Podcasts about fintechs

This week's bonus episode dives into a timely payments story that highlights the challenges businesses can face when things go wrong in today's digital payment ecosystem. Join Charlie Kelly, Partner at Remedy Consulting and frequent host of BankTalk, as he shares a bizarre but true story involving QuickBooks and a business-to-business payment that never reached its intended recipient. What followed was a frustrating and surprisingly complex effort to recover the funds from one of the largest fintech companies in the industry.Send us Fan MailFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

If you're building an executive team to scale your Fintech, start at tieronepeople.comMove Bank has become the first bank in the world to move its entire operation, technology, product, operations and compliance, onto Constantinople's platform. In this episode Dexter Cousins is joined by Move Bank CEO Mike Currie and Constantinople co-CEOs Macgregor Duncan and Di Challenor. They unpack an 18 month migration of around 25,000 members that cut cost to income by roughly 30 percent. It is a story about culture and courage as much as technology, and what it means for every customer owned bank in Australia.Chapters0:00 Introduction0:36 Inside Move Bank and how the partnership began2:48 A banking operating system4:55 Busting the CEO killer myth8:26 Fintechs reputation problem10:26 Why a domestic team mattered13:12 Challenger culture - Building a true partnership17:00 Go live - A world first transformation 21:03 Synthetic scale and the problem with mergers24:35 Going global31:02 The next decade of AI31:49 Advice for bank CEOs39:39 Where to find Move BankFind out more.Move Bank: https://www.movebank.com.auConstantinople: https://www.cxnpl.com** Connect With Dexter **https://www.linkedin.com/in/dextercousins/Follow us LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/fintech-chatter-podcastContact us - https://tieronepeople.com/contact/Send us Fan MailConnect on with Dexter Cousins on LinkedinHire Exceptional Fintech TalentSubscribe on LinkedIn

Immer freitags analysieren wir in unserem „Wochen-Podcast“ aktuelle Entwicklungen in der deutschen Banken-, Fintech- und Payment-Branche. Diesmal haben sich unser Redakteur Christian Kirchner und „Payment & Banking“-Experte Jochen Siegert den folgenden Themen gewidmet: #1: Die Commerzbank legt noch mal gute Zahlen vor – führt gegen die Unicredit aber nur noch Rückzugsgefechte #2: Warum die Deutsche-Bank-Zahlen den Vibe der ersten Sewing-Jahre versprühen #3: Die DWS erscheint allmählich reif für einen M&A-Deal – fragt sich nur noch, wie der dann aussähe #4: Deutsche Amazon-Kunden können jetzt mit Paypal zahlen – eine Kooperation, die lange undenkbar erschien #5: Der Fall des (selbsternannten) Berliner Unicorns Moss zeigt exemplarisch, wie Fintechs die Geschäftsmodelle von Banken aushöhlen #6: Ein wenig Sommer-Gossip sei erlaubt: Der Revolut-Chef und seine 350-Mio.-Euro-Yacht #7: Die Risikovorsorge frisst sich in die Ergebnisse deutscher Banken – auch unabhängig vom Iran-Krieg ====== Fragen und Feedback zum Podcast: redaktion@finanz-szene.de oder (auch anonym) über Threema: TKUYV5Z6 Redaktion und Host: Christian Kirchner/Finanz-Szene.de Coverdesign: Elida Atelier, Hamburg Postproduction: Podstars Hamburg Musik: Liturgy of the street / Shane Ivers - www.silvermansound.com

  From Wall Street trading floors to Nepal's hydropower-fed data centers, we're diving deep into the collision of artificial intelligence, banking, and national ambition a conversation about who controls the future of money, why accountability matters more than speed, and whether a young, resource-rich nation like Nepal can finally stop importing outcomes and start exporting intelligence with Pravesh Rijal.   In this episode, we talk about:   -Why does a Wall Street quant with a PhD in transformer architecture believe Nepal can leapfrog nations decades ahead of it -How $24 billion sitting in Nepali bank vaults and $10 billion in yearly remittance could become the country's biggest untapped weapon -What happens when AI stops being a tool humans use and starts becoming the distribution channel for all of finance -Why banks are terrified fintechs are quietly stealing the one thing that actually matters — data -How a 2017 research paper called "Attention Is All You Need" secretly built the foundation for every AI tool the world uses today -What it really means when a bank tells you "we're just custodians" while billions move invisibly through their rails -Why speed without accountability is the fastest way to destroy trust in the age of AI -How Nepal's 9-10% remittance transaction cost is silently taxing millions of families every single month -What the future of embedded finance looks like when banks disappear completely and come to you instead This episode asks the one question every Nepali dreamer needs to sit with: are we ready to stop importing outcomes, and finally start exporting intelligence. Because the tools exist. The talent exists. The only thing left to decide is whether we're bold enough to use them.   TIMESTAMPS   00:00 Introduction 04:54 What is Quant? 09:54 "Attention Is All You Need" Is the Foundation of GPT 12:16 My PhD Research Is on Transformers 14:19 Our Philosophy at Cross River 21:13 Where Is Fintech Headed Globally? 28:41 Embedded Finance Might Become Bigger Than Fintech 33:18 The Biggest Moat Is Intelligence and Distribution 35:06 The First Decentralized Data Marketplace Developed in Nigeria 40:00 Something Is Happening in Nepal 45:21 Cities Are More Similar Than Countries 50:16 What Is a Stablecoin? 1:05:20 How Would You Train the Next Generation Differently? Want to become a video podcaster? Get info: https://becomeadoer.com/programs/beco...   If you love reading, don't miss our newsletter on Substack Link: https://substack.com/@doersglobal?   Want to join us live in the studio as an audience member? Fill out this form: https://forms.gle/xZi8yptyoxkkc6aa8   ✉ Reach out to us at partners@doersnepal.com  

Ryan Belanger — Founder & CEO, Claro Advisors Most firms are adding AI to existing workflows. Ryan Belanger chose a different path, acquiring a fintech company and rebuilding Claro Advisors around an AI-native platform. He explains why he believes the future belongs to firms that rethink how they operate, not just the tools they use. In Summary Most firms view AI as another technology investment. Ryan Belanger sees it as a business strategy. Louis sits down with the Founder & CEO of Claro Advisors to discuss why his $1.5 billion RIA acquired a fintech company, built an AI-native operating platform, and believes the firms that gain the biggest advantage won't simply adopt new technology—they'll rethink how their businesses are built. The conversation also explores the broader philosophy behind that decision. Ryan shares why he's consistently chosen unconventional paths—from recruiting younger advisors and embracing a partnership model built around ownership to investing in proprietary technology instead of relying on third-party solutions. For advisors, the bigger question isn't simply how AI will change their workflow. It's how it may change what it takes to build a durable, differentiated advisory firm. The Storyline Every generation of wealth management has been shaped by a different competitive advantage. For some, independence paved the way to build unique branding and a bespoke client experience. Inorganic growth and M&A gave many firms access to scale and growth. Today, many believe the next advantage will come from artificial intelligence. But simply adopting AI may not be enough. Ryan Belanger has spent his career challenging conventional thinking. He left Morgan Stanley in 2012, well before independence became mainstream. He built Claro Advisors by investing in younger advisors instead of competing for established producers. He embraced a partnership model centered on advisor ownership rather than restrictive employment structures. And when AI began reshaping the industry, he made another unconventional decision: instead of licensing another technology platform, Claro acquired a fintech company and built its own AI-native operating system. Louis explores the reasoning behind each decision and the philosophy that connects them. Ryan explains why he believes proprietary technology will become a defining competitive advantage, how Claro's AI platform, Claire, is changing advisor workflows, and why the biggest opportunity isn't replacing advisors; it's giving them more time to do the work clients value most. The conversation also tackles practical questions facing every advisory firm: how to integrate AI responsibly, where human judgment continues to matter most, and why the firms best positioned for the future may be the ones willing to redesign their businesses instead of simply adding another layer of technology. Topics Covered AI-native advisory firms Acquiring a fintech versus licensing technology Building proprietary advisor technology Advisor productivity and workflow automation Recruiting and developing younger advisors 1099 partnership model and advisor autonomy Enterprise building and long-term differentiation AI governance and advisor trust The future of wealth management technology > Download a transcript of this episode… Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors Why did Ryan launch independently long before it became common? (7:30) Ryan explains why leaving Morgan Stanley in 2012 wasn't simply about independence—it was about creating a better business model while betting on himself. Why recruit emerging advisors instead of established producers? (15:00) Ryan shares why investing in younger advisors has become one of Claro's greatest competitive advantages and succession strategies. Why would an RIA buy a technology company? (23:45) Rather than licensing another platform, Ryan explains why Claro acquired NDVR to build proprietary technology that could fundamentally change advisor workflows. How does Claire actually help advisors day-to-day? (33:00) From meeting preparation and client follow-up to portfolio management and workflow automation, Ryan walks through how AI is saving advisors meaningful time. Will AI replace advisors—or make them better? (36:30) Ryan discusses where AI belongs, where human advice remains essential, and why he believes technology should enhance – not replace – the advisor relationship. What does the advisory firm of the future look like? (38:20) Ryan shares his long-term view of how AI, proprietary technology, and advisor expectations will reshape wealth management over the next decade. Key Takeaways Ryan believes firms that build AI into the foundation of their businesses will create greater long-term differentiation than those simply adding new software. Claro's acquisition of a fintech company reflects a strategy of owning core technology rather than relying exclusively on third-party vendors. AI is most valuable when it eliminates administrative work, allowing advisors to spend more time serving clients. Recruiting younger advisors and investing in long-term talent has become a defining part of Claro's growth strategy. Advisor autonomy, equity participation, and technology can create stronger retention than restrictive employment models. Human relationships remain central to wealth management, even as AI becomes increasingly capable. The firms that adapt fastest may be those willing to rethink their operating model—not just their technology stack. https://youtu.be/7XvSXi0PzXI Quotable Moments “I wanted to build something that was integrated instead of just layering another tool on top.” “We're trying to make really good advisors become super advisors.” “Clients still want advice from a person—but they're going to expect that person to know how to use AI.” “The firms that win won't necessarily be the ones using the most technology. They'll be the ones building differently.” FAQs Why did Claro Advisors acquire a fintech company? Ryan believed owning proprietary technology would create greater long-term differentiation than licensing another collection of third-party tools. What is Claire by Claro? Claire is Claro Advisors' AI-powered chief of staff, designed to automate advisor workflows, prepare meetings, organize client information, and streamline operational tasks. How is Claro using AI differently than many RIAs? Rather than layering AI onto multiple disconnected applications, Claro built an integrated operating platform where AI has access to the advisor's workflow, planning, portfolio, and client information. Will AI replace financial advisors? Ryan believes AI will automate much of the administrative work advisors perform today, but that clients—particularly those with more complex needs—will continue to value human advice and relationships. How does Claro recruit advisors? The firm emphasizes advisor ownership, partnership, equity participation, technology, and operational support instead of relying primarily on acquisition-based recruiting models. What does Ryan believe will differentiate advisory firms in the future? He believes proprietary technology, integrated AI, and the ability to improve advisor productivity will become increasingly important competitive advantages. Ryan believed owning proprietary technology would create greater long-term differentiation than licensing another collection of third-party tools. Claire is Claro Advisors' AI-powered chief of staff, designed to automate advisor workflows, prepare meetings, organize client information, and streamline operational tasks. Rather than layering AI onto multiple disconnected applications, Claro built an integrated operating platform where AI has access to the advisor's workflow, planning, portfolio, and client information. Ryan believes AI will automate much of the administrative work advisors perform today, but that clients—particularly those with more complex needs—will continue to value human advice and relationships. The firm emphasizes advisor ownership, partnership, equity participation, technology, and operational support instead of relying primarily on acquisition-based recruiting models. He believes proprietary technology, integrated AI, and the ability to improve advisor productivity will become increasingly important competitive advantages. Related Resources Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com Emotional Intelligence: The “Untouchable” Differentiator in an AI World Diamond Consultants Annual Advisor Transition Report Ryan BelangerChief Executive Officer & Founder Ryan founded Claro Advisors in 2012 after seven years at Morgan Stanley. He named the company after a Latin phrase “to make clear in the mind.” All Claro advisors strive to give their clients clarity and transparency, core tenants of the firm. Claro is continuously recognized within industry for its growth and thought leadership. In 2004, Ryan received a BA in Economics from The College of the Holy Cross and in 2009, he earned the Certified Financial Planner™ distinction. He is most proud of his philanthropic activity. Along with his wife Rachel, they started a foundation that raises money for genetic research in the name of their late daughter, Bella. Their focus is on extreme rare disease. Ryan resides in Boston’s Back Bay with his wife Rachel and their three children. He enjoys exercising, golfing, reading and spending time with his family. He has been featured in numerous magazines and industry publications and is regularly on television sharing his market thoughts. NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation. View the transcript of this episode… Why AI Matters Now: How a $1.5B RIA is Building the Firm of the Future A conversation with Louis Diamond and Ryan Belanger, Founder & CEO of Claro Advisors.      Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Why AI Matters Now: How a $1.5B RIA is Building the Firm of the Future. It’s a conversation with Ryan Belanger, the Founder and CEO of Claro Advisors. