rudd's recent comments have included:
Scott Ryles Mr. Ryles is the Founder and Managing Member of Echelon Capital Strategies, an asset management firm investing in consumer and small business loans. He also is Chief Operating Officer of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm that invests in digital, green, and life science technologies. Prior to that, he was the chairman and CEO of Home Value Protection, a KPCB company providing insurance services designed to protect homeowners from loss of home value due to local housing market declines. Mr. Ryles started his career in the finance and investment banking industry at Merrill Lynch. Mr. Ryles was a founder and CEO of Epoch Partners, a KPCB company that was sold to Goldman Sachs in 2001. He has also served as vice chairman at Cowen and Company. Mr. Ryles has served as a board member at ArcSight, Fortify, Gymboree Corporation, & KKR Financial Holdings. Mr. Ryles' recent comments have included:
Mike Sha Mike Sha is CEO of SigFig. Prior to SigFig, Mr.
Sha held senior roles at Amazon where he launched and built the Amazon Visa
Card into one of the fastest growing consumer loyalty cards in history, was one
of the original inventors of Amazon's Prime program, as well as built
sophisticated fraud detection models that leveraged statistical data analysis
in preventing online fraud. Mr. Sha's recent comments have included:
Jay Sidhu Jay Sidhu is CEO of Customers Bancorp. Mr. Sidhu has served as chairman and CEO of Customers Bank since the second quarter of 2009 and of Customers Bancorp since its inception in April 2010. Mr. Sidhu is also CEO of BankMobile. Before joining Customers Bank, Mr. Sidhu was the CEO of Sovereign Bank from 1989 until his resignation and retirement in October 2006, and its chairman from 2002 until December 2006. He was the chairman and CEO of SIDHU Advisors, a Florida based private equity and financial services consulting firm, from 2007 to the first quarter of 2009. He has received Financial World’s CEO of the year award and was named Turnaround Entrepreneur of the Year. He has received many other awards and honors, including a Hero of Liberty Award from the National Liberty Museum. Since 2010, Mr. Sidhu has been a director of Atlantic Coast Financial Corporation, the holding company for Atlantic Coast Bank, a federal savings bank with branches in Florida and Georgia, and has served as its non-executive chairman of the board of directors since May 2011. Mr. Sidhu resigned as non-executive chairman of the board of directors of Atlantic Coast Financial Corporation effective as of April 2012. Mr. Sidhu has also served on the boards of numerous businesses and not-for-profits, including as a member of the board of Grupo Santander. Mr. Sidhu also helped establish the Jay Sidhu School of Business and Leadership at Wilkes University. Mr. Sidhu's recent comments have included:
Jon Stein
Mr. Stein's recent comments have included:
John Streur John Streur is CEO of Calvert Investments. Calvert Investments is a $13.0 billion investment management firm that specializes in responsible and sustainable investing across global capital markets. Calvert Investments serves all types of investors through its family of mutual funds and separate accounts. Mr. Streur is also president and a trustee of the Calvert Funds. Mr. Streur began to focus his energy exclusively on responsible and sustainable investing in 2012, as president, director and principal of Portfolio 21, a boutique investment management firm specializing in global environmental investing. Prior to that, Mr. Streur spent twenty years at Managers Investment Group (and its predecessor), a firm he co-founded and where he served as president, CEO, and chair of the investment committee. He was also president and trustee of the firm’s fund family, Managers Funds and Managers AMG Funds. Managers Investment Group grew to over $30.0 billion in assets under management and offered investment strategies across global equity, debt, and derivative markets. Mr. Streur has managed socially responsible investments at the request of institutional clients, including public funds, religious institutions, and college & university endowments since 1991.
Mr. Streur's recent comments have included:
John Taft John Taft is CEO of RBC Wealth Management US. As the great-grandson of US President William Howard Taft and grandson of Senator Robert Taft, John comes from a distinguished family well-known for its commitment to integrity. This family legacy informs his belief in the importance of staying true to his core principles of purposefulness, humility, accountability, foresight and integrity. Mr. Taft has been active in the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association, the leading securities industry trade group in the US. He served as chairman-elect in 2010 and chairman in 2011. As a representative of the Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association, Mr. Taft advocated for responsible financial reform and testified before Congress in support of a federal fiduciary standard of care. Prior to leading RBC Wealth Management US, Mr. Taft served as head of asset management & products for RBC’s US & international division. He served as chairman, president, & CEO of Voyageur Asset Management; president & CEO of Dougherty Summit Securities; a member of the board of directors of Segall, Bryant, & Hamill, The Clifton Group, & Vintage Mutual Funds; and a managing director at Piper, Jaffray, & Hopwood. Mr. Taft was assistant to the mayor of the City of St. Paul, Minnesota, and has worked as a journalist. Investment Advisor magazine named John to its 2013 IA 25 list of the most influential people in the financial industry, and he was included on the 2014 list of top 100 thought leaders in trustworthy business by Trust Across America. Additionally, he was recently named as a leading Individual by the Family Wealth Report. Mr. Taft is the author of Stewardship: Lessons Learned from the Lost Culture of Wall Street. Mr. Taft has been a guest host on CNBC’s Squawk Box and has been interviewed by other top news outlets, including FOX, FOX Business News, Bloomberg TV and radio, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New York Times, Barron’s, Fortune, and Financial Times. He has also authored articles that appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Forbes and the Huffington Post.
Mr. Taft's recent comments have included:
Frank Trotter Frank Trotter is Chairman of EverBank Global Markets. Previously Mr. Trotter served as an executive vice president of EverBank Financial since 2009 and as an executive vice president of EverBank since 2002. Additionally, he serves as president of EverBank Direct, EverBank's consumer direct distribution channel and is a founding partner of EverBank.Com, a national branchless bank that was acquired by the current EverBank in 2002. Mr. Trotter previously served as senior vice president and managing director of Mercantile Bank Capital Markets and director of the international markets division at Mark Twain Bank, where he created the WorldCurrency family of deposits and directed the global launch of eCashSM. Mr. Trotter has over 20 years experience in the banking industry. Mr. Trotter's recent comments have included:
Edmond Walters Edmond Walters is CEO of eMoney Advisor. Mr. Walters has spent more than twenty years advising high-net-worth clients, first with Kistler, Tiffany & Company in Wayne, PA and later as co-founder of the Wharton Business Group, a financial advising firm in Malvern, PA. During that time, Mr. Walters maintained the belief that advisors who leverage technology to run their practice like a business while developing strong client relationships will be better positioned for future growth. In 2000, Mr. Walters founded eMoney Advisor. Mr. Walters has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, SmartMoney.com, Advisor Today, National Underwriter, CPA Wealth Provider, Investment News and Dow Jones Newswires, among others. He is frequently sought out for his industry insight and has appeared as a guest on Dow Jones Marketwatch, Forbes.com Video Network and Fox Business. In 2007, Mr. Walters was named one of the most innovative people in wealth management, and in 2014, was named the Marcum Innovator of the Year. A graduate of Villanova University, he serves on the advisory council for the Villanova School of Business as well as several other boards, and has been recognized in the past for his philanthropic efforts in the fight against cancer.
Mr. Walter's recent comments have included:
Mike Weil Mike Weil is CEO of RCS Capital Corporation.
Prior to being appointed CEO of RCS Capital Corporation, Mr. Weil served as
president, treasurer, secretary, & director of RCS Capital Corporation. Mr.
Weil also formerly served as president and chief operating officer for a number
of the publicly registered, non-traded REIT offerings sponsored by AR Capital,
the private equity firm of which he is partner. Mr. Weil formerly served as
executive vice president of AR Capital, where he supervised the origination of
investment opportunities for all AR Capital-sponsored investment programs.
Prior to the establishment of AR Capital, Mr. Weil served as senior vice
president of sales & leasing for American Financial Realty Trust, where he
was responsible for the disposition and leasing activity for a 37.3 million
square foot portfolio. In addition to his duties at RCS Capital Corporation and
AR Capital, Mr. Weil served as president of the board of directors of the Real
Estate Investment Securities Association, a leading alternative investments
association providing education, networking and advocacy for members.
Mr. Weil's recent comments have included:
John Wotowicz John Wotowicz is CEO of InStream Solutions. Mr. Wotowicz
is also a director of Hubub. Prior to InStream Solutions, Mr. Wotowicz was vice
president, head of global business development and a member of the global
management committee of Dimensional Fund Advisors focusing on firm management
as well as the development of new strategies, relationships, & products. Prior
to joining Dimensional Fund Advisors, Mr. Wotowicz was a managing director at
Morgan Stanley where he founded Europe’s leveraged finance industry and was
ultimately responsible for oversight of the firm’s European investment banking
business as a member of the European Investment Banking Operating Committee.
Mr. Wotowicz was also one of the architects of Morgan Stanley’s global lending
business and was a member of Morgan Stanley’s Global Credit Commitment
Committee. Mr. Wotowicz currently sits on the boards of numerous not-for-profit
institutions including Washington, D.C.-based National Public Radio, where he
chairs the finance committee, the NPR Foundation and New York’s New Museum of
Contemporary Art where he is the board treasurer.
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Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII: October 7-8, 2014
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII was held October 7-8, 2014, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII officially started at 7:45am on Tuesday, October 7, 2014, included a group dinner that night and finished at 12:15pm on Wednesday, October 8, 2014. Senior industry executives took two days out of their busy schedules to participate. There were over twenty sessions. Along with Tiburon's Managing Partner Chip Roame, Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII included speakers Joe Mansueto (CEO, Morningstar & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), Bob Reynolds (CEO, Putnam Investments & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), & Bill Sharpe (Professor Emeritus, Stanford University; Nobel Prize Winner in Economics; & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), Asheesh Advani (CEO, Covestor), Audie Apple (Co-Founder, GuardVest), Brian Ascher (Partner, Venrock), David Bach (Vice Chairman, Edelman Financial Services), Chas Burkhart (CEO, Rosemont Partners), Jeff Burrow (Co-Founder, FlexScore), Jerry Chafkin (Chief Investment Officer, AssetMark), Tim Draper (Founding Partner, Draper, Fisher, & Jurvetson), Greg Friedman (CEO, Private Ocean), Charles Goldman (CEO, AssetMark), David Grau (CEO, FP Transitions), Brian Haskin (CEO, Alternative Strategy Partners), Gary Henson (CEO, Montage Investments), Tom Kimberly (CEO, Upside), Kevin Knull (President, PIETech), Bo Lu (CEO, FutureAdvisor), Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO, Financial Engines), Bill McNabb (CEO, The Vanguard Group), Bill Miller (Chief Investments Officer, Brinker Capital), Sanjiv Mirchandani (President, National Financial Services), Charles Moldow (General Partner, Foundation Capital), Jim Nagengast (CEO, Securities America), Liz Nesvold (Managing Partner, Silver Lane Advisors), Andrew Rogers (CEO, Gemini Fund Services), Larry Roth (CEO, Realty Capital Securities), Matt Scanlan (CEO, RS Investments), Ron Suber (President, Prosper Marketplace), Jon Sundt (CEO, Altegris Investments), Todd Thomson (Chairman, Dynasty Financial Partners), & Derek Young (Vice Chairman, Pyramis Global Advisors). Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII also featured the firm's traditional client-centric panel discussions and two networking-based social events.
Tiburon
CEO Summit XXVII featured a keynote presentation by Tiburon
Managing Partner Chip Roame regarding the state of the financial
services industry, focused on the rapid evolution being driven all
across the business value chain. This presentation served as the
backdrop and overview of the entire Tiburon CEO Summit.
Chip Roame (Managing Partner, Tiburon Strategic Advisors)
Tiburon Strategic Advisors is pleased to provide a summary of the content of its Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII keynote presentation. Chip Roame (Managing Partner, Tiburon Strategic Advisors) kicked off Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII with a presentation broadly addressing the state of the financial services industry, with a specific focus on the growing wealth management market.
Charles ("Chip") Roame is the Managing Partner of Tiburon Strategic Advisors and a leading strategic consultant to CEOs, other senior executives, & boards of directors in the banking, insurance, brokerage, & investment management markets. Prior to forming Tiburon in 1998, Mr. Roame served in similar capacities, first as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, and later as a business strategist at The Charles Schwab Corporation. Mr. Roame is quoted daily throughout the media and, due to Tiburon's widely shared research, he may be the most frequently demanded board advisor. His particular expertise is that of corporate strategy for larger financial services firms, designing broad multi-faceted strategies and making trade-offs between alternative businesses, products, & markets.
At Tiburon, Mr. Roame has responsibility for all of the firm's consulting, research, & marketing activities which keeps him on the leading-edge of strategic initiatives in the industry's fastest growing businesses -- mutual funds, exchange traded funds, hedge funds & other alternative investments, financial planning, wealth management services, life insurance, annuities, family office services, online financial services, and the growing independent advisor markets. He has also taken a substantial interest in financial services industry venture capital & private equity opportunities and mergers & acquisitions transactions. At Tiburon, Mr. Roame has led over 1,700 client engagements for over 400 corporate clients since 1998.
Mr. Roame has won numerous awards throughout the consulting and financial services industries, including being named one of the power 25 elite by Investment News, one of the 25 most influential individuals in the advisor business by Investment Advisor magazine, & one of the five experts with the answers by Boomer Market Advisor. Tiburon has also been named one of the fastest growing companies by the San Francisco Business Times in multiple years.
Mr. Roame is frequently sought as a board member by Tiburon client company boards. He presently serves as a board member at Envestnet (NYSE: ENV), as a board member of the parent company of The Edelman Financial Group (Ric Edelman’s business backed by Lee Equity Partners), and as a trustee of the SA mutual funds family which is sponsored by Loring Ward Group and employs Dimensional Fund Advisors as its sole sub-advisor.
Overview of Tiburon
CEO Summit XXVII Keynote Presentation
The objectives of the keynote presentation are
to offer a broad view of the wealth management industry with a new theme each Tiburon
CEO Summit,
including highlighting trends that impact strategies for numerous types
of corporate clients, maintaining both a mid-term and a long-term
lens, & offering several methods of summarizing a broad set of
industry views including the 50 underlying trends and the six
fundamental VC & PE bets; and setting an agenda for Tiburon CEO
Summit XXVII, framing the dozens of
“three big points”. The basis of the Tiburon CEO Summit
XXVII
Keynote Presentation was industry developments (“the news”), recent
Tiburon & third-party research findings, Tiburon client
successful
strategies, & the Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII content survey.
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI - Keynote Presentation Recap
Financial services (and
particularly investment & wealth management) are beginning to be
disrupted much like retail, publishing, journalism, music, & travel
industries. Technology is empowering everything: products (ETFs;
folios); channels (robo-advisors; independent advisors); & tactics
(digital marketing; social media; video service; TAMPs). The vision of
the future depends on timeline; five years to significant disruption;
ten years to new business models. The possible mid-term model = online
advice with local in person advice (e.g., Wealthfront of Tiburon
or Betterment of Westchester County). Some attendees remain a bit
skeptical of the potential technology transformation. Other attendees
caution that change always takes longer than predicted.
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI - Award Recipients, One-on-Ones, & Panels Recap
Award recipient returnees included Rob Arnott, Jack Bogle, David Booth, Mark Casady, Harry Markowitz, & Don Phillips. One-on-ones included Nick Schorsch & Tom Lee. Popular panels included online advice with Bill Harris, Clara Shih, Jon Stein, & Alexa Von Tobel, and FA M&A with Dick Burridge, Rob Francois, Fielding Miller, & Peter Raimondi.
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII Themes
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII themes included focusing on consumers & challenging conventional wisdom. Mr. Roame stated, "the light is going to shine (albeit very slowly) on less friendly consumer models." Mr. Roame also said, "I am going to focus on a theory I have which is that consumerism is finally coming to this industry. One factor is technology, which is driving consumerism from a variety of angles. This includes robo advisors. This term did not exist twelve months ago, and today this term was used two minutes into the first panel.”
50 Underlying Trends
Theme: Consumerism is Coming
Consumer Wealth, Attitudes, & Behaviors
Products
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Financial Advisor Channels
Discount Brokers & Online Advice Firms
Strategic Activity
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Consumer Wealth
Consumers have $37.4 trillion investable assets, $20.4 trillion retirement plan assets, & $57.8 trillion financial assets. Consumers have $25.5 trillion of personal assets (driven by home values) (with $10.8 trillion of that being home equity). Consumer household assets are $92.5 trillion with the potential to reach $100 trillion in 2014 depending on stock & real estate markets. Consumers have $13.9 trillion of household debt, of which $9.4 trillion is mortgages. Consumer net worth reached a new peak of $78.6 trillion in 2Q/14.
Consumer Wealth Since 2008
Investable assets, retirement plan assets, & financial assets are all up 40%-50% since 2008. Personal assets (driven by home values) finally rose, now up 15% since 2008 (and 20% since 2011 bottom), with consumers’ real estate equity up 50% since 2008 and 70% since bottoming in 2011 and consumers’ equity share of home values back to 54% from low of 39% in 2008-2009. Consumer household assets are now slightly up over 30% since 2008 ($92.5 trillion versus $71.5 trillion), and likely to reach $100 trillion in 2014 (depending on stock & real estate markets). Consumer household debt overall is up a few percent since 2008 but mortgages are still down 10%. Consumer net worth reached a new peak of $78.6 trillion in 2Q/14 versus $54.7 trillion in 2008 (with $11.5 trillion of the $23.9 billion increase coming in 2013-2014).
Rich Folks
There are a growing numbers of wealthy households, including 1,645 billionaires, 132,000 with $25 million, 1.2 million with $5 million, 9.6 million millionaires (including 600,000 new millionaires in 2013). 38.6 million consumer households have $100,000 or more.
Consumer Wealth Concentration
Consumer households with less than $500,000 investable assets account for 92% of all consumer households but control just 23% of consumer household financial assets, with 8% of consumer households (about nine million) controlling 77% of consumer household financial assets, 0.01% of consumer households (that is about 16,000) controlling 11% of all investable assets, about the same as the bottom 2/3 of consumer households (that is about 80 million). 10% of consumer households earn 48% of income. European countries are at 28%-42%.
Averages & Medians
The average consumer household net worth is ~$600,000. The average per person net worth is $252,000. But, the median per person net worth is $44,911, the median per person home equity is $18,863, & the median per person financial assets (investable & retirement plan) is $26,048 (less household goods, other real estate, & small business holdings) (Tiburon estimate: $8,000). The median consumer household income is $51,939, with three-quarters of consumer households still earning <$100,000. Regarding the median income, Mr. Roame stated, “it is down now for a decade, although average income is up. The typical guy makes less today than he did a decade ago.”
Baby Boomers
93% say baby boomers are key. Attendees say baby boomers are ~75% of clients. The first baby boomers turned 65 in 2011 (birth years 1946 to 1964) and 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 each day 2011-2029. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees mostly believe that baby boomers are not close to retirement financial readiness.
Baby boomers face a lack of defined benefit plans & a lack of savings, with 57% having less than $100,000. The average employee has $49,000 saved outside of their retirement plan. Inheritances are not materializing (~2% of baby boomers will receive over $100,000). They also face Social Security & Medicare challenges. Average life expectancy has reached 78, and it is an incremental eight-to-ten years for those who reach retirement age. The average length of retirement for those currently turning 65 is nineteen years. Health care costs, including long-term care, are creeping higher, and now, there is the twin threats of elder care and the kids moving back in -- plus the ever present risks of market volatility & inflation. The US personal savings rate has held relatively steady between 5.0% and 6.0% since the financial crisis. Female retiree (age 65) life expectancy is 89 years, up from 84 in 1980. Male retiree (age 65) life expectancy is 86, up from 80 in 1980. Regarding life expectancy of retirees, Mr. Roame stated, “everyone quotes the average life expectancy which is completely useless. It refers to babies born this year. That is irrelevant to the consumer. The guy that makes it to retirement lives longer. What you should care about is the life expectancy to the guy who makes it to 60.” Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees expect that many consumers will retire later over the next five years. Baby boomers’ pending retirement will drive more assets into the investable assets market. Mr. Roame stated, "maybe baby boomers did save more than we are being led to believe. But what they need to do is liquidate it. They may have money in illiquid things."
Consumer Confidence in Financial Services Industry (Trust Gap)
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that Wall Street scandals are the biggest factor in low consumer confidence in the financial services industry. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the majority of financial advisors are ethical, but about two-thirds of Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the majority of financial advisors are not well trained. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees increasingly believe that consumer confidence in the financial services industry will stagnate at its low levels. Some Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees are optimistic, while other Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees are not. Mr. Roame succinctly summarized one data slide by saying, "everyone hates your industry; that is what this says." Mr. Roame also stated that because of the complicated nature of the industry, “the ability to hide fees and product performance has always been extremely high.” Mr. Roame added that, “technology is promoting transparency, and transparency will drive down costs.” Regarding consumerism, Mr. Roame said, “when consumerism comes, or price pressure, who you want to be is the guy who owns the customer, because he/she will forever squeeze the other portions of the value chain to keep his/her fee as high as possible. I have long thought that I want to be in the distribution business. I want to be close to the customer.”
Consumer Attitudes & Behavioral Changes
Consumer attitudes & behavioral changes include deleveraging, increased savings, high cash holdings ($10 trillion deposits versus loans of just $7.5 trillion), risk management focus (e.g., life insurance; fixed assets), bailing on equities, reduced trading, a focus on cost, more informed prospects (akin to consumers with carfax), being generally more involved, diversifying across providers, demanding only episodic advice, and do it yourself consumers. Regarding evolving consumers, Mr. Roame stated, "the next generation thinks differently, plus 2008 changed even older consumers’ views.” Mr. Roame relayed that Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said the most interesting change is that consumers are more informed. In response, Mr. Roame said, “really? Did you watch the consumer panel? I am not so sure. I think the industry has been pretty cloudy for a long time.”
Rapidly Evolving Investment Approaches
Rapidly evolving investment approaches include goals-based investing, including asset liability matching & personal performance reporting; retirement income strategies including bond ladders, dividend stocks, retirement income funds, deferred income annuities, GMWB annuities (will they ever win?), reverse mortgages, & life settlements; downside protection strategies such as Brinker Capital Crystal Strategies, longevity insurance (annuities), insurance linked securities, & options & straddles; tactical asset allocation (will mobile technology lead to more tactical trading?); & thematic investing (will social media lead to thematic investing?). Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the most impactful investment strategy trends are retirement income strategies & goals-based investing.
Rapidly Evolving Financial Advisor Models
Rapidly evolving financial advisor models include managed accounts, financial advisor directed portfolio management, break-away brokers, & utilization of TAMPs. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees (interestingly) said that none of the financial advisor model trends are compelling amongst packaged managed account programs. Financial advisor directed programs have been taking share from SMAs & UMAs. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the break-away brokers trend will increase or at least remain steady over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees believe that TAMPs use will increase or at least remain steady over the next five years.
Investment Product Trends
Mutual funds, variable annuities, & exchange traded funds have substantial flows of $100-$200 billion each. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that they personally own individual securities, open-end mutual funds, & exchange traded funds (ETFs). Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that exchange traded funds, open-end mutual funds, & liquid alternatives will have the highest investment product usage. Mr. Roame also stated that, “open end mutual funds are here to stay” and “passive investing is about 30% of equity mutual funds and ETFs today.” Mr. Roame observed that, “centralization and decentralization are happening at the same time. Managed accounts and TAMPs are booming. They centralize investment advice. Simultaneously, breakaway brokers are going independent. The fastest wirehouse programs are the rep driven programs, which decentralizes.” Mr. Roame stated, “strong sales skills keep bad products in business.” Mr. Roame predicted, “I am waiting to watch Google or Amazon buy Betterment or Wealthfront. They might not even know anything about these firms, but if they did, that changes a lot.”
Open-End Mutual Funds
Open-end mutual funds have $152 billion net flows. Some big players present include The Vanguard Group ($3.0 trillion (15.5%)), Fidelity Investments ($1.7 trillion (9.6%)), & American Funds ($1.3 trillion (7.3%)). Winning flows are with The Vanguard Group (12.4% YTD) and T. Rowe Price Group (9.4% YTD). Equity, bond, & hybrid funds gathered $152 billion net flows, still less than 50% of that in 2009. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees mostly believe that US open-end mutual funds will stagnate over the next five years, with a growing segment who expects them to decline. The top 50 fund groups hold 86% of the market share.
Indexing
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI & XXVII attendees said that they cannot predict stock market movements. Nearly half of Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees believe that one can predict interest rate movements. At least one Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendee claims the ability to predict interest rate movements, while other Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees noted that few have been successful predicting interest rate movements. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees mostly utilize a mix of active & passive portfolio management styles, with substantial segments at either end. Index equity mutual funds now account for 18.4% of equity mutual fund assets under management, up from 11.8% in 2007. Index equity mutual funds & ETFs now account for 30% of equity mutual fund & ETF assets under management, up from 19% in 2007. Gene Fama believes that active management is never a good option and expresses that you can not tell luck from skill regarding active managers. Just under half (47%) of large-cap US stock funds beat the S&P 500 between 1994 & 2013. Morningstar has long suggested cost is a critical component. American Funds is a good example of a low cost active mutual fund company. The five largest stock mutual funds are all low cost Vanguard & American Funds mutual funds. Mr. Roame relayed that, “literally no one here owns a fixed annuity. Not sure why we sell them then!” but that, “indexing is alive and well."
Exchange Traded Funds
Exchange traded funds have gathered $1.8 trillion assets under management, up from $102 billion in 2002. Exchange traded funds have net flows of $138 billion, up 400% since 2001 but down from its peak of $187 billion in 2012. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that they do not believe that ETFs have replaced passive mutual funds. Blackrock, State Street Global Advisors, & The Vanguard Group dominate US exchange traded fund assets under management. Exchange traded funds are primarily used strategically but not always. Managed ETF programs have raised substantial assets under management, including $27.7 billion at F-Squared Investments and $18.6 billion at Windhaven Investment Management. Mr. Roame stated, "I send my caution flag up regarding managed ETFs. They sell performance and are going to die by performance." He also stated that, “managed ETFs are gathering a lot of assets but are stumbling all over themselves. Let us call a spade a spade. It is just the next bet. I am not sold on investing that just moves the money around a lot.” He said, “it is not about active versus passive; it is about keeping cost down and managers having some skin in the game.”
Active ETFs
The active ETFs market is still relatively small, with 1% of the ETF market. Non-transparent ETFs may become a transformative hedge fund access vehicle for investors. PIMCO has the most assets under management among active ETF families, with $7.9 billion. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees anticipate that active ETFs will have moderate or limited growth in the next five years.
Alternative Investments (Hedge Funds)
Many predict alternatives will gain share, with some saying they will dominate active flows. Some leading players present include Fidelity Investments $19.6 billion (absolute return; commodities; real estate) and the #2 asset class for RS Investments. Alternative investments are the #1 source of dissent on recent Tiburon CEO Summit presentations.
Hedge funds have $2.4 trillion as of 2Q/14. Leading hedge funds (Pershing Square; Third Point; Tiger Global) have great returns in both up & down markets. Hedge funds are pitched as the new safe investment but hedge fund investments in the aggregate are questionable. CALPERs' hedge fund program generated 7.1% returns in the last fiscal year, far below its 18.4% overall return and 24.8% global equities return. About two-thirds of CALPERs' equity portfolio will now be passively managed in low-cost index funds. CALPERs is gaining support for its decision to eliminate hedge fund investments from their pension fund. Lack of transparency, high fees, & lack of liquidity are the leading reasons financial advisors do not recommend hedge funds to their clients. Regarding hedge funds, Mr. Roame stated, “product proliferation leads a lot of people to pick bad investments. The average hedge fund is not good. There are good ones out there but the average investor finds their way into the weak funds. Hedge fund data is still self reported. If you do lousy, what do you do? You do not report. That is the data. We have no better data.”
Liquid Alternative Investments
Liquid alternative mutual funds have $157.5 billion assets, up over 300% since 2007. Liquid alternative mutual funds gathered $37.1 billion net flows, up 150% since 2004. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that ETFs & open-end mutual funds will be the preferred package for alternative investments over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said liquid alternatives will experience moderate or huge growth over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees are skeptical of the industry’s ability to deliver democratization of alternatives. Mr. Roame stated, “maybe is my philosophy. Just understand that you are putting your money into an asset class with category returns from plus 20 to minus 20. We have to talk about it as something beyond more than one category.” Additionaly, he stated, "watch where the flows go, as opposed to the alternatives. There is a story – which one is getting the money?"
Venture Capital & Private Equity
Private equity has received little respect but has the best ten year returns amongst alternative investments. CalSTRs made more than $1.0 billion in private equity & real estate commitments in just the 2Q/14. For venture capital, crowd funder Kick Starter raised $480 million from 3.0 million people. Institutional investor venture capital & private equity portfolios had a ten year annualized return of 10.0% through 2013, better than real estate, hedge funds, & real assets. Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, & Byers and Sequoia Capital are the firms with the most recent exits, with fifteen each. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees are divided on whether venture capital managers add value on post fee basis. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said venture capital will experience moderate growth over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that average private equity (leverage buy out) managers add value on post fee basis. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said private equity net flows will experience moderate growth over the next five years. Mr. Roame stated, “private equity deserves more respect. It remains the last frontier for the masses.”
Other Alternative Investments
Other alternative investments real estate, commodities & managed futures, structured notes, catastrophe bonds, equipment leasing funds (tough to explain), oil & gas partnerships (sometimes speculative), sports teams, Bitcoins, sports cars, wine, etc. The LA Clippers were sold for $2.0 billion, over 200% more than other recent NBA franchise sales. Donald Sterling received a 15,900% return over 33 years on his investment in the Los Angeles Clippers. Americans drink 2.82 gallons of wine per resident per year, up over 200% since 1962. Over half of consumers agree that it is important to take ethical, social, or religious convictions into account when investing.
Retail Financial Advice Trends
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees use online banking, law firm (trust & estate businesses), & retail bank channels. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that online advice firms, RIAs (custodians), & online financial planning will have the highest retail advice channel growth rates. Many Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees expect growth in all types of online channels.
Financial Advisors
The number of financial advisors has declined in recent years (304,097) and is expected to continue to decline. Independent advisors are taking share (quickly in bodies; moderately quickly in AUMA). Primerica, Morgan Stanley, & Wells Fargo Corporation have the largest financial advisor forces, with Morgan Stanley, Bank Of America Merrill Lynch, & Wells Fargo Corporation having gathered the most AUMA. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the number of independent advisors will grow the fastest over the next five years. Attendees say LPL Financial, Bank Of America Merrill Lynch, and Edward Jones & Company have most impressive financial advisor forces. Regarding the number of financial advisors, Mr. Roame said, “almost weekly you read that there are not enough financial advisors; I am betting the number will go even further down.”
Wirehouses
UBS Wealth Management Americas has the most average assets per rep with $144 million. Almost all existing wirehouse retention deals will expire by 2019. Tiburon felt the bullying of wirehouse anti-transparency itself this past semi-annual period. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the wirehouses will continue to offer retention deals. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that wirehouses will avoid the free market. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said wirehouses will soon allow top financial advisors to operate under their own RIAs. At least one Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendee said that the RIA model could further stem the break-away broker trend. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees mostly believe that wirehouses have a neutral or negative future over the next five years.
Independent Broker/Dealers
LPL Financial, RCS Securities, Ameriprise Financial, & a few other firms lead the independent reps market in number of financial advisors. LPL Financial, Ameriprise Financial, RCS Securities, & Raymond James Financial lead the independent broker/dealer market in assets under administration. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that independent broker/dealers have a positive or at least neutral future. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees have positive views about the future of independent broker/dealers over next five years. Regarding breakaway brokers, Mr. Roame commented, “people are enamored with how many there are until you do the math. Journalists are writing about this trend but I do not see it as a trend.” Regarding independents, Mr. Roame stated, “they are grabbing bodies a lot quicker than they are growing money.”
Fee-Based Financial Advisors (RIA custodians)
The Edelman Financial Group’s Edelman Financial Services serves 25,000 clients, up 400% since 2003. The Charles Schwab Corporation, TD Ameritrade, & Fidelity Investments are the leading fee-based financial advisor custodians in terms of number of fee-based financial advisor clients, with 7,000, 4,700, & 3,300 respectively. The Charles Schwab Corporation & Fidelity Investments are the leading fee-based financial advisor custodians in terms of assets under administration, with $1.1 trillion & $753 billion respectively. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that custodians have a positive or at least neutral future nearly every time. Many Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that all custodians may do well.
Discount Brokerage Firms & Online Advice Firms
Discount brokerage firms & online advice firms are both looking to serve the disenfranchised, including the underserved mass affluent market and millenials comfortable with technology. The holy grail is the ability to cost efficiently serve the mass market (face-to-face via video; financial advice for episodic events). Discount brokerage firms are well positioned to serve all client levels. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that they personally have self-serve (discount brokerage) investment accounts. The Charles Schwab Corporation now consistently generates over three-quarters of its revenues from asset management & administration fees and net interest revenues. The Vanguard Group’s personal advisor services unit has quickly gathered $3.6 billion assets under management, up from $0.8 billion in 2013. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the discount brokerage trend will grow over the next five years. There are at least 38 online advice firms. One-third of Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees already personally have money with an online advice firm. Mr. Roame stated, "30% of you said you have money with an online advice firm. I am shocked." Financial Engines has become the largest RIA while Wealthfront, Personal Capital, & Betterment have all gathered hundreds of millions of dollars of assets under management. Almost all Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the online advice firm trend will increase over the next five years. Some Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees are sold on the future of online advice while other Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees remain skeptical of the potential technology transformation. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees have become far more aware of the online advice models when asked to name the most impressive. Many Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees know Financial Engines. Mr. Roame stated, "the only DIY channel with a proven economic model is Financial Engines."
The Six Fundamental VC & PE Bets
1. Distribution will increasingly take economics from product manufacturing. Closest to the client almost always wins
2. Financial advisor and do it yourself channels are probably better bets than the institutional and international channels
- Private equity -> bet on financial advisors
- Venture capital -> bet on online advice
3. Financial advisor channel smart bets include scale, aggregation, & outsourcing
4. Do it yourself channel smart bets are probably those with proven economic models, substantial capital, and a multi-pronged delivery plan
5. If you insist on products, bet on those with either huge scale, friendly distribution, or sustainable margins
6. Beyond asset & wealth management, best opportunities with disruptors generally, mobile firms, and big data & predictive analytics firms
Several Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees defended products. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that private equity independent financial advisor distribution will continue in 2014. A few Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that private equity may slow its bet on independent advisors. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that venture capital’s bet on online financial advice will continue in 2014. Some Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees questioned the viability of the online advice business.
And a few Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees pointed to opportunities outside of the financial advisor and self-serve channels, specifically internationally, especially in Asia. Some Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees challenged the financial advisor scale and aggregation opportunities. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that The Edelman Financial Group, HighTower, & Carson Wealth Management have the best chance at building a nationwide financial advisory business. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees pointed to a variety of firms as having the best chance at building a nationwide financial advisory business. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that the most successful financial advisor aggregators are HighTower, Focus Financial Partners, & Dynasty Financial Partners. Wealthfront, Personal Capital, & Motif Investing have raised the most venture capital amongst the online advice firms. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees said that winners in the online world are still to be determined. Many Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII attendees pointed to specific product opportunities.
Along with Tiburon's Managing Partner Chip Roame, Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII included speakers Joe Mansueto (CEO, Morningstar & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), Bob Reynolds (CEO, Putnam Investments & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), & Bill Sharpe (Professor Emeritus, Stanford University; Nobel Prize Winner in Economics; & Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner), Asheesh Advani (CEO, Covestor), Audie Apple (Co-Founder, GuardVest), Brian Ascher (Partner, Venrock), David Bach (Vice Chairman, Edelman Financial Services), Chas Burkhart (CEO, Rosemont Partners), Jeff Burrow (Co-Founder, FlexScore), Jerry Chafkin (Chief Investment Officer, AssetMark), Tim Draper (Founding Partner, Draper, Fisher, & Jurvetson), Greg Friedman (CEO, Private Ocean), Charles Goldman (CEO, AssetMark), David Grau (CEO, FP Transitions), Brian Haskin (CEO, Alternative Strategy Partners), Gary Henson (CEO, Montage Investments), Tom Kimberly (CEO, Upside), Kevin Knull (President, PIETech), Bo Lu (CEO, FutureAdvisor), Jeff Maggioncalda (CEO, Financial Engines), Bill McNabb (CEO, The Vanguard Group), Bill Miller (Chief Investments Officer, Brinker Capital), Sanjiv Mirchandani (President, National Financial Services), Charles Moldow (General Partner, Foundation Capital), Jim Nagengast (CEO, Securities America), Liz Nesvold (Managing Partner, Silver Lane Advisors), Andrew Rogers (CEO, Gemini Fund Services), Larry Roth (CEO, Realty Capital Securities), Matt Scanlan (CEO, RS Investments), Ron Suber (President, Prosper Marketplace), Jon Sundt (CEO, Altegris Investments), Todd Thomson (Chairman, Dynasty Financial Partners), & Derek Young (Vice Chairman, Pyramis Global Advisors).
Joe
Mansueto
(CEO,
Morningstar &
Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner)
Mr. Mansueto's recent comments have included:
- “I started Morningstar because I love investing and wanted to build something around my passion. I did not know how to build a company; I have learned how to grow a company in the last thirty years and learned those professional management skills along the way. My vision was to build a big, enduring company. I was well aware of what happens to most entrepreneurs”
- “The real enjoyment is the incremental. I get tremendous pleasure from watching our methodology improve”
- “In the early days, we all answered the phone. We became very close to our clients. I really liked those days but I kind of like our position better today”
- “To me it is very important that a company have intellectual honesty about how we are doing. We have to be able to tell the good and the bad. We look for other managers to be transparent and offer a lot of disclosure. I approach it like an academic, looking at the data. If it is not working, we have an obligation to make it better”
- “Good advice is effective in helping someone reach their goal, making sure it is appropriated in terms of risk level and appetite”
- “Good advice can be delivered online. The really exciting thing is that millions more people will be served”
- “What I really like with these smaller firms is the advancement they are making with the user interface”
- “I am not really keen on acquisitions; for us it is about weaving capabilities together. Previously we had not made any acquisitions for three years. Recent ones were extraordinary companies that we thought we could not match their skill set”
- "My approach is to go slower, build it organically. I think a lot of people raise too much money too quickly, give away too much equity and essentially lose control of the business. They might not know how to spend the money until they really get to know their customers, maybe have a few iterations of their product"
- "There are a lot of role models out there like the Mark Zuckerbergs and Pinterest that inspire a lot of younger people. It is very possible to start a business at young age with little capital and do extremely well. So with lower startup costs and very successful role models where a lot of people have created a lot of value in a short time, it draws in a lot of people to follow similar pursuits"
- "To me, a modern workplace is very collaborative. It is transparent, nimble, fast-moving and non-hierarchical"
- "A lot of entrepreneurs might get shaken off during a downturn. They read the business press about a Groupon or Facebook, and it zooms up to billions in sales. But most businesses are not like that. It takes really a decade to grow a business. I have been at it 30 years and we still have a lot of things ahead of us"
- "We believe aggregation will only grow in importance"
Bob
Reynolds
(CEO,
Putnam Investments &
Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner)
Investments’ executive board of directors, and president of the Putnam Funds. He has more than 30 years of investment and financial services experience and has revitalized Putnam Investments through strong, sustained investment performance, new products to address today’s market challenges, and though leadership for the retirement marketplace. Mr. Reynolds is also president & CEO of Great West Financial, one of the nation’s top providers of retirement savings products & services, life insurance, annuities, and executive benefits products. Prior to joining Putnam Investments in 2008, Mr. Reynolds was vice chairman & chief operating officer of Fidelity Investments. Mr. Reynolds is regarded as a driving force of innovation and progress in institutional and retail financial services. He was named Fund Leader of the Year at the Mutual Fund Industry Awards in 2010, in recognition of a series of strategic changes he has implemented to improve investment performance and position Putnam Investments as an industry leader. He has restructured the money management process, overseen the development of a more investor-friendly fee structure, introduced new products, and revitalized Putnam Investment's commitment to the defined contribution business. In 2005, Mr. Reynolds received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Plansponsor Magazine for his contributions to the retirement services industry. Under his leadership, Putnam Investments was named the inaugural recipient of the Retirement Leader of the Year award at the18th Annual Mutual Fund Industry Awards in 2011 for its initiatives and innovative solutions in the workplace savings arena. Mr. Reynolds serves on several not-for-profit boards, including West Virginia University Foundation, Concord Museum, & Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Mr. Reynolds' recent comments have included:
- “This business always comes down to having the right people. At Putnam there were tremendous amounts of good people when I got there. There was a feeling though that people were playing to lose because they had been beat down. You have to come in everyday playing to win. We changed by creating a true meritocracy and worked to exceed client expectations”
- “Money follows performance. You can never have too much talent. It is all about trying to be the best. You start there”
- “The rollover business is an opportunity set but we sell totally through advisors”
- “I have unbelievable respect for what Ned Johnson has done. He was such a visionary. He could see around corners. He came up with check writing on money market accounts. He said the more access they have the more they will put in. The business exploded”
- “Ned [Johnson] believed clients did not know what they wanted and market research was a waste of time and money. He went a lot on hunch and I learned a lot from that”
- “People save more if they have access to the money. I will put more in, if I know when I need I can draw it out”
- “I do think the Pension Protection act was landmark for defined contribution in this country”
- “There are 33 million American that are on track to have more than 100% replacement of their income upon retirement – one common thread – saving more than 10% of their income”
- “I thoroughly enjoyed the interview process for NFL commissioner”
- “Social Security in its current structure is going to have to be cut dramatically or we are going to have to be taxed more dramatically”
- “I am concerned about whenever the government gets involved in anything. In the UK they have the nest program and it is not a good program, there are not options. I think I would love to see a solution come from the private sector. There are enough people in the business that this can be accomplished. I think universal IRA was a good idea”
- "We are hoping this report on the economic benefits of higher US saving will change the politics of savings and encourage policymakers to do more to enhance savings. If we can convince lawmakers that savings will increase economic growth, then the politics of this issue will change"
- "The
impact on the economy of savings is much larger than anyone would
expect"
- "We should engage in a full debate with lawmakers on ways to make Social Security solvent"
- "The infrastructure that exists today represents a combination of ideas from the retirement industry, private individuals, advocates, & public policymakers. It is a joint effort like this, in a coordinated, full-court press, that is needed to take America’s retirement savings system to the next level"
- "By putting these businesses together, we think that two plus two equals six. Both Great West Lifeco and Putnam Investments' offerings will be even better. We want to be the best in this space. That is our goal. If you have that as a goal then size and growth takes care of itself. We are clearly focusing on growing this business and becoming a major provider in the retirement space"
Bill
Sharpe
(Professor
Emeritus, Stanford University; Nobel Prize Winner in Economics;
& Tiburon CEO Summit Award Winner)
Bill Sharpe is the STANCO 25 Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and also Director Emeritus at Financial Engines, which he co-founded in 1996. Mr. Sharpe's research interests focus on macro-investment analysis and equilibrium in capital markets. He is associated with dozens of widely utilized investment concepts, including being one of the originators of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), and the creator of the Sharpe Ratio for risk-adjusted investment performance analysis, the binomial method for the valuation of options, the gradient method for asset allocation optimization, and returns-based style analysis for evaluating the style and performance of investment funds. Mr. Sharpe received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1990. Mr. Sharpe previously taught at the University of Washington and the University of California at Irvine, and also worked at the RAND Corporation. He has written six books, including Portfolio Theory & Capital Markets; Asset Allocation Tools; Fundamentals of Investments; and Investments. He has also written articles in many professional journals.