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven, and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at (908) 879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: Artificial intelligence has quickly become one of the biggest topics in wealth management in the world. Almost every firm is experimenting with new tools, looking for ways to automate tasks, improve efficiency, or help advisors serve clients more effectively. But what if AI isn’t just another technology to plug into your business? What if it becomes the foundation for how your business is built? That’s exactly why I wanted to have Ryan Belanger on the show. Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Claro Advisors, a billion and a half dollar RIA that’s taken a very different path than most firms in the industry. Rather than simply adding AI to an existing tech stack, Claro acquired a FinTech company and is building its own AI native operating system designed specifically for advisors. What’s interesting is that this isn’t really a conversation about software, it’s about strategy. Ryan has consistently gone against the grain from leaving Morgan Stanley to launch an independent firm in 2012 before it became commonplace, to recruiting younger advisors when others chased established producers, to betting that proprietary technology will become one of the biggest competitive advantages an advisory firm can have. If AI is going to reshape wealth management, and I think it will, the firms that benefit most may not be the ones using the most tools. They may be the ones rethinking how the entire business operates. Ryan shares what that looks like in practice, what he’s seeing from advisors today, and why he believes the next generation of advisory firms will look fundamentally different from the firms we’ve known over the last two decades. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get to it. Ryan, thanks for joining us today. Ryan Belanger: Yeah, nice to see you. Louis Diamond: You too, good to see you again. For those who aren’t familiar with you and your firm Claro, why don’t you walk us through your background and how you found your way into the industry to set the table. Ryan Belanger: Yeah, sounds good. So background was after college, I got a job at Morgan Stanley. I’d done an internship while in college and that gentleman, Morgan Dewey, said you should look at the Morgan Stanley. So I applied, got a job immediately, and just a couple weeks after graduating, I began as a financial advisor in a training program at Morgan Stanley and spent a good amount of time there and was able to develop skills necessary that really I had all along just growing up, a lot of entrepreneurial spirit I think is important in this business, how to relate to people, some competitiveness. I just happened to luck out and get into a profession that rewarded some of those skill sets. Louis Diamond: I’d say it was the right choice for you. So I think you started at Morgan Stanley in 2004. You were 21, 22 years old, just cutting your teeth, but the financial crisis happens a handful of years later. So what was it like being a relative newbie and seeing client accounts falling, the world crumbling every day? What did living through that crash teach you that’s shaped how you’ve built your business or serve clients now? Ryan Belanger: I did learn a tremendous amount at Morgan Stanley and I do still tell people if they’re looking to start at a big shop with big training programs and resources and really try to figure out what you like and then you can go off and get more specialized. But I do feel like it was a great place to get trained. They would post how many cold calls we were making every day. So on the board every morning you’d walk in and say, “Okay, where did you fall?” And I’m a competitive person, and I just want to make sure I was first every single day. So it was those type of things that really propelled me to keep interested in this business but also see the benefits. It’s really hard to get clients and that’s what people underestimate the most is to build the level of trust with someone that they’ll allow you to manage their retirement nest egg is it takes time. And I was 22, I looked really young, I had no experience, but I was fortunate to have two great mentors at Morgan Stanley, a gentleman named Todd Wetzel. He was brilliant at developing relationships, really caring for people. And then the gentleman that I had done an internship with went to Morgan Stanley as well, and he allowed me to work on some small accounts and really cut my teeth with some customers. And I was very fortunate to have done that, but you’d asked about the crash, and I think what I learned from that when people were literally weeping when their account values were down by 50%, 60% was that money is really emotional, and you have to understand how much it means to people, it’s not just the number on your screen. So having some empathy towards someone who’s really in a period of distress is now a critical skill that those of us have been around for this long understand. And there’s a whole generation, Louis, of advisors that have never experienced a real bear market, and I do fear for them at some point because when you go through that, it really changes the perspective that you have. But for me, it happened, I was four or five years into the business at that point, so I’m thankful that it happened just for my own personal development and I’ll never forget it. Louis Diamond: Yeah. Things have a way of happening for a reason and then the best advisors, best humans, they learn from them, and they’re better off for it. You’re very much right. I like that perspective about how the empathy around the emotions of money was something that you still carry and wear as a badge of honor today. So you left Morgan Stanley in 2012. I think you were 30 years old I read. One, that’s very young to consider leaving a firm like that nonetheless to go independent when in 2012, it wasn’t like everyone was going independent. There weren’t as many infrastructure providers or tech vendors or as much capital available as there is today. It definitely wasn’t a path that was as well-worn as it was. So two-part question, what pushed you to leave the firm presumably without a huge book of business? And second part, how’d you think about risk and reward at that age? Ryan Belanger: Yeah, what drove me was ultimately I felt like I was not seeing the value from the firm I was at, Morgan Stanley at the time. They were just taking an exorbitant amount of the revenue I felt. And I would see product managers strolling through and going to steak dinners, and I’m thinking, geez, I’m here every night on weekends. I’m busting my butt, and I should be creating more value to myself. And so that was one kind of thing. And I think there was a right level of naivete just to think that I could pull this off. I did believe that I had a small number of clients. I was hopeful that they would come because I had to hit a minimum for the custodian platform to start the RIA, which I was able to do. But I felt that they would come with me and that I had developed enough trust with them that I could be their advisor for a long time. And so for me, it felt like the technology wasn’t great. I was just told the mother-in-law is an expression. She says to my kids sometimes, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” Have you heard that expression? Louis Diamond: I have. My daughter reads a book where that line is repeated frequently. Ryan Belanger: Yeah, okay. So that’s how I felt then. I was like, “This is what you have and deal with it.” And to me, it just felt like there had to be a better way, but I didn’t have any capital backing, so I bootstrapped it. I Craigslisted an office from an estate planning attorney. I cold called Fidelity at the time they were our only custodian. I called to get some compliance help and I just thought that there’d be other people that would want to join. I named the firm, it’s a Latin phrase, it’s Claro Advisors, and it means to make clear in the mind. And I felt like not only was I trying to do that for clients, but I was trying to push advisors to challenge the norms here. There are other solutions out there. So I purposefully did put my name on it, I knew that there’d be other people that might feel the same way. I’ve always been a team sport guy. I like being around other people and collaborating. And I did have a good friend and credit to him. He said, “If you put this together, I’ll come with you.” And so just a couple weeks after I did, we talked and I said, “It’s up and running.” He came and Dana was our first, he’s still with us. And then a couple of months later, another guy I used to work with called and said, “Hey, I’m at this bank, and it looks like what you’ve done is interesting.” And I said, “We like it if you’d like to give it a try.” And so he came, his name’s Mike. He’s still with us. And so teams started to get put together. But I met someone in 2014, so I was two years in at that point and I was doing legitimately everything, not only as an advisor, but just all the stuff that you have to do to run the business. And it was becoming too much, especially the compliance. And I think nowadays starting an RIA, the threshold is so much higher. That’s why you see better than anyone else. You just see a lot more tuck-ins. But Jen Street was someone that I met and she really allowed me to catapult the business and scale it, so she took over all the operations and compliance and that really freed me up to be an advisor. And I really was just an advisor moonlighting as someone running. I would recruit a little bit or just be introductions, very soft. All that has changed based on what we’ve done in the last couple of years. Louis Diamond: Amazing. So thinking about risk spectrum, obviously now if you look back and say, “Hey, I had 30 million or whatever it was, I didn’t have anything to lose.” Right? But when you’re in it and you had income, you had recurring revenue, you had a paycheck versus the dynamic of, “I’m going to incur a bunch of expenses. I’m not positive who’s going to come with me. I’m not going to have a paycheck for a period of time.” Did the fact that your business was relatively small and you were just getting up and running, do you think it made it easier for you to reconcile that risk, or in some ways it was harder because your dispersion, if someone didn’t come, was that much higher? Ryan Belanger: I think it was easier for me, I knew I could always go to another firm. They would take me and whatever clients I had. I did it at a time when I had little personal risk, no kids, no mortgage. I didn’t have a wife at that point. So for me, it felt like the right time to take a risk. And I had been entrepreneurial in my life. I mean, I had a business in high school and my parents and grandparents were entrepreneurial. So that was in me, even if I didn’t really recognize it, was that I was okay with a good level of risk. And I do say this now to anyone that I’m hoping to partner with is that if you want to bet on yourself, I’ll go all in on you too. But you’ve got to be able to take that jump. I won’t let you fail, but you’ve got to be the one. I think that inertia is what a lot of advisors are like, “Geez, I don’t know, I got to give something up.” And that’s why the data’s important and you have all the data. The clients overwhelmingly go with the advisor. These days it’s just much harder to try to establish a new relationship with a trusted advisor than it is to just DocuSign some forms and move your account somewhere. So to me, it’s just trying to support people, and really push them to the edge and say, “No, this is possible. You should definitely explore this.” And I get it’s totally different, and you might be at a different life stage, but you know the numbers. I mean, tens of thousands of advisors are moving every year and not all of them have a small book like I did when I did it. Louis Diamond: Right, exactly. On one hand, making this entrepreneurial move as early in your career as you did, it was a benefit, right? Because you didn’t have as much to lose, like you said, the stage of life you’re in allowed you to absorb more risk. On the other end of the spectrum, if someone who has a massive business with immense value, they’re well situated financially, maybe their kids are through college, et cetera. And then most people are somewhere in the middle. So it’s interesting hearing that dynamic in real time. Let’s talk about Claro today. So you launched the business, like you said, you had to work hard to meet a minimum custodial threshold. So started from a very small base in 2012, but where is it today as far as assets, team size? Just give us some stats or perspective on what you’ve built in the last decade and a half or so. Ryan Belanger: Yeah, sure. So we enjoyed a tremendous amount of organic growth, Louis. We are not capital-backed. We don’t buy books of businesses, so I would recruit or partner with advisors that were coming from all the various places that you could think of that were finding us to be a very friendly place to work where you had a high level of autonomy, freedom, control, just great economics. We stayed out of people’s ways. We were just good people trying to help other good people, and it was just that friendly environment that allowed us to grow. And of course, we can’t discount market. I think markets had a tremendous growth for everybody in the business. And so the business as it stands right now, we’re about 1.5 billion in assets, 15 to 20 advisors. We got a 40-person team based primarily at a Boston headquarter, but we have advisors all over. And I think as we’ll get to, we’ve just gone through a really exciting new chapter for us where the next 15 years are going to look a lot different than the previous 15 years. Louis Diamond: Very cool. That’s amazing, and I’m in the recruiting businesses and doing recruiting yourself, it’s not easy to tell your story, get in front of the right people, the right like-minded people too, who are willing to take the leap to you, especially if you don’t have the capital backing and you can’t pay big deals or write big checks like others could, so that’s a massive testament to you and your vision. I know the average age of an advisor at Claro is around 40, yet the average advisor in the industry is 59, 60, 61, depending upon what data source you look at. What do you think you figured out about attracting, training, and really cultivating younger advisors that the rest of the industry either gets wrong or ignores? What’s been your hack in that regard? Ryan Belanger: I’ll just take a chance on people that others might not. And typically what that really means is someone with nothing, I’ll make them a deal and I’ll say, “Look, I believe in you. I think you’d be a great advisor. Let’s work on an arrangement where you feel like you can do this and I’ll support you.” And so our specialty was growing advisors from 20 million or 30 million into hundreds of million of client assets. And some of it was just being willing to look where others wouldn’t possibly want to spend their time. But when I was 22, someone took a chance on me, and so I owe it to the next generation to do that as well because there’s some great talent out there that really just isn’t getting the attention they deserve because they don’t have big books of business yet. But one of my core values is long-term thinking, and so that’s the way I frame my decisions is it doesn’t have to be a win today, but it can be a championship tomorrow or down three or five years from now. And so that’s how I’ve positioned it. I think that’s why we tend to get younger advisors. And then what happens when you get a lot of younger advisors, you have some older advisors say, “Hey, look, that’s an attractive bench of talent. I needed a succession plan. You guys seem to have a bunch of guys and gals that know how to do really great work and serve clients.” But I think that’s probably one of the things that I just was willing to take some chances on people at an earlier stage. Louis Diamond: Yep. I love it. I mean, once again, you said in the beginning, you developed an empathy for the emotional side of money and what people were going through that you carry through to this day. So not losing touch with the fact that you started. I mean, everyone starts in this business at some time, but I feel like once you’re successful or you’re through the first few years, you forget what it was like to be a newbie. So keeping that perspective and appreciation for the mentors you had, et cetera, is great. And honestly, from a business building standpoint, to me in this environment, unless you take on private equity capital, or you have capital from a BD or from a wirehouse behind you for recruiting, it’s really hard to win advisors with large books of business. So going in the blue part of the ocean instead of the red ocean, if anyone’s read that book, is very smart, looking under rocks that others don’t or really buying into or leaning into folks that you see something in that you know you can cultivate is a brilliant way. And it’s honestly more scalable, cheaper, you build a better business as well doing it the way that you do, but still, it’s hard. And my guess is the ROI is shorter. I’m sure you’ve made some hires that don’t pan out. So you have to have the tolerance and the demeanor to really invest in people. So long-winded way to say I love what you’re doing. How much of your recruitment of advisors and the retention of that talent as they become successful would you tie to how you compensate them, or equity if that’s available versus the culture of the firm and the mentorship that you and your team provide? Ryan Belanger: Yeah, I mean I’ll speak to what we’re offering now just because that’s more relevant, and so we are positioning ourselves now as the best home for advisors in the country and we really believe that’s the case, but our problem is we’re just a secret. We’ve just come to the market after our deal and all the technology that I know we’ll talk about. So we’re now marketing this message to advisors that want to partner with us. Economics will help them grow. We have a really interesting growth program. We’ll give them equity and Claro. I firmly believe that we should tie each other, just get in the same boat, so to speak. So our success is their success, but allowing them to operate in a 1099 model, which I know is not a popular strategy. I know everyone wants to buy books and own the assets and own the clients, but I feel there’s a tremendous amount of advisors that do not that probably should not be monetizing their businesses so quickly. And so I’m trying to foster a home for those like-minded advisors that want the autonomy to own their clients, maybe even still have a brand, but partner with a firm that’s got really credible technology, just unbelievable back office support and a firm of the future so that they can grow at 10X to what they could have on their own and then they could monetize. That’s what we’ve tried to put together here with our partnership model. Louis Diamond: Love it. Yeah, I mean it is definitely going against the grain a little bit, leaning into growing a 1099 model versus more of an acquisition model where everyone coming over as W-2s. So do you think about those trade-offs when it comes time to raising capital down the line or if you want to sell the business or even just an advisor wants to leave, that would stink if that happened. How do you think about those trade-offs? The ability to let advisors keep control and ownership. And honestly, in my view, probably win many people that you wouldn’t otherwise versus the stickiness, and the enterprise building abilities of owning the books of business. Ryan Belanger: Yeah, it’s a paradox because I understand why you want to own the client, but that’s a different business model. And frankly, I think it attracts different type of people. I had to really look myself in the mirror a couple years ago. We had enjoyed a tremendous amount of success, high growth and all organic, growing at 30% more per year on a CAGR basis. Nothing could stop us. But what happened was when private equity entered the space, everyone wanted to buy Claro. And to me, it didn’t feel like I did a lot of due diligence. I talked to a lot of firms. I didn’t see any differentiation in the market, Louis. To me from a technology perspective, everyone was doing the same thing. They’re using six to 12 different tools. We all know who they are. And now there’s a bunch of AI tools they’re layering on. And to me, it just didn’t feel like that was going to be any… There was no differentiation in the market. But admittedly, I had a couple of friends who I’d brought in at very low levels of AUMB that wanted to leave. And they said, “Look, I want to go to a firm that has more resources.” And so I had to just make a business decision and say, “Where do I want to take this?” And so it was only after some real adversity because you get emotionally attached to these people that you’ve developed friendships with and they still are friends, no doubt, but they can leave and they’re not captive. So we have to plan for that at Claro now, and I think we’ve got two ways that we’ve done that where it really ties the advisors to us, but in a way where they want to be here because we have something that’s really different. Louis Diamond: I like it. I’m sure we’ll get into that. But before we do, we’ll get into what you’re doing on the technology side, which is very cool and unique. How do you balance being an advisor and being a CEO? And what percentage of your time is advisor versus CEO and has that fluctuated or changed over time? Ryan Belanger: Drastically changed in the last year, two years or so. So the first 10, 12 years, I was really an advisor first and foremost. That’s inverse at this point, I’m strictly running the business. I have a great team here that deals with our clients, and I’ll still attend the client meetings and such, but I’m really laser-focused on running the business, trying to develop new partnerships with advisors, running an engineering team, sales and marketing. So the change for me has definitely occurred, and I’ll miss not keeping up with planning as much. I’m a CFP, but I just recognized that for me, I had to make a clear change and commit all my time to running the business, and so that’s the decision that I’ve made. Louis Diamond: It is a hard balance. I mean, there’s some people that try to do both, run a business, be an advisor, be a rainmaker, and something breaks. You’re not able to give all yourself to one thing. Then there’s others that would much prefer to be an advisor over a business owner. Others who say, “I’m over being an advisor. I want to be a business owner.” So I think the cool thing about doing what you’ve done is you get to choose, right? Some of it might be circumstances, but you really got to decide which elements of the business you personally want to invest your time in. And you really push your chips in the middle of the table. So let’s get into what you did in November of 2025. I read that you acquired a tech company of all things called NDVR. I’ve done this podcast for a while, speak to a ton of people. I can’t really think of anyone, any advisor or RIA that’s actually bought a tech company. So what made you puck the trend, buy a tech company and not just license all the FinTech that’s available today? Ryan Belanger: Yeah, that was the decision I had to make was do I really want to be different, or do I want to just say that I’m different? And so I was fortunate enough to get introduced to a gentleman named Michael Simon about 18 months ago, two years ago. And him and I immediately could see that we were both trying to solve the same problem, and we had perfectly mirrored image skills of one another so I had this deep wealth experience and he had a deep tech experience. And sometimes it’s just about timing in life, about catching someone at the right time. And I think we each caught each other at a really good time where we could see that coming together, we could create something really magical. And this AI wave was cresting. And I could see when I was talking to all the national PE firms or RIA firms about what people wanted to do, no one had quite figured out how AI was going to come into the technology mix, and it appears as though it’s just going to be another add-on tool to everything else. And for me, I wanted to try to build something that was integrated an all- in-one platform for an advisor so they didn’t have to use a ton of different tools. And I thought if you could do that, couldn’t you have AI that’s really much more rich and purposeful to help the clients? And so I felt like here’s an opportunity to elevate financial advice throughout the country, really give the clients all the value. And so what we’ve built allows advisors who are really good advisors to become super advisors because they’ve got this technology cape that no one else has that is allowing them to save a bunch of time and do all these really cool things for their clients. But it just felt like right time, right place. I’d been through a little bit of adversity and I felt like taking another swing just like I did 15 years ago going for it. I’ve really never been averse to risk, and so this felt like it was too good to pass up and so we went for it. Louis Diamond: Interesting. So that makes sense on the build or acquire versus rent dynamic, wanting to own the IP that makes you actually different. What does NDVR actually do? Ryan Belanger: Yeah, so everything’s all integrated. So we’ve kept the Claro Advisors name. We feel like clients really want to know that they’re still getting a person to deliver the advice. And so having the advisor’s name in our brand is important, but we have a Claro Intelligent Hub, and that’s where it’s an AI native operating system for the advisors. They spend their entire day in there, Louis. So they’re not toggling between 10 different Chrome tasks to perform all their business. And so what that allows them to do is not only it’s CRM, calendar, contacts, emails, messages, but we also have all the portfolio information. So trading history and we can do tax loss harvesting and factor-based investing. So we’ve got institutional grade portfolio management, and that’s really what Endeavor had created through their R&D was the hyper-personalized portfolios where you have a customer’s financial plan directly tied to their account. So there’s never any de-linking between the two. It’s really sophisticated technology that we can provide to our clients. So that’s all integrated as well. And so we’ve since continued to build the build upon that layer of integrated proprietary technology. Louis Diamond: It’s very interesting. And we have to imagine part of you maybe now or in the future is, okay, we’ve built this amazing technology mousetrap for our advisors, but do we become a FinTech? Is there any thought of eventually licensing what Endeavor is doing for your business and your clients to other RIAs? How do you think about that dynamic of just building something unique and different for Claro that advisors can latch onto versus making what you and your partners have developed into something that someone else can take and license themselves? Ryan Belanger: Yeah, it’s a fair question. We get it a good amount. While there might be a possibility that we license this to some other businesses, our main goal right now is to keep it captive to RIAs that want to partner with Claro. And so we feel like this gives them a true level of differentiation in the market, and so that’s the approach that we’re taking right now. Being a FinTech company, there’s a lot of different skills. The setup and tear down of getting someone to use the platform and I think all that time and resources we want on sales and marketing to try to attract new advisors and continue to develop just jaw-dropping technology for the existing advisors. Louis Diamond: Very cool. Let’s talk a little bit about your partnership model. So it does sound unique in that you have people that are 1099, but you don’t usually also hear partner. So how does it work? Ryan Belanger: Yeah, so we’re offering advisors to come and use Claro as a back office so you can have your own brand if you want or you can just be a Claro advisor. We have both here and you’ll be a 1099 advisor so you’ll still own the business that you’ve owned. So if you were at a wirehouse or something, you would actually now be creating some enterprise value for yourself. But if you’re an existing REA, you’d be coming to us because you’re tired of doing tech vendor due diligence all the time or you’re tired of the compliance, the AI regulations. That’s just coming. So that’s going to be a huge challenge for REAs, so we’re seeing a lot of interest from REAs saying, “Look, you’re not asking me to give up really anything except the stuff that I hate to do anyway, so this sounds great.” So they partner with us. In return, they get all access to our technology And we’ll provide all the back office support, office space, dedicated resources, planning, everything you could want to have to operate a business. We do have a growth program that’s really interesting. And then we’ve got this equity in Claro. As you’re a partner with Claro, you should get equity so we give stock options to our advisors who are here and every year thereafter. And naturally, that’s a way to stay connected with the advisor. So hopefully they never want to leave, and I do believe that once you experience our technology, you never want to go back to trying to do it the way you were doing it before. Louis Diamond: It’s like instead of building the most enclosed box that you keep people in with sticks and with locks and keys like a lot of firms do, it’s we’re going to keep advisors here, but not by force, but because they have the stock options, because you’re delivering value, because they have this amazing technology. To me, that’s the dynamic that so many firms across the industry get wrong is that they try to keep advisors where they are by restrictive covenants and by fear, and by retribution rather than if we just do good work for people, we add value, we make ourselves indispensable to the advisor. To me, it creates a healthier dynamic. I think firms would actually retain more even if it’s a gentler approach. And I love what you’re doing there. I think it’s the exact right way to think about we have advisors that are 1099, so yeah, they could leave us, but we’re doing things that make it that they don’t want to leave us. And that’s your charge as the owner to create the infrastructure and the structure where people could go out on their own, but there isn’t an advantage to do so. Ryan Belanger: Yeah, I think the culture is a big thing for us. And if you have people here that don’t want to be here, that’s a problem. And I think that’s what you see in a lot of the wirehouses. Frankly, they scare people and they don’t. It’s like, oh my God, if I leave. And for us, it’s like personally, life is too short. I want to work with people that want to work with me. I’ve got other things going on in my life and these things are just work things. And so I want to enjoy being in the office every day with people that want to be here. And if you think you’ve found a different place, you should go explore that. It’s really a soft approach. I know it’s not the most popular approach, but that’s just the style that I have. Louis Diamond: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like the trend in your career and in launching Claro was we’re going to do things that aren’t popular, but that work for us, like hiring younger advisors that may not have a book or have a small book, buying a tech company instead of licensing it, being 1099 when you’re recruiting instead of owning books of business. There’s a series of decisions you’ve made as the business owner that they’ve worked out, they’ve paid off, but they’re definitely against the grain. And I very much respect that. Ryan Belanger: I really have never been