Asheesh
Advani
(CEO,
Covestor)
Mr. Advani's recent comments have included:
- “We see that while millennials are a share of our clients, there is broad appeal across age groups to be tech & mobile”
- “We are proud of having both active & passive”
- “The average fee self-directed clients will pay on our marketplace is 131 basis points”
- “We are finding that people want to interact with us in the way that suits them. Providing a phone ability is reassurance. They may not want us to reach out to them but they want the capability to contact us”
- “There will be many entrants of larger players into the robo space. We have opted to partner with many. I believe in the next five years we will see various approaches trying to capture online”
- “I think we are still five-ten years away from consumers being aware enough of price”
- "Not only do the central bankers want to grab global assets, they are planning to block the poor investor who has been led into a trap by the bond buying the banks had done during the financial crisis of 2008 & 2009"
- "In the same way we learned more than a decade ago that being a dot-com was not in itself a guarantee of success, today we are learning that not all Internet marketplaces gain traction"
- "Many people want to manage their own money, but either do not have the time or in-depth experience to do it"
- "The price of ETFs has been dropping historically because of the commoditization of the product. We believe that we are ahead of the trend of bringing the price to as close to zero as possible"
- "Every start-up could use more people, more marketing expertise, more product development skills; the list goes on and on. But entrepreneurs committed to their business do not wait for capital to grow. They find a way to make it happen, often using the people they already have around them: their employees, vendors and even customers"
Audie Apple
(Co-Founder, GuardVest)
Mr. Apple's recent comments have included:
- “Guardvest is Lending Tree for investors. It is a tool to evaluate your investment portfolio and hold advisors accountable. It also connects advisor with investors. You can quantify returns, risks, & expenses. This concept is nothing earth shattering, but most investors do not have even that basic experience”
- “We are here to help investors figure out who the good advisors are; we also want to help those advisors find investors and manage relationships with potential investers by providing a second opinion. This is a high friction exercise”
- “The robo advisors are precipitating a price war. Investment advice is the only thing people buy and they do not know what they are paying. “We are trying to be the weapons supplier to the price war, helping people know what they are really buying and paying for”
- “A couple of advisors came to me and asked if we could find out how they are doing for their own clients. The advisors themselves do not know. It is very difficult to stay on top of”
- “Of the elements you can quantify, we would be willing to rate robo advisors. We can shine a light and deliver transparency on those elements”
- “What this industry has to contend with right now is some very unpleasant economics. The numbers do not work”
- "There has been an absolute explosion in complexity, variety, and fortunately opaqueness, of the products that Wall Street uses to gauge individual investors"
- "An individual investor does not have a good chance to know how much they are actually paying in total fees, or even to very simply measure how they are doing compared to other people like them"
- "There are a variety of things wrong with the financial advisor business, and one of the big factors is how difficult it is to get an objective second opinion"
- "In the fall of 2008 the capital markets environment that we all rely on to build our investment portfolios over time changed forever"
- "What investors are doing today is the moral equivalent of paying 8.5% on your mortgage right now, why would you do that?"
Brian Ascher
(Partner, Venrock)
Mr. Ascher's recent comments have included:
- “Firms that are a combination of services delivered by humans plus tech, I like to just call them digital advisors not robo”
- “Money is emotion. Clients left to their own devices tend to do the wrong thing”
- “Regarding robo advisors you could get a little cynical. How does this differ from target date funds or ETF? If there is not some level of service I do not know that there is a distinction”
- “One of our clients said I use this investment bank and I know I am getting screwed, I just do not know how”
- “A mortgage, a marriage, a couple kids; this changes a lot. Our customers are in their forties. They need to talk through specific situations”
- "A new breed of software company is emerging... that combines data science expertise with deep understanding of business problems"
- "Lots of companies market themselves as “big data” companies, but unless you are selling to IT departments whose problems actually include managing lots of data, most business customers do not really care about data. They care about solving business problems"
- "Providing applications for horizontal business functions like sales, finance, or human resources that function similarly across many industries represents very large opportunities because the market sizes are huge"
- "Providing deep solutions in specific industry verticals like healthcare, entertainment, or education can be a huge opportunity. This is especially true in industries where data has largely been non-existent or hard to access as has been the case in the three industries I just mentioned"
- "While some industries are just getting their first taste of big data, others have been sophisticated handlers and miners of big data for a long time, such as the investment industry, airlines, and e-commerce. In those fields a small incremental advantage afforded by a data driven vertical solution can be extremely valuable"
David Bach
(Vice Chairman, Edelman Financial Services)
David Bach is the Vice Chairman of Edelman Financial Services, one of the country's leading financial advisory firms with over 25,000 clients and over $13 billion in assets under management. Mr. Bach has teamed up with Ric Edelman, Chairman & CEO of Edelman Financial Services to form a powerhouse in the financial advice field, with the goal of providing one million Americans unprecedented access to financial education, financial planning services, & investment management. Mr. Bach is also one of the most prolific and best selling financial authors with nine consecutive New York Times bestselling books including Smart Women Finish Rich, Smart Couples, Finish Rich, The Automatic Millionaire and Start Late, Finish Rich. Mr. Bach’s FinishRich Series has over seven million copies in print translated into over nineteen languages. He is the creator of the FinishRich Seminars, including Smart Women Finish Rich which has educated and inspired over a half million women to take control over their financial future. In addition, Mr. Bach is the founder & Chairman of FinishRich Media, a company dedicated to inspiring people to live their best life financially. Prior to founding FinishRich Media, Mr. Bach was a senior vice president of Morgan Stanley and a partner of The Bach Group, which during his tenure from 1993 to 2001, managed more than $500 million for individual investors.
Mr. Bach's recent comments have included:
- “One year not working was like getting twenty years back in my life. It was not recharging my battery, it was replacing it”
- “This is the greatest business in the whole world. We change people’s lives”
- “Where the customer falls in all this is that no one is thinking about the customer”
- "I grew up in the investment business, so while I consider myself a financial educator at heart and that is my core passion, I am born and bred a financial advisor"
- "When I decided to teach that first seminar Smart Women Finish Rich I actually had to take it to management, get it compliance approved, and I was actually told by management that I should not even teach the seminar, that again, no women would come, there is no money in women & money, you know just forget the idea. Thank God I did not listen because I believed there was a need for financial education for women. I believed that there was a need for a book for women and money; that is why I wrote my first book Smart Women Finish Rich”
- “The key for women to know is this: you are going to be retired significantly longer than your husband if you are married. And because you will be retired longer than your husband if you are married – and even if you are not married you will be retired longer – you need to simply have more money in savings”
- “People who just focus on paying down debt often get depressed about the slow progress and give up, but when people save at the same time, they see some progress on their debt and on their savings which keeps them motivated to keep going”
- “Life is not easy. But that is not the only truth that matters in this context. It also happens to be true that it takes just as much effort to have a bad life, in which you do not get what you want, as it does to have a good life, where you do. So given the choice, why not go for the good life?”
Chas
Burkhart
(CEO,
Rosemont Partners)
Mr. Burkhart's recent comments have included:
- “Financial services firm are chronically poor owners of asset managers”
- “Disconnects abound in the valuation of asset management firms”
- “Valuations are really all over the map”
- “There is a certain consistency that we look for over fifteen years and we just try to define those metrics”
- “Internal transition and buy/sell agreements are too long neglected and ill conceived”
- "We are pleased that Litman Gregory’s succession planning objectives afforded us the opportunity to invest in a premier business. They have a great reputation for serving all their clients through high quality, independent research. We have come to know and respect the investment and business acumen of the Litman Gregory team and are looking forward to partnering with them"
- "It is important to recognize distinctions within the industry"
- "[Rosemont] tends not to take on debt in its acquisitions. And it tends to leave people management matters in the hands of executives that it works with in the acquired company. We have a very light touch"
- "The really successful start-ups are already separate franchises within a large firm—but, many times, the parent companies do not recognize it"
- "The industry is full of failed startups. There are a lot of business checkmarks that companies need to accomplish to be successful"
Jeff Burrow
(Co-Founder, FlexScore)
Mr. Burrow's recent comments have included:
- “FlexScore is the industry’s first personal financial health score. We encompass all facets of your financial life. FlexScore can provide better engagement of investors and investors can get an objective view of how they are doing”
- “The truth hurts. Financial advisors do not want to work with anyone who has less than $250K. Time is money. This has been a growing trend for a number of years”
- “For robo advisors, the best analogy I can think of is that they have taken the computer screen and shown it to the public, and then handed over the keyboard and said you can do it yourself”
- “We get paid licensing the technology to financial institutions. Brand loyalty means a lot. We have an engagement technology that allows for more brand loyalty”
- “If you are trying to add value, you have to go beyond investments. It is hard for robo advisors to add value if they are just lowering costs like everybody else”
- "What are those things you really want to be doing with your money - or think maybe you should be doing - but you really do not know how? Flexscore gets that monkey off your back by telling you what to do and how to get it done"
- "We founded our own independent financial services firm because we wanted a practice focused on stewardship, and on placing our clients' needs ahead of our own"
- "We created FlexScore based on our experience that when people undertake the long form method of traditional financial planning, adhering to six steps based on sound industry standards, they achieve their financial goals more often, more effectively, and in a manner that pleasantly surprises them"
- "It is easy, and all too common, for people to put off saving or investing toward retirement. They forget the biggest single risk for people once they stop working: running out of money before they run out of life"
- "Ignorance is not bliss, in life as well as in finances. Being financially ignorant is the surest way to ensure you will never be financially stress free"
Jerry Chafkin
(Chief Investment Officer, AssetMark)
Mr. Chafkin's recent comments have included:
- “Our ownership structure at the moment is very interesting – but in a good way”
- “One
trend has been the run up in US stocks. Investors have been a little
weary but there are many reasons to believe this will continue”
- “There is still plenty of room in mutual funds & hedge funds for increased equity allocation”
- “We still have plenty of time for investors to recover, just in time for the usual to happen again”
- “By
way of disclosure, I’m a big fan of algorithms. Having said that, what
we have seen in connection with robo are very traditional; passive or
strategic in nature. That is important because traditional does factor
in an element of behavioral finance. Advisor and active managers can be
very helpful and add value here. While there is a lot of interest about
robo, there has not been a real test and the future will show how well
they handle being tested. Some will rise to the challenge”
- “From my perspective, solutions offered by larger broker dealers are the biggest competitor. For us, that means we need to be more agile, faster, innovative. That is our competitive plan”
- “The question raised is not about the product but the implementation. With the right bells & whistles, around risk, target dates fund are a strong tool”
- "The Fed has defined the market for the past few years and will continue to do so. It will require finesse to not scare the market”
- "I think the old [formula for managing investment risk] is less than fully baked"
- "I believe AssetMark's curated but complete investment platform can be a hugely valuable tool for advisors to make a difference in the lives of their clients. The opportunity to help shape the future of the platform is very exciting, and I look forward to working with the AssetMark team and the advisors we serve to develop innovative solutions that help their clients achieve their goals"
- "Our [AlphaSimplex's] objective was to create an equity fund that allowed investors to stay invested for the long term and not suffer through the extreme downturns that sometimes take investors out of the market"
- "We know that individual investors tend to underperform the indexes because they tend to bail out at the extremes, or they divest because they see something more attractive elsewhere and they chase performance"
- "When it comes to risk, investors are primarily concerned with the risk of loss, so we focus on downside risk as the key risk measure. The greater the risk of loss, the less exposure we want to the market, and the lower the risk of loss, the more exposure we want to the market"
Tim
Draper
(Founding
Partner, Draper, Fisher, & Jurvetson)
Mr. Draper's recent comments have included:
- “I think financial services are going through a time similar to the music business or communications or information when the internet came. We have been able to put this off for a long time and be venture capitalists in a very cushy wonderful world; my feeling is that it is time to get in front of this. Because there are amazing technologies that we can take advantage of”
- “What do the biggest winners have in common? The same phrase: I want to delight my customers”
- “We are getting disintermediated by angels who are getting more direct contact with the company”
- “Bitcoin is really exciting. I have something like 35,000 Bitcoins. It is such a change and so exciting because the wealth of a society or success is all tied to the velocity of the money. The faster the money moves, the wealthier the society. It will make entire world much more wealthy... my Bitcoin is more secure than my Morgan Stanley account”
- “Prosper, Lending Club, peer-to-peer lending – Prosper was first – they fought the regulatory agency and got beat up – as Prosper makes it across the industry finish line, Lending Club darts across and takes the market, bright and bushy. There is a lesson in there somewhere”
- “It is fun to be able to step back from your business and rethink it”
- “When one or two of us say an investment is great and the decibel level in the room goes up, we know it is good. You have to go a couple of levels abstract beyond where others are thinking. The best flock to the ideas in the world that seem impossible. If they can do it you have a monster winner. We look for leaders who attract amazing entrepreneurs who will then build that vision. This is the best way to invest early stage venture capital”
- “I think there is a possibility for other governments to create FDAs that are more appropriate - maybe even a private company”
- "Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy. With the help of Vaurum and this newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies"
- "Nowadays, there is a huge demand for creativity. Because now, if you come up with an idea, it is going to spread around the world faster than it ever could"
- "The government has been a monopoly for too long; it really needs competition"
- "Although I am a venture capitalist, I have focused a lot of my efforts on education. When my daughter went to school and had the same great teachers I had but the classrooms were barren, I realized something was wrong with the education system. My entrepreneurial side said that if something is wrong, go see if there is a better way"
- "California as it is, is ungovernable. It is more and more difficult for Sacramento to keep up with the social issues from the various regions of California"
Greg
Friedman
(CEO,
Private Ocean)
Mr. Friedman's recent comments have included:
- “I think one of the biggest issues we have is the willingness of the founding generation to sell”
- “I think people underestimate the effect on clients, the transition of clients in the succession plan and the effect on the business”
- “I tell advisors: picture your business like a tree. The leaves are your clients, some are greener, some are older. A merger is like shaking the tree from the root, and some of those leaves are going to fall off”
- “Next generation entrepreneurial talent is a real issue. I am pleased to see things like the leadership program at Schwab”
- “Without a succession plan, these businesses are going to evaporate overnight”
- "I think a lot about the incredible coming sea change that is coming in the way clients work with advisors and how it will change the competitive landscape. I know that is not really new, but I have a new way of looking at it"
- "Think about psychiatrists, for example. They are employing video conferencing and mobile chat. Situations that are considered very personal, and financial advice would certainly fall into that category, are increasingly making use of communication technology"
- "As you watch the proliferation online of advice dispensers of financial services, more and more are cheap and easy. We dismiss it by saying it is not really customized to the client, but more and more it is. Is it completely the same as going to a financial advisor in person? No, of course not, but the space is getting more and more crowded"
- "I am thinking about the technology and how to serve a younger generation, but also about how to do it affordably"
- "Up until a few years ago, something like this would not have crossed my mind. Now, with my 76-year-old mother who travels all the time and has had an online travel agent for ten years who she has never met in person, I am thinking about the possibilities"
Charles
Goldman
(CEO,
AssetMark)
Mr. Goldman's recent comments have included:
- “We are owned by two mid-market private equity firms. The alignment of interests comes around putting the client first, the right strategy and execution, and your driving change every minute. If the management believes in those things, the private equity team will believe”
- “Size just does not matter. We work in an industry where frankly the execution is pretty poor. Big is not better”
- “We live in a world where consumer choice is very fragmented. One looking for alpha, another brand engagement, another a deep planning experience, some happy with the fee model... it is all about who executes best”
- “Fee-based advice is generally aligned with clients. I do believe that commission can be aligned, but for the client that is not asking the advisors to look for alpha, fees actually align well”
- “Fees put in an automatic increase in revenue. So it is very easy to imagine that if there is neither a consumer or adviser need to change, there will be no change”
- “Most clients talk from their right brain, from their heart. Most advisors talk analytically from their left brain”
- “We have trained the consuming public to believe that advisors’ jobs are to generate better returns as opposed to develop a diversified portfolio”
- "We bought [AssetMark] hoping the CEO would be there. My goal was to spend time with the team and help them — a two-day-a-week cadence with clients, salespeople or in the office. Not to manage, but to coach the CEO"
- "It was about building a broad platform — improving asset management and the way advisors access it — adding new managers, construct portfolios and UMA capability. If [an advisor] wanted J.P Morgan or F-Squared, for example, it took many different steps to figure it out and finally open up an account"
- "We know advisors need to build on a single platform, bundled fees, proposal generation, interactive reporting, so it is easier for the advisor and the end-investor"
- "The future of wealth management is so wide open that none of us have market share. Not only are we not in competition with Steve Lockshin — we are not in competition with anyone"
- "Clients want fee-based advice. They may not understand investing or advisors vs. brokers vs. planners but there is no doubt about the client-driven growth of the RIA industry. Clients like it. They have voted with their wallets"
David
Grau
(CEO,
FP Transitions)
Mr. Grau's recent comments have included:
- “Firm owners do not tend to plan. We plan for planners”
- “From the outside looking in, what we see is that the structure of the practices are designed from day one to ensure that the will have one owner and that it will die with the end of the founder’s career”
- “The lifetime of that practice is tied to the career of the advisors. It has nothing to do with the wealth or lifetime of the clients they serve”
- “Ask the question: What would you like your business to do?”
- “Our business model is to help the practice owner build enduring businesses”
- “Once we get them there, they fly. We just have to give them the tools”
- "Unfortunately, 99% of advisors do not have a formal, well-though out exit strategy or plan for the future, and most firms only last as long as their founder stays in the business. What that means is that advisors are missing out on reaping the full rewards of the value they have spent years building in their firms. We want to help change that"
- "Most advisors love what they do, are married to the income, and do not really believe that anybody could do what they do for their particular group of clients better than they could. As a result, they never sell their business"
- "Succession planning is not just about figuring out who is going to take over when you are gone. It is about building a business that will support your long-term vision, and which will continue to serve clients even when you are not around as much. Whether that means preparing for the firm acquisition or extending ownership to the next generation, continued growth is essential to a successful transition"
- "Firms with less than $1 million in fee-based income rely too much on the business' cash flow to bring on new partners"
- "95% of independent financial service professionals are one owner practices. To the positive, these practices are among the most valuable professional service models in America. But almost all advisors are assembling their practices using the wrong tools, tools borrowed from historically successful, but vastly different models including wirehouses, broker/dealers, and even OSJ's & branch managers. Revenue sharing, commission splitting, and other eat-what-you-kill compensation methods dominate the independent sector and virtually ensure that today's independent practices, if left unchanged, will not survive the end of their founder's career"
Brian Haskin
(CEO, Alternative Strategy Partners)
Mr. Haskin's recent comments have included:
- “I believe that alternative investments will dominate the market (as fees continue to come down and the variety of investments increase)”
- “Alternative investments are a great way to create value in a portfolio – to change the risk and return profile of your portfolio in a meaningful way”
- “Liquid alts provide advisors with unconstrained investment choices”
- “Non-transparent ETFs will become a viable product for hedge funds”
- “Alternatives fill the gap between equities and fixed income investments”
- “One of the most significant trends I see in the market place is that either you are going to be providing some sort of beta exposure, or you are going to be providing some sort of unconstrained portfolio that’s driving toward delivering active beta in alpha, and so there is bifurcation between beta exposure and active management. If you are not unconstrained, and you are in the middle, you are going to have a difficult time surviving”
- "These
firms (fund of fund advisors) are leveraging their relationships with
talented hedge fund managers and convincing them to participate in the
retail channel via mutual fund structures where the fees are not nearly
as lucrative as they are in private partnerships"
- "Hedge fund managers are leveraging their investment expertise and launching single strategy products in the retail channel either on their own... or in partnership with a retail-oriented asset management firm" A new breed of software company is emerging... that combines data science expertise with deep understanding of business problems"
- "For those investors or intermediaries looking for a one-stop solution, the multi-manager, multi-strategy products from the large, fund of fund advisors will fill the need. Other investors, with deeper expertise in manager selection and portfolio construction will use the more focused single manager strategies to fill very specific mandates within an overall portfolio context"
- "Mutual funds allow for the use of all of these (derivative instruments), thus giving the managers the ability to fully implement their investment approaches. In addition, mutual funds only require quarterly disclosure of holdings, thus providing mutual fund managers a reasonable level of anonymity when implementing new ideas. At the same time, investors have full access to portfolio holdings at least four times per year"
- "This development (active ETFs), along with the fact that some managers are comfortable with the required daily disclosure of portfolio positions, has resulted in the introduction of a wide range of alternative ETF products... each of the managers for these products takes a systematic approach to investing, thus mitigating the need for confidentiality around the underlying portfolio holdings"
Gary Henson
(President, Montage Investments)
Mr. Henson's recent comments have included:
- “It does not always pay to have a 40 Act in a LLC”
- “Allocators of capital are PAYING for hyper liquidity”
- “What was safe five years ago is no longer safe today”
- “I am very worried about Floating Rate Bank Loan Funds”
- “I think the pain point for most RIAs is that they do not know what to do with fixed income: the fixed income bucket is shrinking and being filled with liquid alts”
- "Much of our recent growth has been due to success with key account relationships. At Montage, our goal has always been to provide clients with innovative, relevant solutions to help solve their challenges. As we continue to deliver on that goal, we look forward to enhancing our current relationships and developing new ones"
- "There has been a ton of growth introduced into the market place termed alternative. Some of it good, some of it bad. I think the whole category is becoming diluted. It is getting crowded very fast"
- "Generally we have a majority stake in the asset manager and generally we do not exercise that majority stake. We allow them the latitude to be an entrepreneur"
- "Our value add is the fact that retail investors are able to invest alongside a wealthy family who acts like an institution. You invest side-by-side with us"
- "We are now moving toward the broker-dealer channel and the independent broker-dealer channel. The gatekeeping for these channels is different to maneuver, and also very expensive... the holy grail is a balance of distribution channels"
Tom Kimberly
(CEO, Upside)
Mr. Kimberly's recent comments have included:
- “Even if you are delivering greater returns at lower volatility, most individuals do not have an appreciation for this. It is very much about relationship still; it is just a different kind for a different need for a different generation”
- “Part of why we think we are doing better, is flexibility. The advisor can decide what kind of model he has with his client”
- “We are not just a tech or data company or a TAMP or a robo. We are an RIA, a sub advisor, and we have a fully automated tech driven platform. We support advisors in the management of emerging affluent clients”
- “The key trends I see changing the direction of the market are social competition and tech trends – and that makes what we do particularly timely”
- “Robo advisors are here to stay. Robo advisors are demonstrating in a meaningful and clear way that you can use technology to extend services to reach a larger portion of the population and actually create relationships at an early point and generate revenue from individuals you would otherwise not be able to generate revenue from”
- "With the complex yet efficient mechanisms of the market at work, we don’t believe that money managers possess a special ability to predict market movements or can spot pricing “mistakes.” To the extent that information is not reflected in the value of equities, it’s because investors are prevented from acting on it by insider trading laws and other regulations"
- "If fund managers have no special abilities but charge higher fees than exchange-traded index funds, then they are bound to underperform. Although they have come down over the last decade, average expense ratios for equity funds in 2013 were 74 basis points (excluding front and end loads). Even ignoring loads, 74 basis points compares unfavorably to index ETF expense ratios, many of which are 1/10th as high"
- "In its research on Gen D investors (short for Generation Digital), Accenture suggests that the shift of expectations from analog to digital isn’t the exclusive province of Millennials. In fact, far from it. They identify 75.0 million people representing 44% of the US population and nearly $27.0 trillion in assets. According to Accenture, Gen D is comprised of 26% Millennials, 48% Gen Xers, and 25% Boomers"
- "Poor customer experience and a lack of simplicity, clarity, and guarantee of service are now directly impacting client behavior and decisions regarding wealth managers"
- "The regulatory industry is needed, but it can be an innovation killer. We need to make sure any institution we partner with values innovation as much as we do and has a culture that is compatible with out own”
Kevin Knull
(President, PIETech)
Mr. Knull's recent comments have included:
- “We are the number one financial planning software but you may not have heard of us because we are typically white labeled by our clients and only available through financial advisors”
- “Our clients range through all channels and we have done a really good job in covering all in a meaningful way”
- “We started out by saying that the plan should be the center of the universe. Who wins the client? The one with the plan? Or the one with the investment strategy? The advisor who has the plan gets 85% of the wallet share”
- “When baby boomers become widowed, they are going to go to the advisor with the plan in place”
- “Everything we do is built around client engagement. If you do not engage the client, you lose the client”
- “At the end of the day, some will gravitate towards tech solutions while some will gravitate to personal connection. The challenge is that the robo advisors have not been tested”
- “Consider the 100 basis points you charge your client. What percent is allocated to asset management? The vast majority is allocated to managing the client. Probably 10-25% is asset management. The robo advisor model is replacing some of the back office as well as asset management component”
- "Since MoneyGuidePro began, we have been focused on one key word: engage. We want to help you engage your clients"
- "The war for maintaining the best client relationship is not going to be who can provide the prettiest portal or who can provide a ten-basis point additional return; it is going to be who can engage the clients best"
- "Would you rather be saying to your client when the market drops 300 points, here is what your account value is, or would you rather center the conversation and say let us check and see if your plan is still on track?"