afraid to be a little different, and so I think typically you find other people that might be interested, but it’s a big pool out there. There’s 300,000 advisors so there’s something for everyone, which is awesome. Louis Diamond: Totally agree. Let’s get back to the AI platform that you’ve built, or that you’re building. Maybe give a real tangible example. If I’m a Claro advisor, how has my life changed now that I’m using this platform versus before? So the old model was I log in, like you said, to 10 different Chrome tabs. I’m meeting with clients, doing planning, et cetera. What is the day in the life? How does it look different from what an advisor’s actually doing today versus before this platform was rolled out? Ryan Belanger: Yeah. All right. I’ll just give you a couple examples. So a client will send you a request and say, “Louis, I need $25,000.” And so a typical advisor would either write a note down, go drop it off at the CSA’s desk, or maybe forward that email to the CSA and then that person would have to input it into their CRM, and they go perform the task. And then the advisor would want to know where things are in that process so that there’s a lot of back and forth. With our system, Claire, our intelligent chief of staff, AI chief of staff, you just forward that task to tasks@claroadvisors.com. It recognizes the email address that the client is emailing from, it knows the account number. It talks to our portfolio engineer. It knows which account to raise the cash from because it knows the tax jurisdiction, and otherwise, and it performs the task. And the last push of a button is that CSA just moving money from the custodian. So all along the way, the advisor can check on the task and see where it is in the process. It’s beautifully integrated in the intelligent hub, but you could see how that would save a tremendous amount of time and it’s a better customer experience. The mistakes get limited. So it really allows the advisor to get things done at a much higher level. So we’re raising productivity quite a bit. First of all, she’ll establish your meetings, Claire will. So she’ll schedule them for you. She’ll prep them for you. So we have a button, say prep the meeting because we have all the notes, emails. If you’re texting portfolio data, because she has all that information in about 30 to 45 seconds, she’s going to present to the advisor a really nice meeting summary that, “Hey, here’s the things that we should talk about.” She’s going to surface things that the advisor’s forgotten about because she doesn’t forget things. And so she’s prepped the meeting for you, so you’ve saved a couple hours there. She joins the meeting, she takes all of your notes, stores them in the system. She’ll give you a follow-up email. She knows your writing style, so she’ll know that you like to call this client this, and you send these emails typically at this time. And so she’ll deliver a nice follow-up email instantly for the advisor. They click that button, that’s done. So there’s just a lot of things that where she’s efficiency-wise where on 20, 30 hours a week that we’re saving advisors just on the productivity tools alone, so that’s where we’re seeing advisors seeing a ton of value in this. Louis Diamond: It’s very cool. Ryan Belanger: And then there’s a whole portfolio management capabilities, sweeping idle cash and tax loss harvesting and rebalancing that gets done while advisors are having a cup of coffee. They don’t have to think about these things. It just gets done for them. Louis Diamond: It’s so cool because it’s like I think I can conceptualize or think of building in Claude any one of those functionalities for the most part, but the way that the flow of things works and the journey of it is unique. I think every advisor would be interested in that type of promise of saving that much time. So how do you think now in the future, how do you think about the human advisor interaction, and what the human and the advisor will do versus what can be offloaded to AI? Ryan Belanger: Yeah, certainly a lot of the non-client-facing activity can be unloaded and that’s where advisors spend, according to recent studies, almost 60% of their time non-client-facing. So we’re trying to take all that off of their plates for them. We strongly believe clients still want the message to come from a person that has a level of experience and understands them. But at the same point, I think there’s a growing curiosity about, geez, what could it do for me? And so shouldn’t my advisor know how to use it? And so I think you’re seeing a lot of advisors put their head in the sand and say, “I don’t know. I’m just going to hope people don’t really want to use this and adopt it.” They’re a little bit shortsighted there. Our bet is that clients are going to want an advisor that knows how to use tech, has really sophisticated tech, but it isn’t just another tool layered on top that now my data is in that tool. The reason our system is so beautiful and integrated is because it captures everything in a structured and secure way. So all of the compliance is in there. We whitewash all the PII that’s sensitive information, so we’re not layering another tool on, because it’s integrated, we have an AI governance committee that really takes it seriously. How are we using this information? And so we’ve got an approach and we’ve put guardrails around what it can do and what it can’t do. Might there be a generation, Louis, that wants an AI advisor? I don’t know, that could happen. A twin, a digital twin where you say, “Look, I want to talk to Louis.” It’s 10 o’clock at night. He might be in a different time zone than me. He’s got little kids, but I do have this question. And so we’re iterating ideas on how we can surface that for an advisor to be advisable 24/7 without actually having to be available 24/7. Louis Diamond: Seven. It’s amazing to think about. I mean, obviously you’re deeply in this. You have a front row seat into the power of AI, how it’s transforming your business, doing due diligence on acquiring this technology five years from now, 10 years from now, what does the industry look like as a result of AI? What’s your big bet? Ryan Belanger: A lot of the big firms are going to try to figure out how to layer in tech. It’s going to be very difficult to do that. It’s built on extremely old legacy technology. They’ll be slow. They’ll figure out how to do some things. What we’re already seeing from advisors is the wow factor. Wow, I didn’t know this was even possible, and so I think just given our size and where we are, we have an advantage that we can build things from the ground up very quickly. I mean, what used to take an engineer a couple of months or years can be done in a couple of days or weeks, so things have really sped up in terms of the development. It’s much easier to build it than buy it. And so I think you’ll see a lot of firms trying to do what we’ve done, really build proprietary technology. And I think there’ll be a few winners that are able to do that, but being tech forward and aligned with someone who’s thinking about it, I think is what a lot of advisors are going to want to be. That’s the type of firm people would want to partner with, I think. Louis Diamond: What about the dynamic of, like you said, the digital twin thing is equal parts cool as it is terrifying, how do you see, we’ll say the threat of AI impacting the profession of being a financial advisor? Do you look at it as the entire pie is going to grow because everyone’s more efficient? Or do you look at it as it’s going to take out a lot of the advisor capacity we have because it’s no longer necessary? Where do you fall on that spectrum? Ryan Belanger: So robo-advisors came and went, you remember those. I mean, not that they went, but they never took off the way that it was projected. They’re still great businesses, but the human advisor won that battle. Clients do want an advisor, particularly at the higher end, and so I think at the lower end of the market, you’re going to see some AI solutions where people are perfectly comfortable just talking to someone in AI, and they’ll figure out if there’s a hallucinization or not. But I think there’s definitely going to be a market for it, and so I think it just depends on where the clients are and what level of complexity they have. On the higher end, I do feel like the advisors will continue to have a huge advantage there. But we’re building tools to give optionality to advisors. There might be some advisors who say, “Look, I’ll charge half the fee that I used to charge so you can get my digital twin. And that’s a win-win situation for everybody.” Louis Diamond: Yep, that’s fair. So do you look at your competitive ecosystem now? Not for recruiting advisors, let’s say for winning clients. Do you look at Farther and Savvy and different AI or FinTechs as your competition or do you still look at it as the wirehouses and other traditional RIAs? Ryan Belanger: I mean, Farther and Savvy have done a great job of going after this market. I think we’re not as well known yet as they are. We’ve certainly built out what we think is tremendous technology second to none. There’s a huge market of the IBD space that is just these guys and gals are stuck on these old platforms and things are okay, but they’re not super compelled to switch until maybe they see something like this, and so we have a massive pipeline of advisors and I’ve been recruiting for a long time. I’ve never had a pipeline like this. So I know it feels different to me. People really are interested in this. It’s enough for them to want to see tech demos and come visit us and really understand, okay, this is a firm that is challenging what’s possible and that’s someone that maybe I want to be aligned with, and so I think that there’s a lot of places where we can get the talent. And so for us, it’s just trying to find the right people that we want to partner with for the long term. Louis Diamond: Very cool, I got two more questions for you. It’s pretty remarkable that to get from where you started to now, the recruiting you’ve done, buying a FinTech, integrating it, that you still don’t have private equity investor outside capital. So you think it’s on the roadmap, whether it’s a certain size or you’re looking for personal liquidity where the business will just need it because it’s expensive to operate a FinTech platform and to scale up and to keep growing the firm. Do you think there’s a world in which you take on external capital to fuel your growth? Ryan Belanger: Most certainly. I mean, things have developed for us very quickly here, and outside capital and venture particular is a space that we’re actively in discussions with firms that believe in our vision, understand the value that we can create, and there’s just no doubt that you have to have some wind at your back to get to the market, and so while we’re not a household name right now, I’m confident in two years we will be, and our plan is to grow to hundreds and thousands of advisors across the country. Louis Diamond: Wow, big vision, but I love it. Last question for you. If you were 30 years old again, which I think everyone would kill for that opportunity, leaving Morgan Stanley today instead of in 2012, what do you think you would do differently knowing what you know now? Ryan Belanger: At that point, interest rates were near zero, Louis. Valuations you remember were two to three times revenue. It felt expensive then. Obviously things have changed quite a bit. So I would’ve begged, borrowed, and stole all the money I could from friends and family and said, “I need to buy as many businesses as I could at two times, three times revenue and pay, I don’t know, 3% loan.” Just in hindsight, that’s what everyone should have done. That’s not the path that we chose, but I think there’s a huge opportunity in front of us to elevate financial advice across the country, make really good advisors even better by putting that super cape on them. And so we’re very excited about the future, what we’ve got in store, and what we’re going to deliver to the market. And it seems like just yesterday that I walked out of Morgan Stanley with very little assets and tried to start this RIA, but I’m very thankful for all the people that have been supporting me throughout this journey. Louis Diamond: Amazing. And that’s a great spot to end, but let me ask the inverse of that question. Let’s say you leave in 2026, so leave today, you’re 30 years old, but you have the benefit of hindsight. You know what you know now. What would you do differently around the transition or building the firm other than of course be amazing if you can buy businesses for a fraction of what they cost today? Ryan Belanger: I would want to make sure that I’ve got an integrated solution. I don’t want to be picking a bunch of different vendor tools. I know that’s going to become way too time-consuming for me. So I would really try to figure out how you can get something that’s integrated that can scale, but I wouldn’t change anything about the people. I think you got to be able to connect with people that are like-minded and you still take the risk. What I can’t believe, Louis, is that people that sit at the wirehouses take a home team discount and they’re so fearful of leaving Morgan Stanley or Merrill Lynch or UBS, but why are they taking that? The market says you should be paid double what you paid. And it’s not just like that’s 20, 30 years of data here that show that. And so I just would keep pushing people to bet on yourself. Your clients will come with you. Yes, that firm that you love will be the first ones to try to steal your clients. They’re going to call them, and that’s one way, loyalty. Another thing I don’t understand, but that’s the way the business is structured. I think there’s a huge opportunity to just educate advisors about what’s out there and I would take the risk. Louis Diamond: Love it. Ryan, this has been very fun. What you’ve accomplished, like I said earlier, gone against the grain at every turn. Leaving on the younger side without a huge business, buying and integrating a technology company, recruiting younger advisors without books of business. Every single thing you’ve done has been a different playbook. So I’m pumped to watch how we make Claro a household name and how this approach is going to pay off in spade. So I appreciate hearing this different perspective, and I know our listeners did as well, so much appreciated today. Ryan Belanger: Well, thanks for having me on. I know it’s a long time coming. Thanks for your patience. I wanted to make sure we had something really exciting to talk about when we finally did this, and hopefully I can come back in a couple years and catch up. And congratulations on everything you guys have built. You guys are just a premier name out there, and it’s been fun to watch your success as well. Louis Diamond: Thank you, Ryan, I appreciate it. Mindy Diamond: As a financial advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibilities seriously and are dedicated to your clients. But are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firms or could a better option exist? Should I Stay or Should I Go? is a book written with you in mind. It’s a self-guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and roadmap to professional self-discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively whether you’re considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/thebook. Why AI Matters Now: How a $1.5B RIA is Building the Firm of the Future A conversation with Louis Diamond and Ryan Belanger, Founder & CEO of Claro Advisors.      Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Why AI Matters Now: How a $1.5B RIA is Building the Firm of the Future. It’s a conversation with Ryan Belanger, the Founder and CEO of Claro Advisors. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven, and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at (908) 879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: Artificial intelligence has quickly become one of the biggest topics in wealth management in the world. Almost every firm is experimenting with new tools, looking for ways to automate tasks, improve efficiency, or help advisors serve clients more effectively. But what if AI isn’t just another technology to plug into your business? What if it becomes the foundation for how your business is built? That’s exactly why I wanted to have Ryan Belanger on the show. Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Claro Advisors, a billion and a half dollar RIA that’s taken a very different path than most firms in the industry. Rather than simply adding AI to an existing tech stack, Claro acquired a FinTech company and is building its own AI native operating system designed specifically for advisors. What’s interesting is that this isn’t really a conversation about software, it’s about strategy. Ryan has consistently gone against the grain from leaving Morgan Stanley to launch an independent firm in 2012 before it became commonplace, to recruiting younger advisors when others chased established producers, to betting that proprietary technology will b

The Federal Reserve controls master account access to payment services like Fedwire and ACH, with 2022 guidelines creating a three tier review for insured banks, uninsured but supervised institutions, and novel charters. A Congressional Research Service report describes a skinny master account concept that would grant limited services to certain nonbanks under strict limits and collateral. Courts have upheld the Fed's discretion in access decisions, including in the Custodia Bank case. FedNow launched in 2023 and RTP continues to grow, giving operators more connectivity options. For founders, direct access could cut costs and counterparty risk but would require strong compliance and could face caps and collateral. Congress may consider legislation or policy to define skinny accounts, and Reserve Banks would implement procedures if adopted.Learn more on this news by visiting us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Innovation is no longer a future goal—it's a necessity for survival and growth. Justin Dunmyer of ICBA joins us to discuss the strategies community banks need to embrace continuous innovation, prioritize initiatives with the greatest impact, foster a culture of change, and deliver measurable results. Discover how forward-thinking institutions are transforming challenges into opportunities and positioning themselves for long-term success.Send us Fan MailPresented by Remedy ConsultingFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

With Josh Tomolak, Vice President of Independent Advisor Services, Diamond Consultants Louis Diamond and Josh Tomolak unpack today's IBD vs. RIA landscape, explaining what has changed, where each model excels, and how to determine which path best supports the business you want to build. In Summary The independent wealth management landscape has changed dramatically, making the decision between an independent broker dealer (IBD) and an RIA more nuanced than ever before. Louis Diamond welcomes Diamond Consultants' Vice President of Independent Advisor Services, Josh Tomolak, for a practical discussion of how the independent space has evolved, what truly differentiates the IBD and RIA models today, and how advisors can evaluate which path best aligns with the business they want to build. The Storyline Not long ago, the decision to become independent was relatively straightforward. Advisors either remained with a traditional firm or pursued independence through one of a limited number of models. Today, the conversation is far more complex. Independent broker dealers have significantly expanded their capabilities, offering stronger technology, larger transition packages, greater flexibility, and even pathways to RIA ownership. At the same time, the RIA ecosystem has matured into a sophisticated marketplace supported by multiple custodians, outsourced service providers, institutional capital, and enterprise platforms that rival many of the industry's largest firms. As these developments have unfolded, the traditional distinctions between an IBD and an RIA have become less obvious. Advisors evaluating their options are no longer simply asking whether they should become independent—they're asking which model best supports the clients they serve, the business they envision, and the lifestyle they want to create. In this Industry Update, Louis and Josh unpack the realities behind the IBD vs. RIA decision. They discuss where the two models overlap, where meaningful differences still exist, and why factors like service, technology, economics, operational responsibility, enterprise value, and long-term optionality often matter more than labels alone. Whether you're considering changing independent firms, launching your own RIA, or simply want a better understanding of how the independent landscape has evolved, this conversation provides an objective framework for evaluating today's choices—and preparing for tomorrow's opportunities. Topics Covered Independent Broker Dealer (IBD) vs. RIA models The evolution of supportive independence Technology investments across the independent space Transition support and advisor mobility Capital solutions and recruiting economics Business formation and enterprise value Launching an independent RIA Multi-custodial platforms and open architecture Minority investments and succession planning Future trends shaping advisor independence > Download a transcript of this episode… Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors Why are already-independent advisors reconsidering their current model? (5:27) Josh explains why service, technology, economics, and growing optionality are causing advisors to reevaluate their existing affiliations. How have independent broker dealers and RIAs become more alike? (19:28) Louis and Josh discuss the growing convergence between the two models and why the distinction is becoming less obvious than many advisors assume. What really separates an IBD from an RIA? (25:04) A practical discussion of autonomy, compliance, flexibility, custody, economics, and advisor experience. What misconceptions keep advisors from launching an RIA? (36:29) Josh outlines the “Four Pillars” of launching an RIA and explains where advisors tend to either overestimate or underestimate the operational realities. Which advisors thrive most in each model? (33:12) The conversation explores why there isn't a universally “better” model—only one that's better aligned with an advisor's goals. What trends are quietly reshaping independence? (42:13) Minority investments, enterprise value, business formation, and changing revenue models may have an even greater impact than advisors realize today. Key Takeaways Independence has evolved from a destination into an ongoing strategic decision. Independent broker dealers have significantly improved technology, transition support, economics, and flexibility. The RIA ecosystem has matured into a highly sophisticated marketplace with broad outsourcing and support options. Choosing between an IBD and an RIA should begin with long-term business objectives—not industry perceptions. Building a valuable business depends more on business structure and scalability than simply growing assets. Advisors considering independence should evaluate models with an open mind rather than relying on outdated assumptions. The next decade will likely bring continued convergence between independent business models. https://youtu.be/jHDVso2TsmQ Quotable Moments “The question is no longer, ‘Do I want to go independent?' The question is, ‘What kind of independence makes the most sense for my clients, business, and goals?'” “Business formation is far more important than assets under management.” “The way you build your business will ultimately determine how valuable that business becomes.” “Everything in an RIA is going to cost you either your time or your money.” FAQs Is there still a meaningful difference between an IBD and an RIA? Yes. While the two models increasingly overlap, they differ in areas such as flexibility, compliance structure, operational responsibility, economics, and control. Why are more independent advisors changing firms today? Improved technology, stronger transition support, evolving economics, and better service models are prompting many advisors to reassess whether their current platform still fits their business. Is launching an RIA easier than it used to be? Yes. Supportive independence, outsourced service providers, and improved custodial resources have significantly reduced many of the historical barriers. Does every entrepreneurial advisor belong in the RIA model? No. The best fit depends on an advisor's appetite for ownership, customization, operational responsibility, and long-term vision. What matters more: assets under management or how the business is built? Josh argues that scalable business formation often has a greater impact on enterprise value than AUM alone. What's the biggest mistake advisors make when evaluating independence? Starting with assumptions instead of objectives. The most effective due diligence begins by defining the business you're trying to build, then identifying the model best suited to support it. Yes. While the two models increasingly overlap, they differ in areas such as flexibility, compliance structure, operational responsibility, economics, and control. Improved technology, stronger transition support, evolving economics, and better service models are prompting many advisors to reassess whether their current platform still fits their business. Yes. Supportive independence, outsourced service providers, and improved custodial resources have significantly reduced many of the historical barriers. No. The best fit depends on an advisor's appetite for ownership, customization, operational responsibility, and long-term vision. Josh argues that scalable business formation often has a greater impact on enterprise value than AUM alone. Starting with assumptions instead of objectives. The most effective due diligence begins by defining the business you're trying to build, then identifying the model best suited to support it. Related Resources IBD vs. RIA Comparison Guide IBD vs. RIA Revisited: Two Independent Pathways for Advisors to Consider NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation. View the transcript of this episode… IBD vs. RIA: A Special Industry Update on Independence A conversation with Louis Diamond and Josh Tomolak, Vice President of Independent Advisor Services at Diamond Consultants.      Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is IBD vs. RIA: A Special Industry Update on Independence. It’s a conversation with Josh Tomolak, our Vice President of Independent Advisor Services. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at (908) 879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual advisor transition report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: For a long time, going independent would suggest the destination. Today, it’s often the beginning of a different conversation. As the independent space has matured, advisors have more choices than ever before. Broker-dealers have expanded their capabilities. The RIA ecosystem has become increasingly sophisticated. Capital is more readily available and support models now exist that would’ve been difficult to imagine a decade ago. The result is that many advisors who are already independent are taking a fresh look at whether their current affiliation still aligns with what they’re trying to build. My guest is Josh Tomolak, Vice President of Independent Advisor Services here at Diamond Consultants and our resident expert on independence. Josh spends his days helping advisors evaluate independence in all its forms from independent broker dealers, the fully independent RIAs and everything in between. And his knowledge is critical because the distinction between these models is often blurred. Many broker dealers now offer pathways to greater autonomy while supported independence has made RIA ownership more accessible than ever before. So the question is no longer simply, “Do I want to go independent?” The question is, “What kind of independence makes the most sense for client, business, and goals?” Josh shares what he’s seeing across the landscape, the misconceptions that continue to shape advisor thinking and the factors that matter most when evaluating the next chapter of an independent business. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s get to it. Josh, thanks for joining me today. Joshua Tomolak: Thanks for having me, Louis. It’s a real privilege to have come. This is a full circle moment for me going from being a student of your podcast, to working alongside you, to being a guest. So I appreciate you having me. Louis Diamond: Amazing. I’m excited for this one too, because you have a fresh and in the weeds perspective that a lot of our guests simply don’t have. So why don’t you start off, you spend your time helping advisors evaluate independence every day. So working with advisors who are already independent, for the most part. And to me, it feels like the independent space has really evolved dramatically over the last decade. I mean, this podcast is really the epicenter of that to prove that out, but give us a little background on your past roles in the space and then we can get into what you’re seeing right now. Joshua Tomolak: Yeah, I’d be happy to. So I took a very non-traditional path into wealth management. I spent a decade as a deep sea Navy diver, and upon completing my service there, I ended up working for TD Ameritrade. And in my role there, I spent about six years doing nothing but helping financial advisors explore the RIA space, whether that was to join or partner with an RIA, sell to an RIA, or in most cases, launch their own RIA. And one of the things that I ultimately came to terms with is it’s just not the right model for everybody. While I’m a huge advocate for it, we would often lose business to the major broker-dealers of the world. And at the time, I really didn’t understand why. In the last six years at Diamond Consultants has been a very interesting purview into what a lot of the broker-dealers have done and are doing to make themselves more RIA-ish and be very compelling to the right advisor. Louis Diamond: Perfect framing. Your background is incredibly germane to the folks you work with. So let’s start off with the softball here. What are you seeing right now? Joshua Tomolak: It’s not so different than the rest of the industry, the wirehouses, the regional firms, things of that nature, that if you took 10 firms, they’re all likely to go different directions, even if they were identical practices. That could be… A third would go from an independent broker-dealer to another independent broker-dealer. Certainly the supported RIA space is growing every day and has created a lot of very fun and unique solutions for advisors, very customized and curated. And then I think there’s still a lot of really great sophisticated teams and individual contributors that are making the decision to go hyper entrepreneurial and launch their own individual RIA. So the movement’s really all over the board from my perspective. Louis Diamond: It does feel like it’s no longer independence is an alternative option or it’s on the fringes. It’s very front and center whether for breakaways, which is a big topic on our podcast, but in general, the infrastructure has become much, much more sophisticated today than ever before. Advisors have way more tools in their toolbox to serve clients, whether in the private markets or through technology. And it’s no longer that if an advisor’s independent, they’re in the minor leagues where they don’t have the same ability to serve clients like they did if they’re at a big bank or a private bank or a wirehouse. Do you agree? Joshua Tomolak: I absolutely agree. And I’m reminded of a question I got one time from a great team that I worked with in New York. They