- "We will integrate with everyone. We are impartial"
- "Everyone is so focused on the portal and the vault. We do not necessarily believe that it is necessary to be built within the financial planning software. Why? Because you all should control the data at your firms"
Bo
Lu
(CEO,
FutureAdvisor)
Mr. Lu's recent comments have included:
- “We have an opportunity to define what wealth management should be”
- “Because we are machine dominated, there are things that we are good at and things that we are bad at. In the next six to eight months, there will be a series of launches focused on machine dominated strengths”
- “In general I am not concerned about Vanguard, Schwab, etc. getting into the robo space”
- “A fast search team will outpace a slower build team”
- "Mutual funds and ETFs charge fees to pay for operating expenses and to pay their managers (who make a lot of money). These fees, taken from your retirement savings, is what pays for the buildings and annual bonuses. We too understand that it takes money to run a mutual fund or ETF, but imagine if you were paying ten times what your neighbor paid for identical auto insurance. That happens every day in mutual funds"
- "The Vanguard Group is a great example of a mutual fund company that has many mutual funds that are equal in expense, and even sometimes less expensive, than most ETF counterparts"
- "Research shows that real estate investment trusts (REITs) bring unique value to a portfolio. because it has relatively low correlation with stocks and bonds in general, and yet it has high returns like stocks. REITs are more an asset class than a sector, and has unique traits, because it lets retail investors (that is us) own a slice of corporate real estate nationwide, or worldwide."
- "There is a lot more to our vision of bringing turnkey financial management to everyday American households than just the long-term investment piece that is available today. You can expect us to expand in the future both in terms of the financial goals we help households with, and the breadth of financial instruments we help advise on"
- "There are 32 million mass-affluent Americans with assets between $100,000 and $1 million, and only 20% have an advisor. 60% of families with more than $1 million in investable assets already work with a financial advisor. 80% of our clients never have had an advisor. No ecosystem has ever served these people. That is a big gap that is artificial and made by economics. We want to bring the penetration up to where it is for affluent, and that is a 14 million household opportunity"
Jeff
Maggioncalda
(CEO,
Financial Engines)
Jeff Maggioncalda is CEO of Financial Engines, a role he has held since 1996. He has served as board director since 1997. He is responsible for the overall management of the firm and has over twenty years of experience in the financial services industry. Mr. Maggioncalda has led Financial Engines from its founding through its initial public offering in Marh 2010 to today where it is one of the largest independent registered investment advisors in the US with over $98.0 billion in assets under management. Previously, Mr. Maggioncalda worked at McKinsey & Company in their high technology practice and at Cornerstone Research conducting securities and software litigation consulting. Mr. Maggioncalda is a member the board of directors of the SVB Financial Group & Silicon Valley Bank.
Mr. Maggioncalda's comments included:
- “When it comes to innovation pattern, if a small firm figures something out, then a big company exploits it”
- “Things change really rapidly when one big player moves and then the others’ hands are forced”
- “Questions to ask are, is it valuable? Is it different?”
- “The value of creating a diversified account is very high and the price is hitting rock bottom. It is just not different enough”
- “Bad economics and disintermediation do not have to go together”
- "There is a way to create a real business via an online service that serves low-balance accounts. For all the economics to work you need low cost acquisition, a low cost service model, & a relationship with the end client"
- “We have a whole generation of people approaching an important point in their lives where they need to think about retirement, at a time when public policy has shifted all responsibility for retirement onto their shoulders”
- “Financial Engines’ long term vision is predicated on demographics. That is far more enduring and inevitable than any kind of technology trend”
- “The decision to manage money is key. What is interesting about this is that it is the same underlying technology in terms of engines; it is the same target customer, which is the employee 401K plan; it is the same distribution strategy, which is through the workplace. It actually is all the same, but previously we just did not have the killer app that everybody wanted”
- “The way we came up with managed accounts is that we were scratching our heads saying, ‘why is there not more people using online advice?’ We went out and started interviewing people and basically found that they do not want to go online and do this. So we wondered what if we take all the same engines, methodology, and everything else, but create a vision of the service where we will take care of this for our customers”
Bill
McNabb
(CEO,
The Vanguard Group)
Mr. McNabb's recent comments have included:
- “Strategy follows structure. Everything we do can be explained by structure. We are owned by the clients so we measure success by the net return to the investor”
- “On the plane here I sat next to a two year old in 32D. I do not have any status with United”
- “About 10% of what we do is non-US. We are trying to build our model outside the US”
- “Cost is a predictor of future performance; I think this will affect all sectors”
- “In the early days most mutual funds were sold though advisors and on commission. Today about 80% of advisors have a fee-based model – this has put a lot of downward pressure on product providers”
- “You are going to see a lot of pressure on margins in the advice channels. The 150 basis point wrap is not going to be sustainable”
- “We think there is a way to do advice for the mass affluent at a much lower price point”
- “401K plans are away too complicated and we are going to see a simplification of plan features and investment offers”
- “At the end of the day indexing works because the cost, implicit and explicit, is so much lower than active management”
- "You know the core of our investment philosophy has really been very consistent for 40 years now and it is—you need to know your goals. You need to implement your portfolio in a balanced and very diversified way. You need to pay attention to cost, and very importantly, you need to have a long-term perspective. I would say those big principles have not changed, and we do not see any reason for them to change"
- "Balance and diversification—we think about that a little bit differently today than we did 10, 15, 20 years ago, and we recommend to our investors to have, for example, much broader exposure in the equity markets to non-U.S. stocks... the international markets have grown to be a much more important component of overall financial markets, and if you really want to have broad exposure to equities, you need to have a pretty significant international component."
- "Client ownership has been a very powerful driver of our culture. All of us who work here know that we only work for one constituency, and that is the client. And that is always first and foremost, and that culture is a really important element... to reinforce that culture, we really try to go out and hire the kind of people who want to be in that client-first environment"
- "You can never be satisfied with what you are doing from a service perspective or an investment perspective. We come to work every day asking ourselves, 'What can we do better? What can we do better?'"
- "Growth is never an objective. Our objective, when we talk about it with our fellow crew members, is we want to be the best place for people to invest, and we say that over and over again to our folks. We do not talk about being the biggest. That has never been the goal; the goal has been to be the best, and what you find is if you do things really well, growth kind of takes care of itself"
Bill Miller
(Chief Investment Officer, Brinker Capital)
Mr. Miller's recent comments have included:
- "Our
Crystal Strategy delivers precisely what advisors have been asking for
because it was designed to solve their clients’ issues with more
traditional absolute return products. No similar investment strategy
exists in the financial arena in a separate account format, which makes
us confident about the Crystal Strategy’s relevance to today’s
investment environment"
- “More recently we have gained traction in the RIA space”
- “One thing Chuck Widger has done is eloquently integrated behavioral finance with goals-based investing”
- “Usually when clients come in, they are upset about one thing or another. The Boston Consulting Group looked at wages, productivity, energy cost, & exchange rates... they ranked Mexico and the United States as rising stars. You want your clients to see this”
- “We believe that we are still vulnerable to a flash crash”
- “I was told that I should buy Phillip Morris. I sat there mesmerized. For decades to follow, I said there is no way I can invest in SRI. Little did I know that Phillip Morris would write checks for billions for issues that their business created”
- “There is no performance penalty if you invest in SRI. This has enormous implications for our industry”
- “The definitive answer I believe is that social responsible strategies will not hurt your investment”
- “My
biggest concern is that things will get ugly first in Europe. Interest
rates are already lower than when Napoleon was walking around the field”
- "We
believe that the Witherspoon Fund is taking the right approach to
managed futures. The Commodities Corporation history and strategy
embodied in it means a lot to us. We think the new fund is well
positioned to meet its investment objectives"
- "The US Economy continues to do better than what US economists expect"
- "Another
important item when it comes to looking at any equity market or
specific security, is what it is worth, is it a good deal or bad deal?
Generally speaking, Europe is cheaper than the other developed leaders
such as the United States & Japan - not by a wide margin, but it is
notable"
- "Analysts
are in the business of forecasing future years' profits. In 2014
analysts are actually looking for a faster gorwth rate in earnings in
Europe than they are in the United States or Japan"
Sanjiv
Mirchandani
(President,
National Financial Services)
Mr. Mirchandani's recent comments have included:
- “Which channel’s value proposition will connect the best with the changing consumer? Demographics are going to drive the business going forward. People underestimate the illiquid assets. There will be a tsunami of cash”
- “Generations Xers have behaved a little bit like a depression era generation”
- “Consumers do not want to compromise between high tech and high touch”
- “Firms will be winners who follow the right strategies”
- “Wirehouses have a narrow focus to high net worth clients but you have to find a way to scale across”
- “I agree that there are many wonderful advisors. If you were an investor, I believe you would come to wildly different answers in talking to various advisors”
- “We have had a fair amount of success hiring young people, the vast majority of which reach a higher level by growing from within”
- "2013 was a good year for the retail brokerage business. As our clients’ results improved, so did ours, even without any short-term interest rate help"
- "The weak players have been winnowed out of the broker dealer business, in part because the regulators have been busy, leading to increased consolidation pressures in the industry"
- "Given halfway decent markets in 2014, there is a tremendous opportunity this year for the independent broker dealer business, though investors’ underlying skitttishness might send them back out of the market"
- "This can not be a business where only baby boomer advisors serve boomer clients"
- "Yesterday’s advice model presented a simple choice for investors. They could either do it themselves using online tools and a discount broker, or they could work with an advisor. Today we are seeing a significant convergence of the two models"
Charles Moldow
(General Partner, Foundation Capital)
Mr. Moldow's recent comments have included:
- “Peer-to-peer lending will be a trillion dollar market by 2025”
- “Financial services is a key engine of our economy and is growing faster than tech and healthcare”
- “What I see is that there is a generation that has created a lot of wealth in Silicon Valley, with engineering degrees. They approach things in a very data intensive manner, applying engineering philosophy to investing”
- “Certain themes hold to a generation: transparency, simplicity, convenience, mobility, where we see 60-70% mobile usage even if it is not a mobile centric product”
- "Today technology and innovation are making possible a new generation of financial services that are more affordable and more available. That is why we believe what we are calling marketplace lending will be a trillion dollar market by the people, for the people"
- "We believe that when lending activity is taken off of the books of big banks, there will be much less need for government to backstop those banks – thereby rendering irrelevant the concept of too big to fail"
- "Successful players will out-FICO FICO and be fairer than Fair Isaac"
- "Marketplace platforms are neither easy to start nor easy to scale"
- "Marketplace lenders should be built not just to disrupt but to displace"
Jim
Nagengast
(CEO,
Securities America)
Mr. Nagengast's recent comments have included:
- “We are helping advisors become the experts in their community in retirement income distribution”
- “In terms of acquisitions, we have targeted the small broker dealer wind-down. Anywhere from 5-20 million, like recruiting a large branch”
- “Insurance owned broker dealers will face challenges because it is not their primary business”
- “I do not agree that the majority of advisors are not well trained. We spend a lot of money on continuing education, conferences, training... it is not that we are not trying our hardest”
- "[Ethics] is about doing the right thing when no one is looking. It is about treating people how you want to be treated"
- "In [Omaha] your word means something, you can still get a lot done on your word"
- "If you have built up years of trust you can get things done very quickly"
- "We frequently challenge our assumptions by asking ourselves would we recommend this to our loved ones?"
- "It is all about respect. When you treat people with respect it builds trust and allows us to be more effective. We are able to get things done faster when employees and clients are not second guessing our decisions"
Liz
Nesvold
(Managing
Partner, Silver Lane Advisors)
Ms. Nesvold's recent comments have included:
- “One consistent theme we see is that people often have not done enough planning in their own businesses”
- “You have to think about getting the right people on the bus first, then getting them in the right seat, then about the ownership”
- "The financial world’s increasing focus on the wealth management industry will result in a rapid and significant transition from a cottage industry to a relatively consolidated and considerably more aggressive busines"
- "Peter Raimondi has built a sizable business in a short period of time. I expect he will take some time to digest the combination and then get back to business on the deal front with Boston Private's capital resources"
- "In today's business climate, where scale is critical, this deal between Mertiage Capital and Centennial Partners represents a precursor of the merger activity to come. Marrying two hedge fund of fund platforms is no small undertaking, and their longstanding relationship as industry peers created the foundation for a strong combination"
- “I think it is hard for somebody in their 20s to pair up with Decembers because these are people who are trying to build their valuable skill sets. They may be looking at bigger platforms to get their footing"
- "Sometimes clients have told me things that I am 100% sure they would have not told a man. The work-life balance is challenging, while we see a lot of young women come into the profession, we do not see that many senior women stay the course"
Andrew
Rogers
(CEO,
Gemini Fund Services)
Mr. Rogers' recent comments have included:
- “The regulatory environment for leverage is inadequate”
- “One of the challenges is, how are the regulators going to interpret what leverage is?”
- “The real goal for alternative funds is smoothing volatility. And they can smooth volatility within the fund with some kind of hedge type strategy or it could be an alternative asset class that is not correlated to the broad based benchmarks”
- “Managed futures funds are going to have a renaissance”
- "One of the main things we focus on when a client first comes to me to start a fund, besides developing a values statement, is sales strategy. Financial advisers are usually used to working one-on-one with their clients. But if you really want to have a successful mutual fund with significant assets, you are working with more of a retail based solution. It is much more important to develop a successful sales & marketing process and a business plan"
- "More board members are going with online and technologically driven board books. Most of the reporting we do can be accessed on the iPad so it really provides an efficient way to access this information. We are definitely embracing the mobile technology out there and using it more and more"
- "The JOBS Act now allows hedge funds to advertise. This is ultimately, I think, a good thing because they can now promote their performance and advisors can show clients how well certain strategies that they now have access to are performing"
- "As tax rates rise, more interest is once again in variable annuities. It is a brand new market for alternative strategies, and the variable annuity market is still larger than the ETF market, although the latter seems to get more attention"
- "People are coming up with different mutual funds that have lower risk. Investors have been requesting these types of funds that are more wealth preservation with liquid alternatives. It is very hard to launch a large-cap-growth fund. That is not going to go anywhere when you are competing against The Vanguard Group, and that is why advisors are launching these alternative funds for their clients"
Larry
Roth
(CEO,
Realty Capital Securities)
Mr. Roth's recent comments have included:
- “We are very excited about the IBD space and currently affiliated with 10,000 financial advisors and $240 billion AUA. We really love this space for a bunch of reasons. Investors are underserved. The revenue model is about 70% recurring, expense model 80% variable. The model itself has some built in shock absorbers”
- “We are looking at products and platforms differently. Our intention is to be a much more dynamic organization going forward”
- “One of the challenges is many advisors with good practices are not inclined to change. What they do is not designed for the next twenty years of their client’s life. We can do a better job of helping them understand how to better server their client”
- “The regulators do not like some of the solutions that are out there. Also there are not that many options for advisors with average clients in their 60s, working as long as they can improve their standing”
- “I think Uber is going to be a complete failure”
- "We want to more than double where we are now. The goal is to have 20,000 or more advisers in three to five years. The big picture plan is to build the leading open architecture, financial advisory firm in the country"
- "We are going to continue to grow through recruiting and organic growth. And we want additional acquisitions"
- "We have a master plan, and me having this job was not in the plan. Valerie [Brown] deciding to leave is something we had to act on quickly. I am excited to lead the business, and that was absolutely not in cards until two days ago. She is one of the brightest people I have ever met. I respect her very much"
- "Most of the $60 million [in potential savings] comes from the revenue synergies and work with product vendors, both investment and technology products"
- "I have always been kind of a pain in everybody’s backside [at AIG] with my Saturday and Sunday calls and emails and never knowing what time zone they are in. But that is kind of the culture at ARC"
Matt
Scanlan
(CEO, RS Investments)
Mr. Scanlan's recent comments have included:
- “The fact that we have so many different types of clients gives us terrific insight on discerning trends and recognizing challenges”
- “The retirement benefits crisis is a big dark cloud that hangs over our entire industry”
- “In our view, all three legs, government subsidies, personal savings, & company sponsored plans are buckling under the tremendous weight of demographics. Most people are woefully unprepared to live a long life and do not have the financial resources to do so”
- “The average baby boomer has less than $100,000 in savings outside home equity”
- “Pension plans are tremendously underfunded. They will unfortunately continue to decline. They are being replaced with 401K. The problem with 401K is options are not holistic. There is a lack of education, resulting in less than optimum retirement security. Also very few are annuitized”
- “We see a growing appetite for products that are more holistic in nature. We are also seeing a threefold increase in investors demanding growth and income funds as well as global macro funds which take advantage of risk adjusted returns and offer opportunities to capitalize on other economies & interest rates”
- “Benchmark focus solutions are not going away, as exhibited by the growth of ETFs”
- “Investors are looking for managers that are going to outperform. The problem is there are many claiming to do it but few with the actual skill. Investors need to do as much due diligence as possible. It takes a lot of time and interest and skill; not many managers have the wherewithal to do that. The investors that do find them pay higher fees but we find that it is quite worth it when you find highly skilled managers”
- “For optimization, the key is to get a diversified set & then give managers enough time to perform. You must look at how consistent their investment philosophy has been over the years”
- "Giving a fund one year or two years to perform is woefully inadequate. At least five years should be given to a highly skilled manager. It makes sense to give them enough time to demonstrate skill”
- “People are anxious to experiment and try managers that offer something outside the ordinary”
- “When you do not have any tools, the first one is better than anything before. Targeted funds are a massive improvement over having to sort through 15 or 16 options. Are they perfect? Far from it”
- “Younger investors are probably going to be working longer, voluntarily. If we could move social security back five years, we could keep that going longer. There is no need for government stipends to kick in so early”
- “Let us hope and pray that we do not go back to 2007-2008. This time we have less tools to deal with it and more retirees”
- "RS is well-positioned today as a result of the firm's well-established culture of investment excellence and its unwavering commitment to serving clients"
- "We are intensely focused today on expanding our capabilities to fit our clients' evolving investment needs"
- "We continuously strive to provide our clients with investment management solutions that match their growing asset allocation needs"
- "Mike [Reynal] has brought a strong investment philosophy to our emerging markets offerings, combining quantitative analysis and fundamental research with a disciplined risk management process to find companies across the market cap spectrum. We are excited to be able to leverage this investment approach with our new small-cap fund"
- "By transitioning the GNR Team to SailingStone, we are able to ensure that our clients will continue to benefit from the GNR strategy while primarily focusing our in-house strategies on our broad investor base"
Ron
Suber
(President,
Prosper Marketplace)
Mr. Suber's recent comments have included:
- “We got to one billion in eight years – and two billion in eight months”
- “Millenials are telling us this is the way – with people and with technology”
- “Sometimes clients say why are you calling me, the reason I do business with you is because I do not want to talk to someone”
- “Marketplace lending is about trust and transparency”
- “There are going to be a lot more coffee shops because bank branches are going to close”
- “Everybody regulates us. We file as if we are a public company. We are SEC registered. We also register with every state we do business with. We proactively work with every regulatory body possible”
- “Why do we not skip investors and do it ourselves? Because running a business is harder than it looks! We decided to create this public marketplace, and just be good at that one thing”
- "In our country, there are two major players in the peer-to-peer finance space, or the online direct consumer space. It is Prosper Marketplace and Lending Club. We are roughly one quarter Lending Club's size. In the United Kingdom, there are three major players, and then there are fifteen other marketplaces or exchanges around the world in Asia and Latin America, and other parts of Europe that are helping borrowers and lenders meet & exchange credit"
- "We are hearing from many financial planners and wealth managers that they are putting a portion of their clients' assets in the fixed income category into peer-to-peer finance loans, and I can tell you why in two quick numbers. First, if you look at the aggregate US bond market, and the index of it, the one-year performance is -2.02%, as of today. If they had invested the portion in peer-to-peer finance, and done a diversified index portfolio, the yield would be roughly 8% for that same one-year period. Second, if we look at the one-month period, the aggregate US bond market index was down, -0.57%, but if you had indexed the peer-to-peer platform, Prosper Marketkplace, in a diversified index portfolio, the yield for that one-month period would be positive 0.60%, so up more than one half of one percent for the one-month period"
- "We think that diversification is key for all lenders, and we work very closely with lenders. If we see somebody come on with too small of an account to get diversified, if they cannot purchase more than 100 loans, we do not think they are diversified, and we are really working with them to ensure they understand the need for diversification, and we are really making sure that people understand the need to invest over time to have a balanced, diversified portfolio"
- "We think that these online market places for credit are a blend of both retail and institutional investors. We are actually very focused now on adding additional retail investors, even more so than before, so we are working today with some great investment advisors and wealth managers who are helping retail investors gain access to Prosper Marketplace"
- "What really excites me is the opportunity to work with my current teammates and the new people joining Prosper Marketplace. We have very talented people out of college, people in the middle of their careers and people leaving big successful technology and finance firms with PhDs. There are people coming from all over the world to work with us. I am excited about the brand new office that we are building for the Prosper team. We hope to move there in December. This is more than work for me; it is my passion"
Jon
Sundt
(CEO, Altegris Investments)
Mr. Sundt's recent comments have included:
- “Several hedge funds have had a franchise on the market, but that is changing over the next five years as thousands of hedge funds become able to show long term track records”
- “Hedge funds are transitioning to the liquid alt side; they want to get into a business where that have legacy”
- “Private equity is still not distributed to the retail investor”
- “The biggest intellectual challenge in the liquid alt world is, how do you analyze returns?”
- “There is a bifurcation occurring between liquid and illiquid investments”
- "I was one of the forerunners of bringing true, high-quality, best-of-breed managers to the market. The problem that most advisors have is how do they know if these managers are any good?"
- "The right type of long/short manager will not necessarily get clobbered during down days, because he has a low correlation to long-only equities. That is the key. They come into the market maybe long gold, short crude oil, long US equities or short US equities; our software lets us follow them in real time"
- "I think it is becoming more of a stock pickers market, not a market that you can just replicate by being in an index fund. Stock selection as measured by dispersion and correlations is now becoming more important. You can still build the argument that there are stocks that are going to go up. You have got an accommodating fed policy that looks like it will continue to provide a wind at the back of equities, but I think stock selection is key now"
- "Two strategies that you can find in our mutual funds are long/short equities and long/short credit. You can approach the market and say “Look, I want to be exposed to the equities market, but I want a manager that has the mandate to be able to pull out, go to the sidelines, hedge, or manage risk through shorting the market.” So that is a long/short equity manager and we build products around those type of managers"
- "Today's investors face unprecedented challenges in the markets; with stocks at record highs and interest rates at all-time lows, they are looking for guidance to deploy capital into the markets with confidence"
Todd
Thomson
(Chairman,
Dynasty Financial Partners)
Mr. Thomson's recent comments have included:
- “Dynasty is not an aggregator but a liberator and a growth partner”
- “The historical model for wealth management is broken. Innovation is happening and allowing fragmentation of the industry”
- “We want to attract those firms that want to be the consolidators and growers in this industry”
- “If you are a breakaway broker and going to start your own firm; you need a name; branding materials; marketing, budgeting, web, strategy, etc... we provide that capability to allow them to walk out and walk into a functional office”
- “We are not trying to convince people to be entrepreneurs”
- "There is a lot of back-and-forth movement of executives, entertainers, athletes and the like across the US & Canada border, yet the financial services industries of the two countries are quite separate"
- "What I came to realize was that the right way to serve clients was to serve them in an open-architecture, independent way. Over time, you would expect that to be the winning model"
- "As an independent advisor, you now have access to better products and better thinking and better technology than on Wall Street; that is a revolutionary change that is happened in the last 20 or 30 years"
- "The more I looked at the wealth management industry and evaluated potential acquisitions, the more clear it became that there was a screaming need for a business to serve those corner office advisors with wealthy, sophisticated clients who are independent or want to leave a wirehouse or bank and go independent"
- "Independent advisors will continue to grow and take share. What I believe is going to happen over the next ten years is you are going to see an acceleration of the larger teams with larger more sophisticated clients choosing to operate as independents"
Derek
Young
(Vice
Chairman, Pyramis Global Advisors)
Derek Young is Vice Chairman of Pyramis Global Advisors and president of Global Asset Allocation at Fidelity Investments. Mr. Young joined Fidelity Investments in 1996 as director of risk management for Fidelity Management Trust Company (FMTC). Since then he has held a variety of positions across the firm with increasing levels of responsibility and management oversight, including senior vice president of Strategic Investment Services and Marketing for FMTC, head of Fidelity Investment's US Asset Allocation Committee, and co-manager of numerous mutual funds, including the Strategic Funds family and the Asset Manager Funds. Prior to his present role, Mr.Young was chief investment officer of Fidelity's Global Asset Allocation division from 2009 to 2011. Before joining Fidelity, Mr. Young was a manager in the risk strategy consulting practice for KPMG. From 1991 to 1995, he worked for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve as a senior financial analyst and then as a supervisory financial analyst. Mr. Young began his career as a vice president at Empire Financial Services in 1986.
Mr. Young's recent comments have included:
- “What is going on in the markets right now? We are in midcycle. Very good for equities. I still believe the US looks phenomenally good compared to Europe, China, and Japan”
- “Positives in China are credit oriented. They are extending credit to promote growth. This is a very dangerous situation”
- “There is a negative correlation between stocks & bonds. We build portfolios for clients all about diversification. Investment grade bonds are great right now. Balancing is a very powerful tool that we all have to take advantage. Diversification is beginning to work again. This is very important after 2008”
- “Since 2008 there is an anticipation of regret. There are tremendous equity returns but not a lot of reentry”
- “When people are scared it creates a good opportunity for equity”
- “There is no way the Fed is going to create a deflationary environment”
- “From Fidelity’s perspective, you have to lose money to make money. Lower dollar clients we lose money on, but we are creating a model where we give the client what we want”
- “I worry about where we are in the bond market. What happens is, in times of crisis you will see volatility where it did not exist previously”
- “Target dates funds are so important to me. A scatter poll would show that before target date funds, people either had all cash or all equities. After the introduction of target dates funds, you can see much more of a movement to the appropriate aged spaced allocation. As boomers age, we see them exit to managed accounts. I would argue that they are fulfilling their purpose, to help investors get enough wealth to exit”
- “My single biggest concern is that the Fed makes the wrong move. The idea of pushing this country in a deflationary environment scares me to death”
- “The questions for a young person are the same. The answers are different. How much willingness the younger generation has to trust is a factor. Collectively we have to figure out how to gain that trust. We have to reengage and win back confidence”
- “I have a lot of respect for central banks but government involvement is one of those issues that I take great concern with because what you are seeing is artificial stimulation”
- “There is significant corruption in the Chinese markets. They are now beginning to take it seriously and face off on it. This is a long-term game and they have significant issues in the next decade. This is all part of it being a growing economy”
- “It has been a real challenge in the last five years to keep people in the right frame of mind, focused on long-term”
- "Individuals fear running out of money more than death itself"
- "I am much more thinking about our long term views for those saving for retirement, saving for college, et cetera. And, basically I love the U.S, still. I think the U.S. equity market is a good market for our shareholders to be in"
Attendees
Tiburon is pleased to announce that the following 203 Tiburon clients attended Tiburon CEO Summit XXVII:
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Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI: April 8-9, 2014
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI was held April 8-9, 2014, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York, NY. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI officially started at 7:45am on Tuesday, April 8, 2014, included a group dinner that night and finished at 2:45pm on Wednesday, April 9, 2014. Senior industry executives took two days out of their busy schedules to participate. There were over twenty sessions. Along with Tiburon's Managing Partner Chip Roame, Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI included panelists Rob Arnott (CEO, Research Affiliates), Ron Baron (CEO, Baron Capital Group), Jud Bergman (CEO, Envestnet), Rich Bernstein (CEO, Richard Bernstein Advisors), Jack Bogle (Founder, The Vanguard Group), David Booth (Co-CEO, Dimensional Fund Advisors), Dick Burridge (CEO, RMB Capital), Mark Casady (CEO, LPL Financial), Scott Curtis (President, Raymond James Financial Services), Ed Finn (Editor, Barron's), Rob Francais (CEO, Aspiriant), Jane Gladstone (Senior Managing Director, Evercore Partners), Bill Harris (CEO, Personal Capital Corporation), Ben Hochberg (Partner, Lee Equity Partners), Bob Huret (Founding Partner, FTV Capital), Paul Ingersoll (CEO, Good Harbor Financial), Jonathan Korngold (Managing Director, General Atlantic), Tom Lee (CEO, Lee Equity Partners), Mary Mack (President, Wells Fargo Advisors), Harry Markowitz (President, Harry Markowitz & Associates & Nobel Prize Winner in Economics), Pat McClain (Co-CEO, Hanson McClain), Fielding Miller (CEO, Cap Trust Financial Advisors), Don Phillips (Managing Director, Morningstar), Peter Raimondi (CEO, Banyan Partners), Rich Repetto (Principal, Exchanges, eBrokers, & Trading Companies, Equity Research, Sandler, O'Neill & Partners), Tony Rochte (President, SelectCo Division, Fidelity Asset Management), Jim Ross (Chairman, SSGA Funds Management, State Street Global Advisors), Andrew Rudd (CEO, Advisor Software), Michael Sapir (CEO, ProShare Advisors), Jeff Saut (Chief Investment Strategist, Raymond James & Associates), Nick Schorsch (Executive Chairman, RCS Capital Corporation), Skip Schweiss (President, TD Ameritrade Trust Company), Clara Shih (CEO, Hearsay Social), Jon Stein (CEO, Betterment), Jon Stern (Managing Director, Berkshire Capital), Allen Thorpe (Managing Director, Hellman & Friedman), Mark Tibergien (CEO, Pershing Advisor Solutions), Bill Van Law (President, Investment Advisors Division, Raymond James Financial), Alexa von Tobel (CEO, LearnVest), & Derek Young (Vice Chairman, Pyramis Global Advisors). Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI also featured the firm's traditional client-centric panel discussions, three less formal break-out sessions, & two networking-based social events.
Tiburon CEO Summit
XXVI featured a keynote presentation by Tiburon Managing Partner
Chip Roame regarding the state of the financial services industry, focused on the rapid evolution being driven all across the business value chain. This
presentation served as the backdrop and overview of the entire
Tiburon CEO Summit.
Chip
Roame (Managing Partner, Tiburon Strategic Advisors)
Tiburon Strategic Advisors is pleased to provide a summary of the content of its Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI keynote presentation. Chip Roame (Managing Partner, Tiburon Strategic Advisors) kicked off Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI with a presentation broadly addressing the state of the financial services industry, with a specific focus on the growing wealth management market.
Charles ("Chip") Roame is the Managing Partner of Tiburon Strategic Advisors and a leading strategic consultant to CEOs, other senior executives, & boards of directors in the banking, insurance, brokerage, & investment management markets. Prior to forming Tiburon in 1998, Mr. Roame served in similar capacities, first as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, and later as a business strategist at The Charles Schwab Corporation. Mr. Roame is quoted daily throughout the media and, due to Tiburon's widely shared research, he may be the most frequently demanded board advisor. His particular expertise is that of corporate strategy for larger financial services firms, designing broad multi-faceted strategies and making trade-offs between alternative businesses, products, & markets.
At Tiburon, Mr. Roame has responsibility for all of the firm's consulting, research, & marketing activities which keeps him on the leading-edge of strategic initiatives in the industry's fastest growing businesses -- mutual funds, exchange traded funds, hedge funds & other alternative investments, financial planning, wealth management services, life insurance, annuities, family office services, online financial services, and the growing independent advisor markets. He has also taken a substantial interest in financial services industry venture capital & private equity opportunities and mergers & acquisitions transactions. At Tiburon, Mr. Roame has led over 1,600 client engagements for over 400 corporate clients since 1998.
Mr. Roame has won numerous awards throughout the consulting and financial services industries, including being named one of the power 25 elite by Investment News, one of the 25 most influential individuals in the advisor business by Investment Advisor magazine, & one of the five experts with the answers by Boomer Market Advisor. Tiburon has also been named one of the fastest growing companies by the San Francisco Business Times in multiple years.
Overview of Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI Keynote Presentation
The objectives of the Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI Keynote Presentation were to focus on corporate client strategies and not just industry trends, including highlighting trends that impact strategies for numerous types of corporate clients & maintain both a mid-term and a long-term lens; set an agenda for Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI, framing the dozens of “three big points”; and offer two methods of summarizing broad set of industry views including the the 50 underlying trends and the five fundamental VC & PE bets. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "five-ten years out, this industry will be fundamentally different. We are underestimating how much technology is going to change the financial services industry" and "I want to talk about corporate strategies based on real data." The basis of the Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI Keynote Presentation was industry developments (“the news”), recent Tiburon & third-party research findings, Tiburon client successful strategies, & the Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI content survey.
50 Underlying Trends
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Consumer Wealth
Consumer households have $39.5 trillion investable assets, $59.1 trillion financial assets, $91.7 trillion total assets, and $77.9 trillion of net worth. Consumer households have $39.5 trillion investable assets, up over 50% since 2008. Consumer households have $19.6 trillion retirement plan assets, up over 30% since 2008. Consumer households have $59.1 trillion financial assets, up over 50% since 2008. Consumer households have $24.7 trillion personal assets, up 10% since 2008. Consumer households have $19.4 trillion residential real estate, up over 10% since 2008 and 20% since its bottom in 2011. Consumer households have $10.0 trillion real estate equity, up over 50% since 2008 and 60% since bottoming out in 2011. Consumer households have $91.7 trillion household assets, up over 30% since 2008. Consumer households have $13.8 trillion liabilities, down 5% since 2008. Consumer households have $9.4 trillion mortgage debt, down over 10% since 2008. Consumer households have $77.9 trillion net worth, up 30% since 2008.
Consumer Wealth Concentration
Averages can mislead… the United States net worth per capita is $252,000, up 25% since 2000 and nearly at its peak of $253,000 in 2006. There are 1,645 consumer households with over $1.0 billion net worth, up from 140 in 1987. There are 132,000 consumer households with over $25 million net worth, back above its prior peak of 122,000 in 2006. There are 1.2 million consumer households with over $5.0 million net worth, back above its prior peak of 1.1 million in 2006. There are 9.6 million consumer households with over $1.0 million net worth, back above its prior peak of 9.2 million in 2007. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "12% of Americans are millionaires." Said another way, 8% of consumer households control 77% of financial assets. Wealth is concentrating further… the top 10% of earners in the United States earn 48% of income, up from 40% in 1900 and its bottom of 32% in 1960. United States’ income is more concentrated than that in European countries. The United States average income ratio of its top 10% versus the bottom 10% is 16.2x versus 5.5-6.4 at Nordic countries. Consumer household median income is $52,000, up 15% since 1970 but down since 2006. Over three-quarters of consumer households still earn less than $100,000. The US home ownership rate is 65%, down from a peak of 69% in 2005.
Baby Boomer Retirement Situation, Financial Issues, & Attitudes
Germany’s savings rate in relation to disposable income is 10% in 2014, compared to 4% from the United States. Female retiree life expectancy is 89 years, up from 84 in 1980. Male retiree life expectancy is 86, up from 80 in 1980. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day" and "your lens is only driven by how long you are going to be here. Is your bet on a couple of years or decades?" He also stated, "baby boomers now face the liquidation of their money; they just do not have any money to liquidate."
Consumer Attitudes & Behavioral Changes
The total managed accounts market, including packaged programs and RIAs, has reached $6.1 trillion. Amongst packaged managed account programs… financial advisor directed programs have been taking share from SMAs & UMAs. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that the break-away brokers trend will increase or at least remain steady over the next five years. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "deleveraging is not nearly as significant as everyone writes about." Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that TAMPs use will be steady or increase in popularity.
Rapidly Evolving Investment Products
Mr. Roame said, "flows are going to mutual funds, variable annuities, & exchange traded funds" with substantial flows of $100-$200 billion each. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that open-end mutual funds will stagnate over the next five years. The Vanguard Group, Fidelity Investments, & the other top ten mutual fund firms control over half of mutual fund assets under management. Passive equity assets (passive mutual funds & ETFs) now comprise 30% of equity mutual fund & ETF assets. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "truly active ETFs I do not think are going to happen." Passive mutual funds have gathered $961 billion assets under management, up nearly 100% since 2005. Smart beta funds have net flows of $45 billion, up from $5 billion in 2009. Exchange traded funds have net flows of $138 billion, up 400% since 2001 but down from its peak of $187 billion in 2012. Half of large-cap us stock funds beat the S&P 500 in 2013. The average active mutual fund costs six-to-seven times more than the average passive mutual fund. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "active management is here for a long time because we believe we are good at gambling (and we are not)." A thought to ponder about active management… PIMCO has the most assets under management among active ETF families, with $7.9 billion.
Alternative mutual funds gathered $37.1 billion net flows, up 150% since 2004. Institutional investor private equity portfolios had a ten year annualized return of 10.0% through 2013, better than real estate, hedge funds, & real assets. Hedge fund management fees fell to 1.37% of assets under management in 2013, after remaining steady between 1.57% and 1.62% since 2006. Hedge fund performance fees fell to 17.3% of returns in 2013, after varying between 17.7% and 18.7% since 2006. Several attendees noted that there are some exceptions. Several attendees noted that hedge funds-of-funds are expensively lame. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "hedge funds are a disaster. The more shocking is the hedge funds-of-funds. Please do not tell me you own them. Have you done the math? You will never make money owning hedge funds-of-funds."
Only one-quarter of financial advisors offer comprehensive financial planning. 529 college savings plans have gathered $205 billion assets under management, up from a start in 1998. Several attendees noted that impact investing growth will be driven by younger investors with money. Several attendees noted that long-term care pricing may exclude consumers in need.
Retail Financial Advice Trends
Several attendees noted that online & discount channels will experience high growth. Regarding trends, Mr. Roame said, "what did we do before, if goal-based investing is a trend??" and "I think the fee-only RIA trend is kind of done. Now we have the hybrid guys, and the IBDs are going to grab them."
Financial Advisors
There are 318,000 financial advisors across all channels, down from 338,909 in 2005. Independent advisors have steadily been growing as a channel at the expense of the wirehouses & regional broker/dealers. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "there are a lot of advisors who should be out of business and I think it is going to happen in the next few decades." Independent advisors have been a little less successful at capturing assets under administration from the wirehouses & regional broker/dealers. Mr. Roame stated, "if Wealthfront is super easy and Ric Edelman out markets everyone else, smaller and less sophisticated financial advisors are going to struggle to survive." Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that the independent advisor channel will take market share in the future. Specifically, Mr. Roame said, "the biggest firm in the industry has 3% market share." Primerica, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, & Wells Fargo Corporation have the most financial advisors. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, & Wells Fargo Corporation have gathered the most assets under management & administration. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that LPL Financial, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Edward Jones & Company have the most impressive financial advisor forces.
Wirehouses
UBS Wealth Management Americas has the most average assets per rep with $144 million. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that the wirehouses will allow financial advisors to have own RIAs. Almost all existing wirehouse retention deals will expire by 2019.
Fee-Based Financial Advisors (RIA Custodians)
The Charles Schwab Corporation, TD Ameritrade, & Fidelity Investments are the leading fee-based financial advisor custodians in terms of number of fee-based financial advisor clients, with 7,000, 4,700, & 3,300 respectively. The Charles Schwab Corporation & Fidelity Investments are the leading fee-based financial advisor custodians in terms of assets under administration, with $762 billion & $586 billion, respectively. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that The Charles Schwab Corporation will be the most successful custodian over the next five years. Confirming that prediction, Mr. Roame said, "Charles Schwab will be the biggest firm in assets in five years."
Independent Broker/Dealers
LPL Financial, RCS Securities, Ameriprise Financial, & a few other firms lead the independent reps market in number of financial advisors. LPL Financial, Ameriprise Financial, RCS Securities, & Raymond James Financial lead the independent reps market in assets under administration. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that LPL Financial will be the most successful independent broker/dealer over the next five years. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that National Financial Services (Fidelity Investments) will be the most successful correspondent clearing firm in the next five years.
Discount Brokerage Firms
TD Ameritrade average daily volume was 501,000, up from 390,000 in January 2013. The Charles Schwab Corporation has shifted its revenues to be increasingly generated from asset management & administration fees and net interest revenues, while trading & other revenues have relatively declined. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that they personally have self-serve (discount brokerage) investment accounts more than half of the time. Financial Engines has become the largest RIA while Wealthfront and Betterment have both gathered hundreds of millions of dollars of assets under management.
Target Marketing Tactics
Baby boomers’ pending retirement will drive more assets into the investable assets market. Almost half of millenials consider themselves to be conservative investors. Almost half of millennials believe that they spend a lot of time researching alternatives before making major purchase decisions. More than one-quarter of millennials would get a second opinion before taking their financial advisor’s advice. Over half of women reported that they know less about financial markets in relation to the average investor, twice that of their male counterparts. Women are more likely to rely on financial advisors. United States digital advertising spending is projected to be 29% of total United States advertising spending in 2015. Several attendees noted that digital marketing & big data work together.
Technology & Outsourcing Tactics
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that Envestnet will be the most successful TAMP over the next five years. Several attendees noted that LPL Financial is a successful TAMP.
The Five Fundamental VC & PE Bets
- Distribution will increasingly take economics from product manufacturing
- Closest to the client always wins - Financial advisor and do it yourself channels are probably better bets than the institutional and international channels
- Institutionally-oriented firms all rushing towards the financial advisor markets
- Ultimately independent advisors & robo advisors will integrate - Financial advisor channel smart bets include scale, aggregation, & outsourcing
- Do it yourself channel smart bets are probably those with proven economic models, substantial capital, and a multi-pronged delivery plan
- Beyond asset & wealth management, best opportunities with disruptors generally, mobile firms, and big data & predictive analytics firms
- VC & PE Bet I: bet on distribution over products
- VC & PE Bet II: bet on financial advisors & self-serve channels over institutional or international channels
- VC & PE Bet III: make scale, aggregation, or outsourcing bets
- VC & PE Bet IV: pick self-serve bets carefully; likely big fall-out rate
- VC & PE Extra Credit Bet: if insist on products, bet with logic
- VC & PE Bet V: bet on disruptors generally, mobile firms, and big data & predictive analytics firms
Elaborating on the VC & PE bets, Mr. Roame said, "if I had a buck to bet - distribution over money manager – because thou who owns a client always wins." Regarding increasing pressure on active managers to add value, Mr. Roame said, "the job of active managers is getting easier right? 40% easier because of a 40% decrease in companies traded? And therefore management fees came down? I do not think so." He also stated, "the largest & fastest growing channel is the advisor channel."