asked me, “Are there really more options than ever before? Because all we see is one firm selling to another.” And I think that’s a really great point. There’s far less broker dealers on the street than there were even five years ago. But for every Commonwealth, for example, that sells to an LPL, up pops three or four really cool private equity-backed, sophisticated RIA platform firms that are built to service their own unique advisor base. Louis Diamond: I think that’s right. Sitting on the sidelines, sitting on top of everything going on in the industry, I feel like capital is always an interesting topic forever. If an advisor wanted to move within the independent world or break away from a big firm to go independent, the only way to get capital was to go to an independent broker dealer. So we still see that, but I feel like today between all these minority acquisition opportunities, we’re seeing firms acquire practices at time of transition, which is somewhat new. There’s debt solutions, recruiting deals are way up for firms that are paying forgivable loans. RIAs now would, in some cases, will pay a forgivable note. What are you seeing there as far as the availability of capital and just deals in general? Joshua Tomolak: It’s a great question and I didn’t want to take the low-hanging fruit, but capital’s been a huge innovation, I guess, in the last five years I’d say. Just to give you rough quotes, please don’t hold me to it, but traditional transition broker-dealer deals were five years ago, 40 to 60% of Trailing Twelve revenue today are somewhere between 90 and 120%, sometimes north of that for the right team. That’s really meaningful money for the team that is thinking about foregoing a wirehouse deal, for example. I’d also say a lot of these firms are getting hyper-creative in how they solve for capital. The minority investment piece that you mentioned is very interesting. We’re seeing a lot of privatized forgivable notes in the RIA space where third-party or private lenders are basically lending the money and the RIA is making the payments on that forgivable note as long as the advisor is affiliated with them. So there’s been a recognition among the RIA space to get away from the, “Oh, they just took a check” type of mantra, and to say, “Look, I understand there are capital needs. These people are taking a risk. We need to solve for that.” So we’ve seen a lot of that in the marketplace. Louis Diamond: Very interesting. I think another thing financially, and then we’ll keep the train moving, that I know I’ve seen, and maybe you can weigh in if you’ve seen the same, is the cost to an advisor or a business owner to join an independent BD or to join an RIA has come way down, probably in part because of Schwab going to zero on trading. That’s been a catalyst. But it feels like we used to say independent BDs were expensive relative to the RIA world. And in some cases, they certainly could be. And if you’re at scale, maybe you can pick up a point or two being in the RIA world versus a BD. But when you have some of these BDs that have a basis point admin fee or no admin fee at a certain size and the payouts I feel like are similar, maybe have gone up a little bit, but it’s more so like the administrator fees, the platform fees, the program fees. Anyone who’s not in that world, it’s like, “What are you talking about?” But basically the way that these broker-dealers make money, it seems like there’s been a pretty big differential in the exchange of value where advisors now get more services, better technology, get more money to join them and get it at a lower cost. Do you agree? Joshua Tomolak: I absolutely agree. I think that maybe that’s one of the larger changes that we’ve seen, and it’s probably one of the benefits from a lot of the industry consolidation on that independent broker-dealer side. The economies of scale of these folks have allowed them to increase their tech spend, increase their service capacities all while offering it to the advisors at a cheaper price. And when I was at TD Ameritrade, one of the biggest pitches was the idea of a 100% payout and you control the fixed expenses, your technology compliance, et cetera. But what’s changed is that broker-dealers are pretty darn comparable on the expenses. All of those admin fees and things you mentioned will still exist, but they’re on a much smaller scale. And I think the question a lot of advisors are asking is, “Am I getting congruent value from my broker-dealer for what I pay for?” And while that answer might’ve been no a couple years ago, today the answer is more often yes. Louis Diamond: Yeah, I would agree. A lot of times we work with advisors who are starting an RIA or affiliating with an RIA or going to a BD and they see how big the deals are in the independent BD world and the payouts are really high and the fees are relatively low. And honestly, it is a hard decision or calculus to make, like, “How does it make sense for me to turn down this extremely lucrative deal when my ongoing economics are going to be somewhat similar in the BD world versus in the RIA space?” I think it’s just an interesting dynamic and we’ll get more into that distinction. One of the stars of the show right here is we’ve seen a ton of advisor movement across the industry. Our annual advisor transition report said that in 2025, over 11,000 experienced advisors changed firms, which is a large number. A lot of those numbers are within the independent world. So advisors who are 1099 through a BD or through an RIA transitioning to another platform or organization or starting an RIA. So why do you think we’re seeing so many advisors reconsider their current firm or their platform or their broker-dealer today than in years past? Joshua Tomolak: It’s a jarring number. 11,000 is definitely a significant amount of advisor movements. To me, it comes down to a few things, but I will say that it’s almost always a conglomeration of pushes and pulls. Pushes being inherent frustrations with your status quo, pulls being the new sexy, shiny things that you see in the marketplace that could be really impactful for your business. To me, it typically comes down to one of three things, at least on the push front, that drives advisors to movement. Service being number one, technology being number two, and economics being number three. And if we were just going to unpack those, I think service being, “Can you call somebody that knows your business, that knows your name? Are you getting the correct answers? Are you being pushed through a phone tree? And even if you’re not doing it, is it taking up a meaningful amount of time of your staff’s free time?” On the technology front, there’s very significant tech spends happening in the industry right now. I think Raymond James and LPL reported, for example, they spent 500 million in 2025 on a tech spend. So advisors are going to the places that are making their life easier. People are looking for a mechanism to really scale their business without having to add staff and a lot of expenses to the bottom line. And technology is just the fastest, most efficient way to do that most times. And then economics, certainly a lot of advisors and teams have built phenomenal businesses and they’ve made a great living without really stressing out about the economics. And they eventually get to a point in their business where what they were giving up as a million dollar producer is far different than what they’re giving up as a $4 million producer. And back to the congruent value, it perhaps stops to make as much sense. Louis Diamond: Well said. I always say when the cost-to-value ratio is out of whack, that’s when advisors sit up and take notice. And not to name names of firms, but there definitely are firms that are more expensive. And even if you look at how much a wirehouse or a Ed Jones advisor paid their firm, it’s like, “What got me here is not necessarily what’s going to get me there.” And while the name on the business card, the resources were incredibly impactful, and I’m so grateful for what my firm, my broker-dealer did for me when I was just starting or when I was smaller. Now the business is bigger, I rely upon different resources or I don’t need the firm as much. So I’d rather plow the cost savings either into income for myself or invest it in areas that are most germane to my business. And it’s usually when that kind of light bulb moment goes off, that’s one of the major pushes that cause advisors to evaluate other options. So I agree with you, those are the major push factors, but then what are the pull factors? What are the major advancements or changes across the independent space that’s causing advisors to say, “Hey, okay, I might have some frustrations, but at the same time, I also need to find something that’s more than marginally better than the firm I’m at. Otherwise, why am I going to go through the hassle, take the risk, et cetera? So what are some of the pull factors that advisors are latching onto today? Joshua Tomolak: Sure. And I might say with one final push factor, there’s a straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back when you’ve been told for however many years that this change or that change is coming down the pipeline and it never happens. And it translates well into the pull factors is do they do what they say they’re going to do? The talking points really for the pull factors are exactly the same. So the counterpoint to service is perhaps having a direct relationship with the chief compliance officer at a firm or having a dedicated service representative that knows their stuff inside and out and can get you the answer even if they don’t know it off the top of their head. Having the technology to rebalance a household in two clicks instead of two hours. In economics, I think it’s really a transparency of economics. We’ve both worked with some really significant firms that have looked at their P&Ls and said, “where the heck is the money going?” And we’ve looked at the same P&Ls and said, “I have no idea,” because it’s so convoluted. People are happy to pay for good service, good technology, good products, but they just want to know where the money’s coming from. So I think it’s a yin and yang. The same things that they’re the push are often the pull. Louis Diamond: Definitely. I’ll give you a couple other from my perspective. I’ll say first specific to the independent BD world, and then we’ll dive into the RIA, I think it’s a little bit different. But I think some other will say innovations or changes that are causing advisors to really perk up and listen and really make the case to themselves that life will be better at this new organization than the status quo or staying put. We’ve seen major advancements in transition support, whether it’s being able to do a transition without a shred of paper, being able to… I mean, we’ve seen some independent advisors move their entire book within two weeks, which never would’ve happened before. So the firms that I’d say are playing offense, the larger firms that are winning, they have insane headcount around transitions and are always investing in technology, whether now on the AI front or in general. And we’ve seen transitions, they’re never easy. So that’s not a comment to say it’s easy, but a lot of the friction, a lot of the manual work has been taken away, which is massive. You definitely mentioned the significant technology spend. I mean, just the innovations going on across the industry. There’s definitely some firms that are laggards on technology and others that are light years ahead, whether because their tech is more integrated or they’ve built out their platform to be more, we’ll say modular, to plug in different third-party softwares where an advisor can really customize and create their own tech stack. I think there’s been some changes on compliance. It used to be if you’re at an independent BD, you had to be the OSJ by yourself or you had to roll up under an OSJ. But now most BDs offer home office supervision, so a big friction or pain point is taken away. And then I’ll give you a bridge to talk about what we’re seeing on the RIA side. But we’ve also seen, I would say, a real blurring of the lines between what you would traditionally think of as an independent broker dealer versus what was an RIA. So whether it’s an internal pathway where it’s like, “Start off on our independent BD platform, get the big deal, get the support, but then you can ditch that and just use this as a custodian or you can sell the business to us when you want to retire and convert to W2.” So in that vein, transitioning internally to an RIA, give me the same points like, “What are the major advancements or changes you’re seeing on the RIA side today?” Joshua Tomolak: I love that you said that because it’s been one of the most interesting changes to watch. Independent broker dealers becoming more like RIAs, and to your point, being more flexible, having more optionality, a more curated experience in some cases. And in many cases becoming closer to independent broker dealers with some of these massive shops that we’ve seen be created over the last five years that now have hundreds, if not thousands of advisors. To your question on the internal RIA slide as we sometimes call it, this really didn’t exist many places a few years ago. And I think it’s been created as both originally a retention tool in many places for the advisors that were with a major independent broker dealer and they ultimately wanted to have their own ADV and their own RIA. And the firm didn’t want to lose all the assets to an independent custodian so they gave them the green light to… And it’s ultimately became a sales tool in many cases. Just to use a couple of examples across the industry, I mean, Raymond James has Raymond James Custody Services, which has attracted a lot of really sophisticated teams. I know Wells Fargo Finance done something similar and even the counterparts over at Cetera and Osaic are trying to do the same thing. So it’s a recognition in my view that we want to keep the best talent possible. And if these folks are ultimately going to go RIA anyway, it’s less about the money and more about the flexibility and control that it offers them. So what can we do to keep those folks on board? And rightfully so, a lot of senior management of these firms have said, “Let’s not lose these teams. It’s going to be a lower margin business for us, but at the rate that they’re growing, it’s going to pay off in the long run.” Louis Diamond: Well said. RIAs are now more mainstream. And some of these RIAs, they’re either resembling independent BDs or I would even go so far to say the valuations that are even publicly available on some RIAs is definitely having people take notice. I mean, Cerity Partners recently raised capital at an over $8 billion reported valuation. Crescent was well over a billion. Firms like Mariner, Creative Planning, Mercer, Wealth Enhancement Group, and there’s many that I’m missing, are all worth a couple billion dollars or more and growing. Do you think that’s had an impact on the legitimacy or the staying power of the RIA model? Joshua Tomolak: Oh, absolutely. There’s no doubt about it. I mean, those groups that you mentioned and many more are winning some of the biggest teams on the street. I mean, if you pull up a run-of-the-mill advisor hub article, for example, you’ll see as many of those RIAs win significant businesses as you will their broker-dealer counterparts, partially in my opinion, due to the massive valuations these firms are fetching. And it’s much more of a partnership in the sense that joining a Crescent or a Wealth Enhancement Group, as you mentioned, you’re a part of a boutique group of maybe a couple of hundred very sophisticated high-producing advisors all playing under the same banner, all rowing in the same direction, and that creates substantial growth. Louis Diamond: Exactly right. I think two other things to me that’s driving the legitimacy or the growth of the RIA segment, there’s so many different outsourcing solutions