Financial services firms raised $551 million in venture capital, up 100% from 2012. Wealthfront, Personal Capital, & Motif Investing have raised the most venture capital amongst the robo advisors.
There were 54 RIA merger & acquisitions, up 50% since 2006 but down from its peak of 70 in 2010. Other RIAs have been the acquirers in half of all RIA merger & acquisition transactions in 2013, up from a low of 22% in 2012. Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI attendees said that the most successful financial advisor aggregators are Hightower, United Capital Financial Partners, & Focus Financial Partners.
Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI featured speakers & panelists, including Rob Arnott (CEO, Research Affiliates), Ron Baron (CEO, Baron Capital Group), Jud Bergman (CEO, Envestnet), Rich Bernstein (CEO, Richard Bernstein Advisors), Jack Bogle (Founder, The Vanguard Group), David Booth (Co-CEO, Dimensional Fund Advisors), Dick Burridge (CEO, RMB Capital), Mark Casady (CEO, LPL Financial), Scott Curtis (President, Raymond James Financial Services), Ed Finn (Editor, Barron's), Rob Francais (CEO, Aspiriant), Jane Gladstone (Senior Managing Director, Evercore Partners), Bill Harris (CEO, Personal Capital Corporation), Ben Hochberg (Partner, Lee Equity Partners), Bob Huret (Founding Partner, FTV Capital), Paul Ingersoll (CEO, Good Harbor Financial), Jonathan Korngold (Managing Director, General Atlantic), Tom Lee (CEO, Lee Equity Partners), Mary Mack (President, Wells Fargo Advisors), Harry Markowitz (President, Harry Markowitz & Associates & Nobel Prize Winner in Economics), Pat McClain (Co-CEO, Hanson McClain), Fielding Miller (CEO, Cap Trust Financial Advisors), Don Phillips (Managing Director, Morningstar), Peter Raimondi (CEO, Banyan Partners), Rich Repetto (Principal, Exchanges, eBrokers, & Trading Companies, Equity Research, Sandler, O'Neill & Partners), Tony Rochte (President, SelectCo Division, Fidelity Asset Management), Jim Ross (Chairman, SSGA Funds Management, State Street Global Advisors), Andrew Rudd (CEO, Advisor Software), Michael Sapir (CEO, ProShare Advisors), Jeff Saut (Chief Investment Strategist, Raymond James & Associates), Nick Schorsch (Executive Chairman, RCS Capital Corporation), Skip Schweiss (President, TD Ameritrade Trust Company), Clara Shih (CEO, Hearsay Social), Jon Stein (CEO, Betterment), Jon Stern (Managing Director, Berkshire Capital), Allen Thorpe (Managing Director, Hellman & Friedman), Mark Tibergien (CEO, Pershing Advisor Solutions), Bill Van Law (President, Investment Advisors Division, Raymond James Financial), Alexa von Tobel (CEO, LearnVest), & Derek Young (Vice Chairman, Pyramis Global Advisors).
Rob
Arnott
(CEO,
Research Affiliates)
Mr. Arnott's recent comments have included:
- “Theories represent an approximation of the real world. As long as we recognize that and that the real world is going to throw surprises and twists, the profits one can make are often found in the gaps of those two. I have spent a lifetime mining those gaps, those differences”
- “The markets are just efficient enough to confound most investors and inefficient enough to lead to lots of opportunities for thoughtful investors with sufficient spine and courage to do rather well. The challenge is a risk or discomfort premium. The markets reward a willingness to bear discomfort”
- “What I hope will happen is a marriage of neoclassical & behavioral finance. That has not happened yet. There have been some huge strides in that direction in the last dozen years”
- "The market is not passive at all from an economy or company
centric point of view"
- "Our industry, contrary to conventional wisdom, has high ethical
standards"
- "I credit [my academic & professional accomplishments] on my
urge to test ideas and see if they are true"
- "I would love to see a market where value is
really on a roll and reinforces the view that it [fundamental indexing]
does okay when growth is winning and hits the lights out when value is
winning"
- "Our business model is one of creating new
product and advancing it to the marketplace and, in effect, seeing what
sticks. Every year we try new ideas, and half of them gain traction. The
one I am most optimistic about becoming our next profit engine is the
marriage of low-volatility strategies with fundamental indexing"
Ron
Baron
(CEO,
Baron Capital Group)
Ron Baron is CEO of Baron Capital Group. Mr. Baron founded Baron Capital in 1982 and has 43 years of research experience. From 1970 to 1982, Mr. Baron worked for several brokerage firms as an institutional securities analyst. From 1966 to 1969, Mr. Baron worked at the U.S. Patent Office as a patent examiner. From 1965 to 1966, Mr. Baron worked at Georgetown University as a teaching fellow in biochemistry.
Mr. Baron's recent comments have included:
- “It is always curious to be called a legend. I would rather be described as an all-star than a legend”
- “We are in the compounding business”
- ”We are long-term investors. We find businesses that have big opportunities to become bigger. One of the things we always look for is what is this company doing that no one else can do?”
- “[Regarding Manchester United] Our time horizon is not about the next quarter but what it can become over time. We thought about it as the most popular television program in the world. 42% of soccer watchers watch Manchester United. There are 36 games a year and 85 million watch each game. They have an opportunity to monetize that they have not done before. Our company has fans all around the world”
- “We invest ten years in a publicly owned company. The average is seven-eight months. Over the long-term we have outperformed”
- "My investment philosophy is to invest for the long term in businesses that have big growth opportunities, competitive advantages that make it difficult for other people to do what they are doing, businesses that are well managed"
- "In a very high tax, slow growth economy, I want to look in high regulation economy, then I want to look for companies that are investing in themselves and getting to write off that investment, with competitive advantage. And therefore are willing to penalize current earnings, therefore their stock is going to be lower than they ordinarily would, so their business can be much bigger in the future than it is today"
- "One thing that you can not do is panic at the bottom and act contrary, to try to think what the market is going to do and make macro judgments instead of trying to be focused on your businesses. So, be focused on your businesses, number one. And try to keep the market out of what you are doing"
Jud
Bergman
(CEO,
Envestnet)
Jud Bergman is CEO of Envestnet, responsible for directing its core strategies and guiding organizational & business development. Mr. Bergman founded Envestnet in 1999 to provide web-based wealth management software and services and advanced portfolio solutions for independent advisors to better serve their affluent and high net worth clients. Mr. Bergman also serves as a trustee for Guardian's RS Investments' mutual fund family. Prior to Envestnet, Mr. Bergman was the managing director, Nuveen Mutual Funds, for Nuveen Investments, a diversified investment manager. In this role he was responsible for the profitable growth of Nuveen's mutual funds business and was a member of Nuveen's Investment Management Committee. From 1992 to 1997, Mr. Bergman directed Nuveen's corporate development activity, where he initiated the development of Nuveen's separately managed accounts business and helped guide the firm's expansion into diversified investment management beyond municipal investments.
Mr. Bergman's recent comments have included:
- “I do not know that I have ever been introduced as someone that does not have opinions before”
- “There are more financial advisors in their 70s than there are in their 20s today”
- “52% of millennials’ asset allocation is to cash”
- “Our research shows that there are five ways financial advisors add value: knowing the client, asset allocation, fund or vehicle selection process, system rebalance, & tax alpha (management)”
- “My wife (my financial planner) has discovered that in reaching the younger investors, there is a much more heavy reliance on technology. There is a strong preference towards passive low cost strategies. And for conservatism”
- "Our business is a combination of wealth management software technology, investment solutions, and back-office services. On the investment side, our core competence is not picking securities or bonds; our core competence is constructing portfolios and identifying good managers, and rebalancing those portfolios consistently in a disciplined manner"
- [Envestnet's strategic advantage is] advisors who end up doing business with a firm like Envestnet end up having a technology and operational partner. I think we do that very well. It means that we innovate and adapt our software to a variety of practice patterns"
- "I think that economies of scale are shifting rapidly in our line of business. We are seeing advisory practices with $120 to $150 million thrive on top line revenues less than $2.0 million with just two or three people in their shop"
- “Will there be capital sufficient to meet the liquidity requirements of retiring advisors?”
- “How will advances in investor-facing technology affect industry consolidation activity?”
Rich
Bernstein
(CEO,
Richard Bernstein Advisors)
Rich Bernstein is CEO of Richard Bernstein Advisors. Mr. Bernstein has nearly 30 years' experience on Wall Street, including most recently as the Chief Investment Strategist at Merrill Lynch. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch in 1988, he held positions at EF Hutton and Chase Econometrics/Interactive Data Corporation. Mr. Bernstein was voted to Institutional Investor magazine's annual All-America Research Team eighteen times, including ten as the top-ranked analyst in his category. He was also twice named to both Fortune's All-Star Analysts and to Smart Money's Power 30. Mr. Bernstein was recently named to Registered Rep’s Ten to Watch for 2012. Mr. Bernstein sits on the Alfred Sloan Foundation’s investment committee and the Hamilton College endowment’s investment committee. He also sits on he executive committee of the New York University Stern Graduate School fo Business, where he is an adjunct professor of finance.
Mr. Bernstein's comments included:
- “You have to know what you know and know what you do not know”
- “We are almost the polar opposite of a Warren Buffet”
- “I did not want to have a group of yes men. Our team is very very experienced”
- “Investors have yet to reposition portfolios”
- “Everybody knows the global credit bubble is deflating”
- “ A stark difference is that we are significantly underweighting credit-related asset classes”
- “If you are a day trader, making money is essentially flipping a coin. The probability is 50/50. Intra day probability of losing money has to be even higher. If you are consistently making money as a high-frequency trader, you have to be cheating. The statistics are so against it”
- "Bull markets are not periods of wine & roses; fear & indecision dominate the first seven innings of most bull markets”
- "Investors are not very good at identifying bull markets until the eighth inning. The average investor has underperformed all asset classes except Japan. Investors even underperformed cash; they would have been better with their cash under their mattress”
- “Sure signs of a market top and bear market include the fed tightening too much and an inverted yield curve, significant overvaluation, and euphoria for asset class of choice”
Jack
Bogle
(Founder,
The Vanguard Group)
John Bogle is Founder of The Vanguard Group. Mr. Bogle
founded The Vanguard Group in 1974, served as chairman & CEO
until 1996 and senior chairman until 2000, and today serves as the
president of Vanguard's
Mr. Bogle's recent comments have included:
- “Indexing was only one of the four most disruptive innovations in the mutual fund industry history (others were mutualization, no–load distribution, & defined-maturity bond funds)”
- “The only thing that happened overnight was to find the maturity of our bond funds. – series funds. Sometimes things work out in different ways than you would expect”
- “Sometimes a little patience is required. Not, dare I add, my strong suit”
- “I do not brag about our size; it makes me more nervous than positive. Look, what do you think two trillion dollars of assets means to someone who has written book called Enough?”
- “I am still so damn competitive, I am embarrassed... but I get over it quickly. We are now larger than our second & third competitors combined”
- “Doing the right thing for investors. At Vanguard I had two rules of market share: one, market share must be earned and not bought. If you do the right thing the world will beat down your door. Two, market share is a measure and not an objective. If you are hitting the proper note for the investing public, it will grow”
- “We have been on the right side of history. I am not going to write an eleventh book but if I did, it would be called Mistakes I Made and it would be the longest book I have ever written”
- “The drive for index funds is a mysterious dichotomy as you all know. Just as active management becomes like passive indexing, so passive indexing becomes more like active management”
- “The ETF raises serious questions about what indexing is all about. ETFs are the greatest marketing idea in the 21st century but I doubt very much that they are the best investing idea”
- “From the very beginning of Vanguard, we focused on relative predictability. We did not want the money to pour in on the up side and pour out on the down side”
- “I have no insights other than these simple ones. One idea – that goes back to 1776, from Adam Smith: the interest of the consumer must be the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce”
David Booth
(Co-CEO, Dimensional Fund Advisors)
David Booth is Co-CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors. Mr. Booth founded Dimensional Fund Advisors in 1981 to provide access to small capitalization stocks, which were largely underrepresented in institutional portofolios at the time. Many of Mr. Booth's original concepts underpin Dimensional's overall strategy and his problem-solving innovations for clients set the firm apart from its competitors. As Chairman and Co-CEO of the $350 billion assets under management firm today, Mr. Booth continues to focus on the firm's key corporate initiatives and strategic long-range planning. Mr. Booth won the Financial Analysts Journal's Graham & Dodd Award of Excellence (with Gene Fama) in 1992. In 2010, Investment News named Mr. Booth as one of The Power 20 in the financial services industry, and Mutual Fund Wire ranked him 12th in its list of the 100 Most Influential People in mutual funds.
Mr. Booth's recent comments have included:
- “Arguably we were the first to come out with small cap funds as an asset category”
- “We started very economically. Our first office was my apartment”
- “I think of us as two parts to the story: One, good academic research & a particular point of view about the markets and two, implementation. Is the market being served at a decent cost? If it is then we leave it alone”
- “When we started the firm, a lot of people were skeptical. [Gene] Fama gave us a 50/50 shot if we could make it”
- “My view is similar to Tom Sawyer... surround yourself with people that are a lot brighter than you are”
- “I was going to become a professor but dropped out of the program, which worked out not only to my advantage but to the advantage of the University of Chicago”
- “How do you get the first clients? It was from the assistance we were given and the personal liability individuals took on just to help out, like working for Gene Fama as a research assistant. The University of Chicago gave me a great opportunity”
- It is unnerving to clients to say we found something new to worry about, but they also expect us to do that. They want us to do the best we can. Hopefully we are always continually improving”
- “Looking at historical data allows insights into the past”
- “People that have lots of money are concerned about longevity – if you plan well you can give your money away while you are above ground, which is a lot more fun”
- “I worry about having a big screw up in the firm and hearing people say, ‘how can you not have foreseen that?’”
- “It is nice when the markets are up. People say, thank you and wave at you, and they use all their fingers to do so”
- "The top down approach does not work anymore"
- "Financial services is becoming more integrated"
- "Most innovation comes from the academic world"
- "Our basic investment philosopy transends cultural barriers"
Dick Burridge
(CEO,
RMB Capital)
Dick Burridge is CEO of RMB Capital. His career spans more than 25 years in the financial industry, including tenure as one of the top advisors of a Fortune 100 company. In 2005, Mr. Burridge co-founded RMB Capital in order to establish an independent firm. This allowed him to gain freedom from corporate conflicts of interest and make the best investment decisions for each individual client while serving them with the highest level of care. At RMB Capital, Mr. Burridge sets investment policy, oversees all portfolio management activity, and directs clients' asset allocations. Mr. Burridge & RMB Capital have received remarkable accolades from several prominent publications, including Forbes, Chicago Magazine, and Barron's Top 100 Investment Advisors. Mr. Burridge currently serves on the board of the Burridge Center for Finance at Colorado University.
Mr. Burridge's recent comments have included:
- "As a firm with an entrepreneurial spirit and a focus on client service, we are continually looking to expand on the investment solutions we are able to offer"
- "We strongly believe that alternative investments have a place in most qualified investors’ asset allocations"
- "We have an entrepreneurial and collaborative culture"
- "The entire team does an excellent job of remaining focused on each client’s best interests while putting our holistic wealth management approach and our disciplined investment philosophy into practice on a daily basis"
- "I truly believe our model positions clients for long-term success, and we look forward to serving our clients for many generations to come"
Mark
Casady
(CEO,
LPL Financial)
Mark Casady is Chairman and CEO of LPL Financial. Before joining the firm in 2002, Mr. Casady was managing director of the mutual funds group at Deutsche Asset Management, Americas (formerly Scudder Investments). He was also a member of the Scudder, Stevens, & Clark board of directors and management committee. Prior to Scudder Investments, Mr. Casady held roles at Concord Financial Group and Northern Trust. Mr. Casady serves on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (FINRA) board of governors and is former chairman and a current board member of the Insured Retirement Institute. Mr. Casady also previously served on the executive committee of the Investment Company Institute board of governors. Mr. Casady was recognized as the financial executive of the year by DePaul University College of Commerce in 2007 and was also named one of the top 50 financial professionals by Irish American magazine in 1999. Mr. Casady was inducted into the Redefining Investment Strategy Education Hall of Fame by the University of Dayton in 2008.
Mr. Casady's recent comments have included:
- “I have never felt more like a dinosaur after the last panel. If we go extinct in front of you, you will know why; we have been robo’ed right out of the industry”
- “If you are private, stay private”
- “Build a capability that lets the advisor pick the practice that works best for them”
- “There are not enough people to provide financial advice to the millions that need it”
- “Right now is the best opportunity I have ever seen in my thirty years in the industry, because there is incredible wealth that needs help right now”
- “We all have to live with the fact that margins are going to be lower”
- “We have to think about how we experiment with our models to drive costs down & think of ways to more efficiently serve consumers”
- “Regulation speaks for itself. When times get tough, add more lawyers”
- “I am encouraged about the long term view for America because teens today are an incredibly entrepreneurial group”
- "There has never been a time when more Americans have had a greater need for objective, unbiased financial advice"
- "There is a rhythm to business. And I think success in part is about understanding that rhythm, that is a natural part of the business, and understanding the way to know when you are in the right vein of that rhythm and when you are not"
- "The technologies, tools, and support services we provide ultimately translate to our advisors having more time to focus on what matters most to them: meeting the needs of their clients"
- "One of the critical dynamics that will shape the future of financial advice in this country is the growing interest among advisors to build their practices on their own terms. Whether that is a fee-based model, a commission-based model or a hybrid, advisors want the ability to fit their practice to meet the needs of their markets and their clients"
- "The success of our business depends on the success of our people. We need to attract the very best talent and then put them in position to do great work and to feel that they are contributing to something meaningful – because they are"
Scott Curtis
(President, Raymond James Financial Services)
Scott Curtis is President of Raymond James Financial Services. Mr. Curtis directs Raymond James’ independent contractor business that includes close to 3,300 financial advisors and generates roughly $1.3 billion in annual revenues. He was promoted to his current position following six years as senior vice president of Raymond James & Associates Private Client Group (PCG) where he was responsible for prioritizing and directing numerous initiatives focused on revenue growth, efficiency enhancements, service improvement, and risk mitigation. Mr. Curtis joined Raymond James in February 2003 as president of Raymond James Insurance Group. Mr. Curtis spent the prior thirteen years of his career with GE Financial Assurance in a variety of senior leadership roles – including as national sales director for mutual funds and annuities and as president of the firm's FINRA-registered broker/dealer.
Mr. Curtis' recent comments have included:
- “Our bank has one location, two ATMs, and we have no intention of doubling either one of those. Our bank is a service provider for institutional & retail clients” “The financial advisor population is aging with not enough new entrants – we need more people in the business"
- "Client expectations drive innovation. As an industry we are behind, partly because of regulation and partly because of legacy systems. Challenge to continue to upgrade”
- “Training the next generation including getting a lot more business is something that is very important to us and something that we are working hard on”
- "[The margin compression among independent broker/dealers] is almost a perfect storm of increased cost and investment required to keep up with the regulatory changes"
- "The financial advisor base is getting older. There are not as many as there used to be. The numbers have declined, and obviously that has driven up transition assistance, or recruiting deals. Those are a lot higher than they have been historically. The decrease in interest rates, that are at all-time lows, has also contributed to margin pressure"
- "We are having more conversations with higher-end advisors—financial advisors whose practices are north of $800,000 in trailing 12 GDC—as a total percent of the advisors we are speaking with. We are seeing a greater percentage now of very successful advisors than we had in the past"
- "When clients are saying, my measure of success is I do not want to lose any money, and when you look at the performance of bond funds over the last ten years, in most cases, on average over that period of time, it has been hard to lose money in bond funds. But that is because interest rates have declined. Sooner or later, they are going to turn around and go the other way"
Ed
Finn
(Editor,
Barron's)
Ed Finn is Editor of Barron's. Mr. Finn joined Barron’s as managing editor in 1993, and was named editor in 1995 and president in 1998. He was previously the editor of American Banker, assistant managing editor at Forbes magazine, & a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Finn is also the author of Barron’s Guide to Building Wealth.
Mr. Finn's recent comments have included:
- “We think earnings could grow five-ten% over the few next years”
- “There may be pieces of your business that you could do better in. As we have sought out those pieces we have done well”
- “Products have to be first class and if they are not then you have to keep working and working until they are. Even if you have a successful product, you have to be willing to change it and looking for improvements”
- "Clients
may be back in the market, but they are back in a more conservative
way"
- "Investors
today have a scared and scarred mindset about the current markets"
- "I have more confidence in Johnson &
Johnson’s ability to pay a dividend more than some municipalities' ability
to make interest payments"
- "Barron's
goal in publishing its rankings [top 100 independent financial advisors]
is to shine a spotlight on leading financial advisors with an eye toward raising
standards in the industry. The rankings serve two types of Barron's
readers. For wealth management professionals, who comprise about
one-quarter of our readership, they serve as an industry scorecard. For
individual investors, who make up about three-quarters of our readership,
our financial advisor rankings are a tool to help them in the process of finding
financial guidance"
Rob Francais
(CEO,
Aspiriant)
Rob Francais is CEO of Aspiriant. Mr. Francais co-founded the firm in 2008 and prior to that co-founded Quintile Wealth Management. Mr. Francais has recently been named to Barron’s 2013 list of the Top 100 Independent Financial Advisors.