that have popped up, whether it’s more of a… We’ll say a bundled or a package outsourcing solution through firms like Dynasty and Sanctuary. LPL has done a ton with having a shared services outsourcing model. So you have those. But you also have, I mean, probably 10 different firms I could think of that can be an outsourced chief compliance officer. You have tons of marketing agencies that specialize in helping RIAs. You have all these FinTechs popping up to support the RIA space. Really, it’s like anything and everything can be outsourced now. And even the big Wall Street banks like UBS, Merrill, et cetera, they’re attempting to sell and distribute product into the RIA space. Venture funds, private equity funds, anyone you talk to is trying to get a piece of the RIA space, which means there’s more product and platform availability than ever before. And I think it’s massive because one, it’s a catalyst for teams who say, “I love everything about the RIA world. I just don’t want to do it on my own,” or, “I don’t know where to start.” But also it means that they can look their clients in the eye and say, “Hey, not only do I have the same stuff that I had for you at XYZ firm, I can actually do more for you.” And even if you look at what the custodians are doing on the lending side now, Schwab owning a bank is massive and being able to facilitate mortgages, securities-backed loans, things that didn’t really exist in the past. I think it’s a very exciting time for advisors either that are independent or are considering the independent space because you have all these choices and it’s really like, “Choose your own adventure. Give me your top five things you want.” I’m sure it exists and we can find it and make it happen. And I don’t think we’d have the same confidence in that statement 5, 7, 10 years ago. Joshua Tomolak: I couldn’t agree more. That’s such a huge development is the marketplace of third party vendors in any kind of capitalism environment. There’s problems that people encounter and there’s really smart people that are trying to make a lot of money that go to market to solve them. And we’ve seen a ton of that over the last few years. Louis Diamond: Exactly right. Yeah, it’s like also… If an advisor looks around and says, “Hey, this is what I want,” and it doesn’t exist, oftentimes that’s a light bulb moment to be like, “Okay, I’ll go build it. I’ll do it on my own.” Whether it was Stewart Partners when they launched a number of years ago or Hightower, Dynasty, et cetera. They were all started by people that said, “Hey, I see a big gap in the ecosystem. Let’s create a business and raise capital to go solve it and then deliver this service to other like-minded advisors or business owners.” Honestly, it’s a treat to be able to watch all this happen in real time. We probably should have laid the groundwork with this next question, but I think it’s an important one. What’s the difference between a independent broker-dealer and an RIA? Really basic foundational. It sounds like the lines are blurred. There’s probably a lot of similarities. Advisors are successful in both. It’s not like one’s better than the other. How would you explain the differences, if a client of ours asked, “What’s the difference between an independent broker-dealer and IBD versus an RIA”? Joshua Tomolak: Get into the core of it. Again, the lines are blurred, and I’ll stay very high level on the strategic differences, but I like to use this example. I drive a Toyota Tundra. Really like the truck, gets me from A to B. Now, if I were getting to a point where I wanted a new vehicle, if I were to go get another Toyota Tundra because I really like a lot of aspects of it, but I want the one with the bigger screen and the bigger tires and the power seats, and I have rolled down windows because I have a fear of drowning. But if I want a lot of the bells and whistles, but I want to keep the foundation, that’s what I align to a independent broker-dealer to independent broker-dealer. You like the foundation of everything all under one roof. You like a lot of the resources, but you have some meaningful frustrations and you want to see if another provider in the market can solve for those or you can upgrade. If I instead, Louis, decided that I wanted a sports car or a Jeep Wrangler or something, I would be looking at a different category altogether. That’s how I articulate the platform space. They provide the same services and support in many cases that an independent broker-dealer does, think of marketing and a tech stack and regulatory oversight and a fellowship in a community, but they’re built on an RIA TC registered chassis. They’re typically far more customized so you can shop the street to get a lot more of the things that you like, though you are walking away from maybe some of the things that you’ve liked in the independent broker-dealer model. So I guess that’s the highest level I might explain it, just a little bit more minutia in any broker-dealer is going to be a FINRA registered, FINRA member broker-dealer. So they’re subject to the FINRA rules, which basically means it’s the compliance interpretation of those rules that they have to follow. So LPL’s rules may be slightly different than Cetera’s than Ameriprise’s because it’s based on their interpretations of the rules. In the RIA space, everybody really operates on the fiduciary standard. So it’s just a different lens that from a compliance standpoint, business is looked at. And a lot of people would make the argument that it’s just easier to get things done when you’re looking at something from that lens. I might’ve gone too compliance nerd on you there, but I’d be curious what you think some of the major differences are. Louis Diamond: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, it sounds like if you’re in the RIA world in some capacity that you as the advisor or business owner are going to have a little bit more control and autonomy and flexibility. One, do you think that’s true? And what are the reasons why that is? Is it platform? Is it strictly just compliance is easier? What are the different ways that an RIA would have more or less flexibility than someone who’s with an independent BD? Joshua Tomolak: Yeah, I think it’s overwhelmingly true, but it certainly depends on your business. Within most RIA platforms, you’re going to be one of a couple dozen, maybe a couple hundred, where you’re going to have people within that firm that really know your business. So the experience in getting things done is much less about, “Can I do this,” or, “Can I not do this?” And it’s, “Louis, I understand you asked for this. We’re going to run into these issues, but let’s figure out how to get to yes.” So it’s far more curated by people that are not operating on black and white rules and can actually figure out how to get to yes for your business. The other thing I would say is that most significant RIA platforms have multiple custodial options. So many times you’ll see as few as two or as many as five. So if an advisor or a team is trying to bring on a new piece of business or do something creative, that might be something they can use a different custodial relationship to accomplish. It might be something that Goldman Sachs does really well but is in its infancy at Fidelity, or it might be international business that’s approved on Pershing’s platform but not Schwab’s platform. So the RIA partner that you’re with can really look at those custodians agnostically and say, “What’s the best home for this business? What’s the best way to get this done for Louis?” There’s a couple examples of where I see the flexibility in practice. Louis Diamond: Yeah, I think one more too would be the concept of being able to shop the street. I’ve heard it described as becoming a buy-side advocate for your clients versus being a professional seller. So meaning, if I’m affiliated with an RIA or I’m operating my own RIA, there’s no selling away like there is at a wirehouse or at certain BDs. So if I have a client who’s trying to get a $10 million loan for a new building that they’re breaking ground on, if I’m at UBS, Merrill, Morgan Stanley, captive to a BD, I can go to my firm and say, “Hey, this $10 million loan, here it is. What are the terms? What are the rates? Will you take on this business?” And the firm will say, “Yes. No. Yes, here are the terms. Here’s the caveats, et cetera.” But it’s a very closed market process and an advisor has to live and die by what their firm says. Versus in the RIA world, it’s, “Okay, I have relationships with nine different banks and I can go to these different banks and private credit funds and whoever and really create either an option process for my client or really just help them in a fully agnostic open way.” And we see the same thing when it comes to alternative investments. No one at a wirehouse, let’s say, is complaining that they don’t have enough alts that they can offer clients. Those firms have done an amazing job with really boiling the ocean and having tons and tons of options for private investments, hedge funds, et cetera. But if you’re in the RIA world, you can take it to the next level and say, “Hey, this $3 million startup company that my friend is starting, I’m going to help them raise capital,” or, “My client wants to get a syndicate of investors together to have a direct investment into a qualified opportunity zone fund that they’re starting. Let’s do it when we can advise on it.” So it really expands what an advisor is able to do on behalf of clients. Like to me, that’s the most interesting or exciting part of the RIA model. You can get some of that within the BD world, but to me, when an advisor’s business becomes more sophisticated as far as what their end client’s needs are, it tends to translate better to the RIA world than the BD world. Not to say there aren’t ultra-high net worth focused advisors at BDs, but because of that additional flexibility, autonomy, customization, et cetera, that speaks more RIA. So again, absolutely not down at all on the independent BDs because I think there’s a massive home for them. Josh, let me turn it back to you. I’m rambling now. Give me the pitch for an independent BD. What are the things that are misperceptions that people have? What are the advantages that an independent broker dealer like an LPL or a RayJ or a Cetera have over RIAs or over other models in general? Joshua Tomolak: Absolutely. And I’d say I’ve learned more over the last six years from some of your ramblings than most people learn in an MBA course, so keep doing what you’re doing. But it’s funny being in this position now, having spent so much time sort of selling against the IBD model within TD Ameritrade, but what I’ve learned is it’s a good home for everybody. And a lot of times the advisors that they’re entrepreneurial enough where they like having their name on the door, but they’re not so entrepreneurial where they want to build everything out themselves, that’s where the independent broker dealers absolutely kill it. Their economics have gotten to a point where they’re really competitive. They offer transition capital that isn’t even going to be comparable in the RIA space unless you’re selling a minority share of your business. And you mentioned LPL, or we could really list all of the major ones, there’s not a department that they don’t have. It could be as nuance as finding 403(b) payroll slots or it could be as mainstream as fixed income or setting up events. There are all kinds of really neat departments that these all under one roof independent broker dealers have invested in. And a lot of times they make an effort to make you very much aware of all of the support because most people don’t use it. So I would say for the advisors that are looking to get their improved Toyota Tundra, then you can get probably 70 or 80% of what you want within the independent broker-dealer world. And you can also keep 20 or 30% of the stuff, maybe more that you really liked at your previous firm. So I think that’s where it really shines. I sometimes call it an incremental change rather than a transformational change. But for many advisors, incremental is really good enough if you get to keep the familiarity of how you’ve been doing business for the last 20-some years, but you’re able to get net improvement on the things that were really bothering you. Louis Diamond: Well said. Something that I’ve seen that’s been… I guess this could be either pro or con depending upon the advisor, but with some broker dealers, letting an advisor co-brand with them or really having a real consumer-facing brand, whether it’s, “I’m a franchise owner with Ameriprise,” or, “I’m independent through Raymond James,” or, “Running my own practice through Wells Fargo FiNet,” or, “I’m independent with Northwestern Mutual.” There’s definitely some brand cache or brand familiarity with some of those firms that may or may not be the same if you’re in the RIA world. So I would agree there’s a lot to like about the independent BD world and there’s a fit for people that is absolutely better with independent BDs than on the RIA side. Even if some people would say RIA is better, we’re cleaner, I wouldn’t say that. To me, it’s all about what an advisor’s goals are and then matching that up with what these firms do. And there’s never a perfect option. I jokingly say, “If there was a perfect firm, we wouldn’t be in business.” Every firm has their advantages or disadvantages. And depending upon where an advisor’s coming from, their style of business, their pain points, that’ll match up really well with on firm or one type of firm or one model than the other. Let’s pivot a little bit to the RIA world. A lot of your comments have been more about advisors affiliating or joining RIAs, this whole supportive version of independence concept. But what about advisors who want to go and start their own RIA? Either they’re leaving a captive firm and taking the entrepreneurial route and starting their own firm, or they’re leaving an independent BD to go start their own RIA. What do you see as some of the biggest misconceptions that advisors have about that move? Joshua Tomolak: That’s probably my favorite topic because there are the most misconceptions I think in this space. Louis Diamond: I’d agree. Joshua Tomolak: And I would say there’s 9 out of 10 conversations that I have with advisors and teams, they start off with the launching an RIA in mind or at least RIA curious and they want to understand what’s out there. And probably less than half the time do these folks end up actually launching their own RIA, which is okay because the ones that do are massively successful and they know they’re dang sure that’s exactly what they want to do. I think it gets a little bit romanticized sometimes that they’ll say, “Oh, I’ll just give Schwab a call,” or, “I’ll just give the custodian a call,” as if they were shopping independent broker dealers. That’s fine. You can do that and they will help you, but there’s quite a bit more to think about. And it’s not, in my opinion, the same as evaluating independent broker dealers. If it’s all right, I was taught the four pillars of the RIA model. I can go through that with you really quickly. So the way to think about the RIA space is in four pieces. And shout out to a friend, Eli Suarez, that taught me this years ago. The first pillar… Thinking of four pillars on a bar stool, if you will. The first one being administration. And this is your compliance, this is setting up your ADV, your LLC, all of your business formation documents. The second piece being technology, what do you actually want to use? Because the benefits of the broker-dealer world and the supported independent world is they’ve already built it for you. They’ve already paid for it and scraped their knees building it. In this case, you have to. And for some people, that’s really exciting to source financial planning software and portfolio management software and your CRM and tax software, et cetera. For some people, it just sounds like a huge headache. The third