Mr. Francais' recent comments have included:
- "We asked, is bigger better? Does it help solve the durability problem in the industry? In the end, we concluded you could aggregate talent in the industry, govern it, standardize the organization and institutionalize value propositions to clients. You could achieve a permanent organization that best serves families for multiple generations"
- "We are in the home stretch getting through the integration and now it is time to focus on operations and locate the next candidate and we will start those negotiations by the end of the year and finalize them by early next year. And, then it all starts all over again, but I think it gets a little easier each time. We learn how to do it more effectively"
- "We created a strategy for growth which was to find like-minded people who are committed to the same type of things we were from a client service perspective and come up with a strategy for combining those organizations - a governance structure, a service model, a cultural model and a compensation model that works with a set of core values"
- “We are engineering a 100% employee-owned business model that we believe properly aligns our clients interests with those of our people for generations to come”
Jane Gladstone
(Senior Managing Director, Evercore Partners)
Jane Gladstone is Senior Managing Director at Evercore Partners, head of Evercore's financial institutions advisory group. Ms. Gladstone was named one of the Top 50 rainmakers on Wall Street by Dealmaker magazine and served as a delegate to the World Economic Forum. Prior to joining Evercore in July 2005, Ms. Gladstone was a managing director at Morgan Stanley. Ms. Gladstone has over 21 years of investment banking experience.
Ms. Gladstone's recent comments have included:
- “Hospitalization is the new foreclosure”
- “There is a scarcity value to companies with genuine organic growth. Those that do deserve to get a premium”
- “There is a real need for platforms that bring scale to the financial planner”
- “I think there will be more IPOs in part because several of these platforms are backed by private equity”
- "Some of the most important changes involve the central clearing that is mandated for most over-the-counter trades"
- "The way that Dodd-Frank is implemented is still up for grabs. There is a chance that we still have some important sessions and regulatory meetings at Davos"
- "Trying to inhibit the progress of high frequency trading is like trying to change gravity"
Bill
Harris
(CEO,
Personal Capital Corporation)
Bill Harris is CEO of Personal Capital Corporation. Personal
Capital Corporation is the culmination of Mr. Harris' career (his words),
bringing together many things he has worked on over the past twenty years to
deliver complete financial solutions for clients. Mr. Harris was formerly CEO
of PayPal and CEO of Intuit, the makers of Quicken, QuickBooks, & TurboTax.
He has also founded numerous financial technology and security companies, and
served on the boards of RSA Security, Macromedia, Success Factors, GoDaddy,
& EarthLink.
Mr.
Harris' recent comments have included:
- “Many of our client interactions that are less strategic are spent on technology, which allows the advisor to spend more time on strategy”
- “Key issues
that the industry should be discussing include tech versus touch; product
versus customer; and manufacturing versus distribution”
- "I do not
reject face-to-face advice...what I reject is the physical substantiation
of the face-to-face advice"
- “Hybridization
is the ability to combine high tech self service with high touch advice in
a seamless application”
- "The
brokerage account was the craftsman model while the mutual fund was the
assembly line or mass production that allowed economies of scale"
- “Hyper
personalized wealth management is where we are going"
Ben Hochberg
(Partner, Lee Equity Partners)
Ben Hochberg is a Partner at Lee Equity Partners. Prior to joining Lee Equity Partners, Mr. Hochberg was a principal at Odyssey Investment Partners, a middle-market private equity investment firm, where he worked closely on the firm’s investment in Norcross Safety Products. Prior to that, from 1997 to 2005, Mr. Hochberg worked at Bain Capital Partners, a global private equity investment firm, where he most recently held the position of principal. At Bain Capital Partners, Mr. Hochberg was involved in Warner Music Group Corporation, Loews Cineplex Entertainment, ProSieben Sat.1 Media AG, Warner Chilcott and Toys R Us. Mr. Hochberg was also the initial analyst for Bain Capital’s $20 billion Sankaty Advisors credit investing business. Mr. Hochberg started his career in 1995 at Bain & Company as a strategy consultant. Mr. Hochberg serves or has served on the boards of directors of Aimbridge Hospitality, The Edelman Financial Group, Papa Murphy’s International, Skopos Financial Group, Deb Shops, and Norcross Safety Products, a portfolio company of Odyssey.
Some of Mr. Hochberg's comments included:
- "Private equity is a mature institutional asset class in its own right; private equity fund managers face the same expectations as any other institutional asset manager”
- "While we will invest in cyclical themes, we believe that investment themes supported by secular growth factors present more attractive risk-reward opportunities for our firm’s skills”
- “The average individual investor has a long memory for best-in-class service”
- "What distinguishes the middle market is you can control your own destiny. In the middle market, somebody can write a billion-dollar check for something that was ‘X’ and is not yet ‘Y.’ It is a little more fun than calling the equity capital desk [of a securities trading firm] to find out what the appetite is today in the public markets"
- “Financial education in addition to regulation, has the greatest potential to benefit the fiscal health of the American consumer"
Bob Huret
(Founding Partner, FTV Capital)
Bob Huret is a Founding Partner of FTV Capital. He has over 40 years of commercial banking and investment banking experience. Mr. Huret has participated in more than 100 bank and bank-related mergers, public offerings, & joint ventures. He was previously a senior consultant to Montgomery Securities and at the Bank of California and First Chicago Corporation. Mr. Huret is also the founder of Newell Associates, a money management firm, and Third Age Media, an internet portal.
Some of Mr. Huret's comments included:
- "We want our pensions back"
- "My take on regulations is... you ain't seen nothing yet"
- "It is clear to me that everyone in this industry will be subject to the fiduciary model"
- "It is always best to lean into the wind. When things are going great, chances are they are not as great as they look"
Paul Ingersoll
(CEO, Good Harbor Financial)
Paul Ingersoll is CEO of Good Harbor Financial. Mr. Ingersoll co-founded the company and is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the firm. Previously, he served as a senior finance officer in the portfolio companies of several private equity firms and was a co-founder of a business services company, which grew from a start-up to over $700 million in revenue with a successful IPO in 1998.
Mr. Ingersoll's recent comments have included:
- "[Our strategy] is based on the idea that aggregate investor appetite for risk changes and that there are periods when it makes sense to reduce risk in a portfolio - so we define tactical as varying our exposure to market risk over time"
- "We believe that going into any market drawdown, equity risk premiums rise. As we observe this rise, our model moves to a more defensive footing"
- "Broadly speaking, we look at three categories of information [to measure the equity risk premium]: economic data, momentum indicators, & the behaviour of the US Treasury yield curve"
- "Our flexibility is as important as our discipline, and all of these moves are made within our data-driven decision framework"
Jonathan
Korngold
(Managing
Director, General Atlantic)
Jonathan Korngold is a Managing Director at General Atlantic. Mr. Korngold is a member of General Atlantic’s Executive and Investment Committees, head of the firm’s Financial Services sector and was formerly head of the Healthcare Sector. Having worked previously in General Atlantic’s London office, he is now based in New York. Mr. Korngold has worked closely with many of the firm's public and private portfolio companies in the financial services, healthcare services, and business services areas and is currently a board member of Santander Asset Management and MedExpress Urgent Care. Before joining General Atlantic in 2001, Mr. Korngold was a member of Goldman Sachs's Principal Investment Area and Mergers & Acquisitions groups in London and New York, respectively. Mr. Korngold has also spent extensive time in China, where he worked in the U.S. Embassy's Foreign Commercial Service in Beijing. Mr. Korngold is very active in community affairs and is involved in a number of not-for-profit organizations, including his having served on the Board of Directors/Trustees of The Cleveland Clinic, The Central Park Conservancy, The 92nd Street Y, Kids In Distressed Situations (K.I.D.S.), Streetwise Partners and The Harvard Business School Club of New York, among others. In addition, he has been an Adjunct Professor in the Finance and Economics Division of Columbia Business School, a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a Commissioned Kentucky Colonel, a member of the American Museum of Natural History's Museum Advisory Council, and sat on the Healthcare Advisory Board of the Executive Council.
Mr. Korngold's recent comments have included:
- "Key issues that the industry should be discussing include the growth of passive & index products; the success of RIA roll-up platforms; and asset accumulation in the emerging markets"
- "The growth of passive & index products will shift profit pools from manufacturers to distributors"
- "Demand for liquid alternatives is surging; this is the first thing in years to re-energize mutual funds"
- "Often, without a unified investment strategy, RIA roll-ups bring risk in scaling and managing a federation of quasi-independent entrepreneurs"
- “In the vast majority of emerging markets, distribution capabilities can often trump investment performance for retail flows"
Tom
Lee
(CEO,
Lee Equity Partners)
Tom Lee is CEO of Lee Equity Partners. Prior to forming Lee Equity, Mr. Lee served as Chairman and CEO of Thomas H. Lee Partners and its predecessors, which he founded in 1974. Over the past 36 years, Mr. Lee has been responsible for investing in excess of $10 billion of capital in more than 100 transactions. Prior to founding Thomas H. Lee Partners, Mr. Lee was with the First National Bank of Boston, where he was a vice president and led the high technology lending group. Previously, Mr. Lee was a securities analyst in the institutional research department of L.F. Rothschild & Company in New York. Mr. Lee serves or has served as a director of numerous public and private companies, including Edelman Financial Services, Papa Murphy’s International, Mid Cap Financial, General Nutrition Companies, Metris Companies, Playtex Products, Snapple Beverage Corporation, Vail Resorts, Vertis Holdings, Warner Music Group Corporation, and Wyndham International, among others. In addition, Mr. Lee is currently a trustee of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, Langone NYU Medical Center, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other civic and charitable organizations. He also serves on the executive committee for Harvard University's Committee on University Resources.
Mr. Lee's recent comments have included:
- “At the margin, the smaller, growthier end of private equity intersects the higher later stage of venture capital”
- “Collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) funds have made a pretty significant comeback. Close to $100 billion have been raised recently”
- “We bought a company where the management wanted to retire and we did not have the new management yet. That is a mistake we will not make again. It is our vast preference to work with the existing management”
- “If a company is doing poorly, the hardest thing we have to do is to change management. In a leveraged deal, everything is magnified. First bad quarter, etc., finally you figure out if things are not going well and there is no way to fix it, then you have to. It is wrenching, an emotional wrench, and a wrench for the company. It is not something we like to do”
- “A lot of people on our staff have been in strategy consulting inside large companies. We have operating talent. We want to help a company. If you are a retailer we want to help you locate stores; if you are a money management firm, we would like to help you examine growth avenues”
- “It is an honor and privilege to invest in American companies and it is a responsibility we do not take lightly”
- “Organic growth in a company is preferred. However, we have seen many companies in industries, where tuck-ins or a rollup strategy of small competitors makes a lot of sense”
- "The Edelman Financial Group has achieved a strong track record and is a clear leader in the independent financial advisor field. We are excited to partner with Edelman Financial’s management team, and we look forward to supporting the company’s continued expansion"
- "There has been an evolution; it has really been a dynamic business in the last forty years"
- "I have found that it is both personally satisfying and financially also to be involved with companies that can grow"
- "As China moves toward more domestic consumption, it is really going to be as great a force in say the next ten years as it has during the last ten years"
Mary
Mack
(President,
Wells Fargo Advisors)
Mary Mack is President of Wells Fargo Advisors. Ms. Mack leads one of the nation’s largest full-service retail brokerage organizations. She is a 30-year veteran of the company and has a broad mix of brokerage/advisory, banking and finance experience. Prior to taking the helm at the firm, Ms. Mack led the financial services group there and was responsible for the strategic direction and management of investment, advisory and banking products; the firm’s research and advice model; financial advisor recruiting; financial advisor productivity and development; and the client and financial advisor platform. Ms. Mack joined Wells Fargo Advisors through the mergers of Wachovia and First Union, she has held a variety of leadership positions including the head of Wealth Brokerage Services (bank/brokerage channel); leader of Wachovia’s Client Partnership; director of Community Affairs; General Bank regional president; and managing director of Healthcare Corporate Banking. Ms. Mack serves on the board of trustees at Davidson College, her alma mater. She has also served on the board or executive committee for Johnson C. Smith University, the United Way of Central Carolinas, Junior Achievement, Childcare Resources, and the Arts & Science Council. She is a founding member of the Foundation for Fort Mill Schools. Ms. Mack currently serves on the Private Client Services Committee for the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and was named to the top-ranked Most Powerful Women in Banking Team by American Banker magazine two years in a row.
Ms. Mack's recent comments have included:
- “Both financial advisors and clients want choice”
- “We have the benefit of scale, we have been building over the years, and we have the ability to leverage”
- “We need to transform the client experience. Our belief is that our competitors are in the Amazon, Google, Apple space who have transformed the way we interact with the consumer. Our clients are not as interested as we are in this field so we need to make it easier for them. We have made it awfully confusing to be a client. We need to simplify”
- “This industry is well suited to millenials who want to make a difference in the world”
- “If we do not start addressing incorporating diversity into the industry, in 25 years we will not be reflective of our clients and we also will not have a base to draw from”
- "Retail investors really are looking for guidance... they are looking for help in terms of navigating an increasingly complex environment"
- "We have a lot of work to do with our younger investors"
- "Many clients will benefit from an advice-based relationship, so we have continued to see that mix shift. The managed side has definitely grown"
Harry
Markowitz
(President,
Harry Markowitz & Associates & Nobel Prize Winner in
Economics)
Harry Markowitz is President of Harry Markowitz
Associates and a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics. He is also an adjunct
professor of finance at the
Mr. Markowitz's recent
comments have included:
- “Capital asset pricing model is a hypothesis about how the world works. Portfolio theory is not. It says you pick out a universe of investables, you make forward looking estimates, tell me constraints, and then I will show you the relationship and implications for the portfolio”
- "I was a
nerd before it was an in thing"
- "I did
not know I was going to win a Nobel Prize but I knew I was going to get a
PhD"
- "Modern
Portfolio Theory worked in 2008 if you rebalanced; if you were high on the
efficient frontier, you got clobbered"
- "I do not give a lot of thought
to investing"
Pat McClain
(Co-CEO, Hanson McClain)
Pat McClain is Co-CEO of Hanson McClain. He is a chartered financial consultant, a featured speaker at numerous industry conferences and co hosts a weekly call-in talk radio show called Money Matters that covers investment and financial topics. Mr. McClain is heavily involved with a variety of local charities. He serves as a board member for several organizations, including the Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services, www.sfbs.org, and Jesuit High School.
Mr. McClain's recent comments have included:
- "Incredibly, 90% of 401(k) participants reallocate less than once a year. The line of financial advisors waiting and hoping to advise on your assets is miles long post-retirement – but what about leading up to retirement? Where are all the advisors as you save and allocate throughout these critical years?"
- "The reasons people make the most irrational money decisions are fear or greed. If something goes on in their life, they might panic. Our job is to reach out to them before they feel the need to call us"
- "We really have to prepare for (the show). People call in about so many topics, you have to stay on top of everything financial—you do not want to look stupid"
- "People's greatest fear is running out of money in retirement. One of my biggest clients is also the one who is most freaked out about it. He has got an obscene amount of money; he cannot even spend how much it earns for him. A lot of (what we do) is try to manage people's emotions. When it comes to investing, people have two basic emotions: fear and greed. The good investor can keep both of those in check"
Fielding Miller
(CEO,
Cap Trust Financial Advisors)
Fielding Miller is CEO of Cap Trust Financial Advisors. As the co-founder of Cap Trust Financial Advisors, Mr. Miller is credited with setting the course for the company becoming one of the nation's largest independent financial advisory firms. He leads corporate strategy, ensuring that Cap Trust Financial Advisors remains competitively positioned to serve clients' needs in an increasingly complex and volatile market environment. Mr. Miller serves on the Ravenscroft School, East Carolina University, Oak Ranch, & House of Hope boards of trustees.
Mr. Miller's recent comments have included:
- "We are not just buying revenue. This is a strategic play. This has that magic fit. They (Freedom One) are a lot like us as an RIA. We have been moving down the path to take on more 3(38) total fiduciary management but they have been doing it for ten years"
- "Managed accounts is something that Freedom One brings to the table. They are doing much more than we do. They have got an excellent track record and we will use their managed-account platform. We do think what we are doing is unique and goes against the grain of the advisory industry"
- "We think there is more emphasis on participant advice and participant outcome than ever before"
- "Freedom One had other options and they took a long time to make their decision. Ultimately this was a better fit for his company. A lot of people would gut his practice, but we are using it as a strategic investment to grow"
- "The opportunity to build upon our Greenwich presence by adding an experienced industry pro like Bruce Graham is a real coup. This is a perfect example of how bringing the industry's best talent to the firm will help us grow in key retirement markets"
Don
Phillips
(Managing Director, Morningstar)
Don Phillips is a Managing Director at Morningstar. Previously Mr. Phillips oversaw the firm’s global fund, equity, & credit research. He has also served on the company’s board of directors since 1999. Mr. Phillips joined Morningstar in 1986 as the company’s first mutual fund analyst and soon became editor of its flagship publication, Morningstar Mutual Funds, establishing the editorial voice for which the company is best known. Mr. Phillips helped to develop the Morningstar Style Box, the Morningstar Rating, and other distinctive proprietary Morningstar innovations that have become industry standards.
Mr. Phillips' recent comments have included:
- “Today, money goes into good funds, but it goes in at the wrong times”
- “There has been way too much fighting in this industry (ie., separate accounts came out with rumors about hidden fees in mutual funds)”
- “My son’s image of Wall Street, of our industry, is Jim Cramer. It is not a positive one”
- “You have a hidden asset when you own undervalued securities”
- “Online advice is going to marry with financial advisors to offer incredible tool kits which are going to serve the younger generation. I am quite optimistic about it. I see technology & better training coming together to meet this challenge”
- "Costs, transparency, & investor protections are better in the US fund market than in any other"
- "Mutual funds are the vehicle of choice for America’s middle class. They are something to champion and export”
- “Asset managers must prove that they align their interests with Main Street, not Wall Street"
- “Casting investing as a game, appealing to greed, as done in the late 1990s, was short sighted”
- “Reputations are forged in decades, not in quarters”
Peter
Raimondi
(CEO,
Banyan Partners)
Peter Raimondi is CEO of Banyan Partners. Mr. Raimondi founded Banyan Partners in 2006 on more than three decades of wealth management and investment expertise. Mr. Raimondi leads the overall strategic vision of the firm, guiding the executive team and serving as the Chairman of the firm’s board of directors. One of the fastest growing RIAs in the country, Banyan has completed seven acquisitions in the past five years and added over $4.5 billion in new assets over that time. The firm currently employs over 90 professionals throughout its nine regional offices. Named by Barron’s as one of the nation’s “Top 100 Independent Advisors” in 2013, Mr. Raimondi has built Banyan into the 15th largest RIA in the country, according to Financial Planning Magazine. Mr. Raimondi was recently featured as the cover story for the September 2013 issue of FA Magazine, which profiled the firm’s strategic growth. Mr. Raimondi regularly appears as a featured speaker or panelist on industry-related topics such as mergers & acquisitions and practice management and on investor-related topics such as wealth planning and asset management.
Mr. Raimondi's recent comments
have included:
- "The most unfortunate thing about the small RIA business—say firms under $600 million—is that they generally need every person they have working for them. So it is hard to cut staff, which is going to be the largest expense. Most firms are running 50% or above in terms of payroll costs"
- "Every client is really receiving from us a customized response to what they had in mind when they showed up, and that is not customary in our business because it is an expensive model. You cannot scale that very easily. You need a lot of research analysts and a lot of portfolio managers, and that is expensive"
- "We will get as big as we need to get to continue to offer all the solutions necessary to our clients. I do not want to farm out things that I think we can do better"
- "We plan to continue being aggressive with our acquisition strategy as we look to acquire the best and brightest who share a similar, client-centric culture"
- “Our clients value our broad investment platform which allows us to deliver institutional-caliber capabilities with a level of service only available from a boutique. This combination is unique within the industry and sets Banyan apart from other independent wealth management firms"
Rich Repetto
(Principal, Exchanges, eBrokers, & Trading Companies, Equity Research, Sandler, O'Neill & Partners)
Richard Repetto is a Principal of Sandler, O’Neill, & Partners. His research coverage includes the eBrokerage, Execution Venues and eSpecialty Finance Sectors. Mr. Repetto has received numerous accolades for his equity research. He has earned numerous industry awards, including Analyst of the Year in 2010 by Financial Times/Starmine. Mr. Repetto was previously a managing director at Putnam Lovell NBF. This position followed his work at Lehman Brothers, where he established the firm’s research coverage of the Internet Financial Services Sector.
Mr. Repetto's recent comments have included:
- "Clearly, there were problems with accounting processes and controls with legacy Getco"
- "You can expect every couple of years someone is going to try something new or try something a little bit different and innovative in the e-broking sector"
- "The futures model, where there is not a lot of price competition among the specific asset classes should continue to do well in the future, no pun intended. The interest rates and other futures - the CME and ICE controls the vast majority of trading in the U.S., and that is because of the vertical integration that they have. So futures continue to be growing very strong, and the companies continue to realize pretty strong revenue capture"
- "I think what is interesting here is we have had another problem with a trading error where it sort of has run away from a broker dealer. These are clearly erroneous trades... we are going to bail out Goldman this time, but going forward there is going to be more intense scrutiny on the exchanges, the regulators, and the broker/dealer to try to prevent something like this happening before hand"
- "If you look at electronic trading, if you look at what goes on our markets today, the electronics just mimic what happened in the markets manually prior... electronics mimic the manual world we just have to do a better job and put better controls on it"
Tony Rochte
(President, SelectCo Division, Fidelity Asset Management)
Tony Rochte is President of the SelectCo Division at Fidelity Asset Management. Previously he was senior managing director and head of the North American Intermediary Business Group at State Street Global Advisors.
Mr. Rochte's recent comments have included:
- "We are not trying to build a passive-ETF business. There are plenty of firms already in that space. This is chapter one of our larger ETF strategy"
- "To us, it is not one or the other, it is both. We think mutual funds are growing, and we think ETFs are growing too"
- "We offer value on both fronts. We think these passive 10-sector ETFs offer great value. And we think we deliver alpha in our sector mutual funds. Even though they are higher-priced, we think we deliver a lot of value in that space from an alpha-generation standpoint"
- "This is not about the competitive landscape. This is about delivering great value for the customer"
- "We want to deliver choice, expand the lineup; we want to deliver value; and we want to continue to innovate in a space that we helped pioneer more than 30 years ago"
Jim Ross
(Chairman, SSGA Funds Management, State Street Global Advisors)
Jim Ross is Chairman of SSGA Funds Management. Mr. Ross is also an Executive Vice President of SSGA, Global Head of SSGA's SPDR Exchange Traded Funds Business and Head of Intermediary Distribution in the United States. Mr. Ross is responsible for all aspects of SSGA's SPDR ETF business globally. Mr. Ross has extensive history with exchange traded funds and is frequently quoted in the press regarding ETFs. Mr. Ross also serves as chairman of the Investment Company Institute's Exchange-Traded Funds Committee. As head of U.S. intermediary distribution Mr. Ross is responsible for overseeing SSGA's sales and relationship management efforts with clients in the Private Wealth Management, National Broker-Dealer and Premier Private Client segments. In addition, Mr. Ross is a member of SSGA's North American and Global Product Committees. Prior to joining State Street in 1992, Mr. Ross was employed by Ernst & Young as a senior accountant, responsible for auditing investment companies and insurance companies.
Mr. Ross' recent comments have included:
- "When someone calls me pioneer, it just means I am old and I have been doing this too long, but it has been a good twenty-year run"
- "I am not one of these folks that try to plan every three years or five years for what they want to do. I have never done it. “I just look at different opportunities as they have been in front of me and take them”
- "I learned that when you go to different places there are different cultures, but there are always great people – you just have to seek them out and find them”
- "The thing about ETFs is that they can be bought by a direct retail person straight up to the most sophisticated hedge fund or institutional investor in the world and they are buying the same product, but you need to educate them differently. I think there is always a challenge in that"
- "The ETF is just an implementation vehicle"
Andrew
Rudd
(CEO,
Advisor Software)
Andrew Rudd is CEO of Advisor Software. He previously was the founder of Barra (which he sold in a 1991 initial public offering, and then again in 2004 to Morgan Stanley for $900 million). Previously he was a professor of finance & operations at Cornell University. More broadly, Mr. Rudd is an expert in quantitative analysis, asset allocation, modern portfolio theory, risk management, and performance measurement. He was the CEO of Barra from 1984-1999, and is the co-author of two books on institutional investing: Modern Portfolio Theory - The Principles of Investment Management and Option Pricing.
Mr. Rudd's recent comments have included:
- "Goals are self-imposed liabilities"
- "Has the industry been solving the wrong problem?" (referring to the traditional asset versus a broader asset & liability lens)
- "It is hard to believe that a target date mutual fund is optimal for anyone other than the vendors"
- "Financial planning today must manage longevity, complexity and anxiety"
- "Historically, the retirement approach has been too simplistic... by looking at a 50-year problem and thinking about it as a holistic entity, you come up with a slightly different perspective than typically is seen"
Michael Sapir
(CEO, ProShare Advisors)
Michael Sapir is co-founder, Chairman and CEO of ProShare Advisors, the investment advisor to the ProShares family of over 140 exchange traded funds. Offering the nation’s largest lineup of alternative ETFs, ProShares enables investors to go beyond the limitations of conventional investing and meet today’s market challenges. ProShares helps investors build better portfolios by providing access to alternative investments delivered with the liquidity, transparency and cost effectiveness of ETFs. Mr. Sapir has nearly 30 years of experience in the financial services industry and a history of innovation in the introduction of ground-breaking products. Prior to co-founding ProShares and its affiliate, the ProFunds family of mutual funds, Mr. Sapir played an integral role in the creation of the first emerging markets mutual fund, the first prime rate mutual fund, and the first insurance general account annuity. Mr. Sapir was chosen by ETF Database as one of the 25 inaugural members of its ETF Hall of Fame and by Mutual Fund Wire as one of the 40 Most Influential People in Fund Distribution. Mr. Sapir is frequently quoted by the financial media, including Barron’s, Bloomberg Business Week, Forbes, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Sapir's recent comments have included:
- "In the early days, tactical might have been code for market timing"
- "Actively managed ETFs will be successful if they can take the reasons that index ETFs have been successful, and transfer them"
- "Investors do not feel like the old ways have worked for them. Either they have not gotten the return they wanted or the volatility was too much for them"
- "There is now an incredible array of alternative strategies that did not exist not long ago"
- "This might be the first time in the history of financial innovations where the same product appeals to such a diverse spectrum of potential investors"
Jeff
Saut
(Chief
Investment Strategist, Raymond James & Associates)
Jeff Saut is Chief Investment Strategist of Raymond James & Associates. Mr. Saut joined Raymond James in September 1999 as one of the managing directors of research working with the senior managing director Bob Anastasi. Previously, Mr. Saut was managing director of research at Roney & Company, which was acquired by Raymond James & Associates. Prior to that, he was managing director of equity capital markets for Sterne, Agee & Leach. His responsibilities there included equity research, investment banking, institutional sales, and syndicate. Mr. Saut began his career on a trading desk in New York City and became the trade desk manager in 1972. In 1973, he joined E.F. Hutton, where he began following equities and writing research. He subsequently worked as a securities analyst for Wheat First Securities, and then Branch Cabell, where he ran the equity research group as director of research and acted as portfolio manager for the firm's affiliate, Exeter Capital Management. In addition, as director of research he built the research and institutional sales departments for the regional brokerage firm Ferris, Baker, Watts, and subsequently Sterne, Agee & Leach. Mr. Saut is well known for his commentary regarding the stock market and makes regular appearances on Wall Street Week, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, USA Networks, Fox TV, NPR, and many local radio and TV networks. He is also often quoted in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Barron's, Washington Post, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, Fortune, SmartMoney, as well as on many websites like MSNBC and TheStreet.com.
Mr. Saut's recent comments have included:
- “We are in a secular bull market that may be bigger than 1982”
- “The individual investor does not understand why stocks are going up”
- “I actually think there is more political cooperation now than in the last five years”
- “I argue that while GDP is low, it is simple but sustainable”
- "It is not just liquidity, the majority of individual investors do not get that the equity markets do not care about the absolute of whether things are getting better or worse”
- “The industrial revolution is alive and well. It is not showing up in the empirical data yet because the plants are still being built... this is profoundly bullish”
- "What is going on in the energy patch is transformative. I do believe in the American industrial renaissance”
- “You are going to see smarter policies and policy makers in the next five years”
- “I have great faith in the American people”
- “I do not think that high-frequency trading is a zero sum game”
- "A permabull is defined as somebody who is always upbeat about the future direction of the stock market and the economy. Recently I have been called a permabull by certain members of the media, which may be true since March of 2009, but certainly not true over the past fourteen years"
- "Speaking to the bears’ debt worries, to me it is interesting that the debt ceiling crisis came when the deficit is actually coming down a lot faster than even the CBO thought could happen. That decline is going a long way in improving the future outlook. While the bears expect the economy to contract, I believe the capital expenditure cycle that is about to begin will actually strengthen the GDP figures in 2014"
- "Obviously, the American Industrial Renaissance is happening. A few of the ways to participate in this renaissance is through Rich Bernstein and either of the mutual funds he manages for Eaton Vance"
- "The markets do not care about the absolutes of good or bad. The markets care about are things getting better or are things getting worse? Things are getting better"
Nick Schorsch
(Executive Chairman, RCS Capital Corporation)
Nick Schorsch is CEO of AR Capital. Mr. Schorsch co-founded AR Capital and currently serves as its chairman and CEO. Additionally, he serves as executive chairman on the board of directors of RCS Capital. RCS Capital’s broker dealer, Realty Capital Securities, is the largest money raiser in the alternative investment industry, raising almost $3 billion of equity capital in 2012. Mr. Schorsch also holds CEO and board positions for all of the publicly registered, non-traded investments sponsored by AR Capital. On the exchange-traded side of his business, Mr. Schorsch is chairman and CEO of the publicly traded REIT, American Realty Capital Properties. In addition, Mr. Schorsch served as chairman of American Realty Capital Trust, a net lease REIT he co-founded in 2007 and listed on the NASDAQ in March 2012. Mr. Schorsch has over 30 years of business experience operating and building US companies, including 20 years of real estate experience. He is the recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2003 Award and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award for real estate. He also serves on the board of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts and Investment Program Association.
Mr. Schorsch's recent comments have included:
- “We are really looking at M&A that is in integration. We think that the distribution platform can be a lot more than it has been here to for”
- “We went public intentionally... with a full balance sheet and low leverage, we can fund the broker dealers”
- "Consultation comes through back office, clearing, can be done in a significant way to save significant money. We don’t intend to change the personnel in any significant way”
- “What we are not going to consolidate is individual advisors. They generate the revenue. They have to want to come back to work tomorrow. I do not think it has been appropriately honored and cherished. The smaller & mid-size platforms have been struggling just to survive”
- “We are building a bigger war chest; we are going to be acquisitive. We are in the first inning of a ten inning game”
- “Interest rates will rise, it is just a question of how much and when. The revenue model will get better”
- “By gathering your knights of the round table, you have a lot less consternation, and it becomes less about how to be in charge than how do we become great. When you hire really smart people, they push you. They come up with great ideas”
- “When I was sixteen I thought every idea was taken. Now I see a new deal every hour on the hour. You look for pockets of disruption. That is my advice”
- "If you really want to know what drives me, it is the fact that I never want today to be my best day. We can always do better tomorrow"
- "Quakers have this saying that goes something like, the way will open. Basically, you start to believe you are making a difference and you will. I am just doing that in business"
- "This is not growth for growth's sake. It is an all-out effort to gain competitive advantage"
- "I would like to work about nineteen hours a day"
- "The goal here is to build the greatest company on the planet. I am kind of in the second inning. I have a long way to go"
Skip Schweiss
(President, TD Ameritrade Trust Company)
Skip Schweiss is President of TD Ameritrade Trust Company, which offers retirement plan solutions and services for independent registered investment advisors and third-party administrators using TD Ameritrade's trust platform. Mr. Schweiss is also the managing director of Advisor Advocacy & Industry Affairs for TD Ameritrade Institutional. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Schweiss held a variety of management positions within Fiserv Investment Support Services, including serving as executive vice president of Fiserv Trust Company, which was acquired by TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation in February 2008.
Mr. Schweiss' recent comments have included:
- “Tiburon CEO Summits are the highest caliber conference of the year that I go to”
- "There are strong feelings that debt and deficits are our single largest problem"
- "Medicare and Social Security were previously sound but life expectancies increased by fifteen years"
- "The Securities & Exchange Commission is scared that any court challenge to Dodd-Frank will fail"
- "Consumers go to RIAs and stock brokers looking for advice and they do not see the differences"
- "Financial advisors are going to pay more due to regulations"
Clara Shih
(CEO, Hearsay Social)
Clara Shih is
CEO of Hearsay Social. Ms. Shih founded Hearsay Social in 2009.
Hearsay Social is the leading social sales and marketing platform, empowering
the world’s largest companies to build stronger customer relationships, grow
revenue, and bolster their brands across social networks. In 2007, Ms. Shih
developed the first social business application, called Faceforce, and
subsequently authored the New York Times-featured bestseller, The Facebook
Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Market, Sell and Innovate, now used as a
marketing textbook at
Ms. Shih’s
recent comments have included:
- “We believe in the uber advisor: ones that are there today and equipping them with the technology and social media that their clients use”
- “Triggers for financial advice are broadcast on social media”
- “We are witnessing the evolution of communication. The cost of staying in touch has gone down. Research shows that social media involved people have larger social networks. They have more options & are more clued in”
- “Communication of the future is content marketing in small pieces and letting people ask for more – it is a lot easier for them, if they like the content, to share within their network”
- “We are seeing a seismic shift in communication -
spanning everything from personal relationships to business to consumer”
- "Social media is a fundamentally new business paradigm,
as big as, or even bigger than, the Internet was a decade ago"
- "In the rapidly evolving technology arena, it is critical
to test and iterate new ideas quickly. Often, it is the fastest and most
agile learner rather than the best first attempt that wins"
- "People
thought I was crazy when I was quoted in 2007 as saying that five years from now, no enterprise
application will not be social. That idea seemed
unfathomable then, but what I have come to realize is that, in
- "I
realized that the lines are completely blurring between the consumer and
enterprise worlds"
Jon
Stein
(CEO,
Betterment)
Jon Stein is CEO of
Betterment, which he founded in 2007. Prior to creating Betterment, Mr. Stein
spent his career developing financial products, platforms, and investment
strategies for international banks, brokers and other financial institutions,
and advising them on strategies to mitigate the risks inherent in their
products. Most recently, Mr. Stein held the position of senior consultant at First
Manhattan Consulting Group, where he counseled a number of the world’s most
prominent financial institutions.
Mr. Stein's recent comments
have included:
- "We use software to provide optimized return for customers”
- “We are the only online advisor that provides truly end-to-end solutions. This allows us to provide an exceptionally seamless experience for our customers”
- “It is not technology versus advisor, but technology plus advisor”
- “The place of technology is to make investing better for everyone”
- "Our
mission is to take the emotional haphazardness out of investing so that
you get the best possible result"
- "I am no
smarter than the millions of other people watching the market, and I do
not have better information. The cardinal lesson of modern portfolio
theory – that there is no better portfolio to own than the market
portfolio – is a lesson to live by"
- "You
should always be looking to supplement your weaknesses"
- "A set
of strong co-founders inspires confidence in investors. It brings
legitimacy and respectability, and demonstrates that others are validating
your idea"
- "My advice to entrepreneurs just starting out is to get going on
building the team"
Jon Stern
(Managing
Director, Berkshire Capital)
Jon Stern is a Managing Director at Berkshire Capital. Mr. Stern joined Berkshire Capital in 1998. During his career at the firm, he has completed transactions involving institutional asset management, mutual fund, wealth management, and securities firms. Mr. Stern currently co-heads the firm’s institutional and mutual funds practice areas. Mr. Stern brings extensive transaction experience in financial services to Berkshire Capital assignments. Prior to joining Berkshire Capital, Mr. Stern had spent his entire career at First Union and a predecessor bank, First Fidelity Bancorporation, beginning in 1984. He has extensive experience in the corporate finance area focusing on M&A and capital planning, and was a senior vice president responsible for acquisitions and divestitures in the northern part of First Union’s franchise. Previously, he held other management roles within the finance division including asset/liability management and accounting & reporting.
Mr. Stern's recent comments have included:
- “There has to be a plan for succession of equity just like there has to be a plan for succession of management”
- “A lot of firms, when evaluating transactions, have a lot of timing angst relative to growth projections and trends. It is very hard to predict”
- “Growth momentum is the leading indicator of whether a transaction will take place or not; but do not get caught up in the timing”
- “I have a little skepticism on some of the aggregators. Whether they attain success is based on suggestion management”
- "If performance is not in the top levels, firms in that size range [mid-size] are really struggling to retain assets, much less grow"
- "To get into the retail and high-net-worth space is more difficult at times than the institutional space"
- "Executives at boutique firms have begun thinking more about how they should be managing the business, rather than simply managing specific strategies"
- "Unusually attractive prospects now for many fixed-income segments are adding an opportunistic element"
- "The insurance parent, like other financial conglomerates, is re-examining why it bought Gartmore, asking whether it is as beneficial as we thought to own our own manufacturing"
Allen
Thorpe
(Managing
Director, Hellman & Friedman)
Mr. Thorpe is a Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman and leads the firm's New York office. His primary areas of focus are healthcare and financial services. He is a director of Artisan Partners Asset Management, Pharmaceutical Product Development, Emdeon, and Sheridan Holdings, and is a member of the advisory board of Grosvenor Capital Management Holdings. He was formerly a director of Mitchell International, Gartmore Investment Management Limited, Mondrian Investment Partners, Vertafore, Activant Solutions and LPL Financial. Prior to joining the firm in 1999, Mr. Thorpe was a vice president with Pacific Equity Partners in Australia and was a manager at Bain & Company.
Mr. Thorpe's recent comments have included:
- "At Hellman & Friedman we think of ourselves as investors….not private equity, or deal, or LBO (leveraged buyout) guys”
- "Knowing what is inside of all of these products and wrappers matters a lot (regarding alternative investments for the retail investor)”
- "I am bearish on the self-serve movement….advice is still important and needed"
- "I am sure that someone will eventually prove me wrong on this... but the ante is high service and low fee, and that is really challenging"
Mark
Tibergien
(CEO,
Pershing Advisor Solutions)
Mark Tibergien is CEO of Pershing Advisor Solutions, a BNY Mellon company. Pershing Advisor Solutions is one of the country's leading custodians for registered investment advisors and family offices. Pershing Advisor Solutions’ assets under custody have increased from $30 billion to $125 billion over the past five years. Mr. Tibergien is also a managing director of Pershing, a BNY Mellon company, and a member of Pershing's Executive Committee and BNY Mellon's Operating Committee. Prior to joining Pershing in 2007, Mr. Tibergien was a principal at the accounting and consulting firm, Moss Adams where he was partner-in-charge of the Business Consulting group, chairman of the Financial Services Industry group and partner-in-charge of the Business Valuation group.
Mr. Tibergien's comments included:
- “To compete in this market we have to find ways to differentiate”
- “When we look at the future of the business I am excited about it, and fragmentation is interesting but not particularly disturbing; we see transitions quite often”
- “Our biggest flows are coming out of Latin America today”
- “This conference has been focusing on the United States but the reality of global transformation is something you should participate in or be aware of because it influences the way resources are allocated”
- “I want to talk about people development. What we have to be thinking about is how we help organizations do this”
- “I had to explain to my wife that the 24 year old woman helping me is my reverse mentor. She said, ‘Oh that is what you call them now.’”
- “It is hard to imagine that people would find this industry compelling when they do not understand it”
- "Pershing Advisor Solutions perceives itself as the new model custodian. It serves professionally managed, growth-oriented advisory firms that serve clients with complex lives"
- "Key issues that the industry should be discussing include the globalization of the advisory model; designing new model financial services companies around clients; and the implications of the age gap"
- "The right perspective to approach this business is to focus on financial advisors' client satisfaction"
- "I think people are confusing succession planning with selling practices. Succession should be part of your growth strategy. If you do not have a succession strategy as part of your growth strategy, you are going to be selling an empty oil well"
- "Older financial advisors call themselves entrepreneurs but I am convinced that entrepreneur is a French word that means, I do not want to be accountable."
Bill Van Law
(President, Investment Advisors Divison, Raymond James Financial)
Bill Van Law is President of the Investment Advisors Division at Raymond James Financial. Previously, he was senior vice president and national director of business development at Raymond James Financial. Mr. Van Law worked in the private client group at Merrill Lynch before joining Raymond James Financial.
Mr. Van Law's recent
comments have included:
- "I did a really deep dive so we could create something competitive. We want to position ourselves to really grow this. We saw advisors who did not stay at Raymond James and left for an RIA model, and that was disturbing. That reinforced that the strategy was not going to work going forward unless we created something more competitive"
- "It is about quality caliber and diversity of the team. It is important that we have people with outstanding experience from all areas of where we are going to recruit from. If you look at our team, now we have got experience from two major custodians, Schwab and Fidelity, and experience from independent broker-dealers and the wirehouses"
- "It does not matter where you are in terms of value, if you are not priced the right way, no one will come"
- "My goal is to reinforce that this RIA business is a growing business and we are making major commitments"
Alexa
von Tobel
(CEO,
LearnVest)
Alexa von Tobel is CEO of LearnVest. Ms. von Tobel founded the company in 2008. Previously she was a trader at Morgan Stanley in
Ms. von Tobel's recent
comments have included:
- “We are an RIA doing something slightly different. We are the first ever real consumer program – something as simple as Weight Watchers for the average consumer”
- “We do not sell any products – your planner is never selling you anything. Transparency is the key”
- “We are a subscription service at its core”
- "Being a
registered investment advisor allows us to start giving investment advice
and to maximize all of our customers' investments. We are bringing a
subscription model for financial planning to the masses"
- "The
best advice I have ever received — and I really abide by this — is when it
comes to people who want to start a company, who want to be entrepreneurs,
once you get to the point where you know you want to do it, you have to
just do it"
- "Financial
judgment is not about not letting you have things. Good financial judgment
is about you living big when you are older"
- "Thirty
percent or less of your paycheck should go to lifestyle purchases...the
goal of having a really balanced budget is building in splurges"
- "Having
command over your finances is a huge aspect of taking command over your
life, from changing jobs, to who you end up with, to having the courage to
ask for raises"
Derek
Young
(Vice
Chairman, Pyramis Global Advisors)
Derek Young is Vice Chairman of Pyramis Global Advisors and president of Global Asset Allocation at Fidelity Investments. Mr. Young joined Fidelity Investments in 1996 as director of risk management for Fidelity Management Trust Company (FMTC). Since then he has held a variety of positions across the firm with increasing levels of responsibility and management oversight, including senior vice president of Strategic Investment Services and Marketing for FMTC, head of Fidelity Investment's US Asset Allocation Committee, and co-manager of numerous mutual funds, including the Strategic Funds family and the Asset Manager Funds. Prior to his present role, Mr.Young was chief investment officer of Fidelity's Global Asset Allocation division from 2009 to 2011. Before joining Fidelity, Mr. Young was a manager in the risk strategy consulting practice for KPMG. From 1991 to 1995, he worked for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve as a senior financial analyst and then as a supervisory financial analyst. Mr. Young began his career as a vice president at Empire Financial Services in 1986.
Mr. Young's recent comments have included:
- “There is no better way to build a macro view of the world than talking to analysts who are talking to consumers & the rest of the world”
- “Mainstream America really has a distrust of the financial industry. We take that quite seriously. We truly do care about you retiring in dignity, about your kids going to college, about helping people do what they can not do themselves”
- “I have a lot of respect for central banks but government involvement is one of those issues that I take great concern with because what you are seeing is artificial stimulation”
- “There is significant corruption in the Chinese markets. They are now beginning to take it seriously and face off on it. This is a long-term game and they have significant issues in the next decade. This is all part of it being a growing economy”
- “If you get too worried about short-term moves, you can really end up on the wrong sides”
- “It has been a real challenge in the last five years to keep people in the right frame of mind, focused on long-term”
- "Individuals fear running out of money more than death itself"
- "I am much more thinking about our long term views for those saving for retirement, saving for college, et cetera. And, basically I love the U.S, still. I think the U.S. equity market is a good market for our shareholders to be in"
Attendees
Tiburon
is pleased to announce that the following 237 Tiburon clients attended Tiburon CEO Summit XXVI:
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Prior Tiburon CEO Summits
As noted above, details on prior Tiburon CEO Summits are also available here:
Most Recent,
2024-2025,
2022-2023,
2020-2021,
2018-2019,
2016-2017,
(2014-2015),
2012-2013,
2010-2011,
2008-2009,
2006-2007,
2004-2005, &
2001-2003.