pillar being custodians. I have them third because you want to make sure that the right custodian can integrate properly with the technology that you’ve sourced that you’re passionate about. And then ultimately transition. What does a transition really look like? What are my legal and regulatory requirements? How does this work? What are the timelines? Things of that nature. So I guess I would say in closing that if those four things are things that you really want to own, then you’re in a really good position to consider an RIA launch. What do you think, Louis? Louis Diamond: I think that’s a great framework to break it down. Not just be like, “Okay, I can tolerate that,” or, “My team can do it,” but I think you have to be pretty excited about rolling up your sleeves and customizing and doing it yourself because in our experience, there’s a nominal differential between the economics of running your own RIA versus affiliating with an RIA or going to an independent BD. All the extra work and responsibility, you’re not really going to make it up, at least on the front end, on a higher net payout. So it has to be more about what the model means to you and having a vision that you don’t think anyone else can accomplish other than yourself. And looking at that crazy ever-expanding Michael Kitces’ FinTech map and there’s 500 different logos on it and being like, “Yes, that’s what I want. I want to go through this. I want to pick the seven pieces of my tech stack that work for me,” rather than getting, “Here’s the tech stack, take a demo, you like it, you don’t like it, take it or leave it.” To me, the two biggest misconceptions people have about the RIA world is one, “I’m going to have to be a full-time chief compliance officer,” and just that compliance is this boogeyman, this terrible, scary thing. In some ways it is. But the reality is most, especially startup RIAs will fully outsource compliance to a firm or they’ll hire a compliance consultant or firms that are big enough even will hire a CCO or repurpose someone on their team to be CCO. But compliance is much more streamlined and simpler than BD compliance. And ultimately, it’s compliance that’s being built for your business rather than compliance that’s being built for a publicly traded multinational company that supports 20,000 financial advisors. So I think compliance is always a big misconception. It’s definitely what a lot of firms will pry upon when they’re saying like, “Oh, you’re going to own all the legal and regulatory requirements. You could, but it’s definitely not a requirement.” And then I think another one is folks sometimes underestimate and overestimate the operational burden and how much work it is to start an RIA. Sometimes people just… They’re perfect for the RIA world, that’s their goal, but they get stopped in their tracks. They don’t really know what to do. But what we’ve seen, we said it earlier with so many different outsourcing solutions and different service providers that have popped up, if you have the fire in your belly to go build something, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it by yourself. I mean, that’s what firms like ours do. The custodians are very helpful. On the flip side though, I have seen advisors chasing payouts say, “Hey, I’m just going to go start an RIA because I want to make another 1 to 3%,” or whatever it comes to and they drastically underestimate what it really takes to build a successful firm. Joshua Tomolak: Exactly right. I think that’s my favorite one, Louis, overestimating and estimating the operational burden there is you could have the same conversation with two teams and it can go the completely different direction. Louis Diamond: Josh, let’s wrap here. I got one more question for you that I think is an exciting one, but give me three key trends or storylines that most people don’t know about or aren’t talking about that you’re passionate about or that you’re sharing with advisors or counseling today. Joshua Tomolak: Sure. This is the free advice portion. And I’ll tell you what, Louis, if it’s all right with you, I’ll give you two and I would love to hear one from you as well. The first one I’ve seen in both the independent broker-dealer and RIA space is the minority investor concept. A lot of folks will talk about the idea of taking chips off a table and starting to partially monetize your business. I think that’s all important, but what I’ve found is that a lot of advisors really want their partner, whether it’s an RIA broker dealer to help them grow. And that could be with M&A opportunities, that could be with traditional recruitment of advisors, that could be building a business plan. But the minority investment part really helps accelerate that for a lot of businesses because all of a sudden, not only are you cashing out a small part of your business, but you’ve just created an ally with the parent entity, it is now much more likely to help you grow in that capacity because they’re insulated from it and they profit when you profit. So I think it’s easy to be shortsighted and say, “Well, my equity’s going to keep growing. Why would I sell you a piece of this?” But I counsel folks often to really think about what that long-term strategic partnership is and making somebody a real equity partner rather than just a vendor that provides you with technology and regulatory coverage. The other one I’d say is that… And this one’s really important to me, that business formation is far more important than your assets under management. Said a different way, the way you build your business is going to make your business far more valuable than the number of dollars underneath your name. And what I mean by that is, just to use an example, a sophisticated, well-built, centralized, scalable and repeatable business, whether it’s an RIA with a broker-dealer that is going to fetch a far higher M&A multiple than a OSJ that’s five times the size that just has a bunch of 1099 independent advisors underneath the umbrella. What we’ve seen in the M&A space is that if you’re going to shell out 50, 60, $80 million for somebody’s business, you want to know that you have this business for the long term. So I would certainly counsel people that have been around maybe far longer than me to take a look at how you’re building this and put together a business plan on what those next 10 years should look like and not necessarily fall into the trap where your only revenue source is the override that you receive from a firm and then you in turn pay to the advisors on your team. Louis Diamond: Well said. I really like that line. We’d probably do a whole episode on what are the tips and tricks for building a business with the end in mind? Like the Covey quote, “Begin with the end in mind.” Transitions are like… They’re a bear. I mean, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Advisors, when they hear transition, if you ask them, “Don’t think about it, give me your reaction.” “Terrible, risky, a lot of work. I’ll never do it again. My friend did it and it was terrible. What if my clients don’t come?” It’s all these negative emotions. And in many cases, I don’t blame an advisor because it is a big act. But to me, if someone is weighing making a transition, whether a wholesale business model change going from being an employee to being independent, going from being an advisor at an independent BD to starting an RIA, or even going independent BD to independent BD, it’s an opportunity if you rise to the occasion to build with this next act with intentionality. So whether it’s restructuring compensation for your team, converting people from 1099 to W2, putting in place new workflows, changing how investments, instead of it being each individual advisor doing investments to more of a centralized model, cleaning up workflows, really investing in data, investing in AI. It’s something that I think, again, we can have a whole episode on it, but I think it’s a great one. Build the business the right way. And obviously, businesses that are larger, theoretically, sell for more, but we’ve certainly seen businesses that are half the size of a larger one sell for a similar amount or more because they did all the right things and the larger one did the things that really turn off a buyer or detract from a valuation. Let me give you one more and tell me if you agree, but I think we’re in this moment when Altruist, the upstart, a new kid on the block custodian, they launched a basically tokenization of cash in a way to automatically agentically source or sort cash to the highest yielding money market. And you’re like, “This is fricking wonky. Louis, why are you telling us this?” I think this is an important one just to keep a watchful eye on. I have no idea how this is going to shake out, but really the biggest way that independent BDs or even custodians like Schwab and Fidelity really make money, it’s not on their overrides from practices or the admin fee or the custody fee. It’s really on net interest margin. So how much the broker-dealer or the firm is making on client cash and brokerage accounts relative to what they’re paying out the client. It’s essentially like free margin to these firms. And this concept, I think, has massive potential for disruption for the business model. Again, I don’t know what it’s going to look like, whether it means platform fees that are instituted at all these firms, whether it means certain models would be more beneficial than others, whether it means nothing’s going to change, which is probably the right answer given this industry. But it’s something to keep a watchful eye on just if your firm institutes a new platform fee or there’s a fundamental way in which your firm can no longer make money. How are they going to make it up? Are they now going to be uncompetitive? They’re not going to have as much scale or profits to invest in the platform. Is it going to cause even more consolidation in the industry? So to me, that’s the one pretty under the radar, pretty wonky storyline that I don’t think enough people are talking about, but has the biggest possibility for disruption across their space than anything I’ve seen in a while. Joshua Tomolak: Sure. That’s the whole iceberg. Not a lot of people are talking about it. It’s not poking out of the ocean, but it’s going to be continuously brought up. I think it’s a question that a lot of advisors are going to have to ask these firms. And at the end of the day, the firms aren’t the bad guys. They have to make money too to provide a quality product. So where the money comes from matters. Louis Diamond: Exactly. Josh, this has been awesome. I learned a lot talking with you and just having your objective consulting hat on what I think are really the differences between IBD and RIA and some of the key trends and storylines to watch has been instrumental. I’ll also give a plug that on our website and we’ll link to it in the show notes, we have a really helpful one-page reference guide going through the differences between independent BDs or IBDs and RIAs. So feel free to click on it. We’ll make sure it gets in your inbox. Josh, thanks again for joining us today. Joshua Tomolak: Yeah, thanks for having me, Louis. It was a pleasure. Mindy Diamond: As a financial advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibilities seriously and are dedicated to your clients. But are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firms or could a better option exist? Should I stay or Should I Go? is a book written with you in mind. It’s a self-guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and roadmap to professional self-discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively whether you’re considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/thebook. IBD vs. RIA: A Special Industry Update on Independence A conversation with Louis Diamond and Josh Tomolak, Vice President of Independent Advisor Services at Diamond Consultants.      Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is IBD vs. RIA: A Special Industry Update on Independence. It’s a conversation with Josh Tomolak, our Vice President of Independent Advisor Services. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at (908) 879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual advisor transition report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: For a long time, going independent would suggest the destination. Today, it’s often the beginning of a different conversation. As the independent space has matured, advisors have more choices than ever before. Broker-dealers have expanded their capabilities. The RIA ecosystem has become increasingly sophisticated. Capital is more readily available and support models now exist that would’ve been difficult to imagine a decade ago. The result is that many advisors who are already independent are taking a fresh look at whether their current affiliation still aligns with what they’re trying to build. My guest is Josh Tomolak, Vice President of Independent Advisor Services here at Diamond Consultants and our resident expert on independence. Josh spends his days helping advisors evaluate independence in all its forms from independent broker dealers, the fully independent RIAs and everything in between. And his knowledge is critical because the distinction between these models is often blurred. Many broker dealers now offer pathways to greater autonomy while supported independence has made RIA ownership more accessible than ever before. So the question is no longer simply, “Do I want to go independent?” The question is, “What kind of independence makes the most sense for client, business, and go

Featuring Mitch Avnet, Founder & Managing Partner of CRC-Oyster, and Devin Sullivan, Deputy General Counsel at Altruist.Fintech is at an inflection point. More companies are stepping into regulated territory: standing up broker-dealers, registering as investment advisers, and building the infrastructure regulators expect from day one.In Episode 2 of Built to Scale, we sat down with Mitch Avnet, who guides tech-enabled firms through registration and operational build-out, and Devin Sullivan, a former SEC rulemaking attorney whose in-house career runs through Robinhood, AngelList, Cash App, and now Altruist.CRC-Oyster: Compliance Risk Concepts / Oyster Consulting

Digital financial services are transforming the way we bank, borrow, save, invest, and make payments. But are these innovations creating more competitive markets, or are they simply fostering new forms of market power? On this episode of Our Curious Amalgam, we speak with Beatriz Marques of the OECD Competition Division about the evolving competitive landscape in digital finance. We explore the role of FinTechs, incumbent banks, card networks, and BigTech platforms; the importance of data, interoperability, and open banking; and what competition authorities can do to foster innovation while protecting competition and consumers in an increasingly digital financial ecosystem. With special guest: Beatriz Marques, OECD   Related Links: OECD (2025), "Competition in mobile payment services", OECD Roundtables on Competition Policy Papers, No. 324, OECD Publishing, Paris OECD (2025), "Balancing prudential regulation and competition considerations in banking", OECD Roundtables on Competition Policy Papers, No. 329, OECD Publishing, Paris OECD (2026), "Banking Unbundled: Competition in the Age of Digitalisation" Hosted by: Anora Wang, Arnold & Porter and Lexi Michaud, Fried Frank

Escheatment is a $70 billion problem hiding in plain sight: every state, territory, and dozens of countries have laws that hand dormant and unclaimed accounts over to the government after three to five years of inactivity. Allen Osgood, co-founder and CEO of Eisen, left a five-and-a-half-year run as a payments product manager at Coinbase to build the compliance infrastructure that helps banks, brokerages, and crypto platforms reunite customers with their money before the states ever claim it. In this conversation, Allen makes the case that crypto is about to collide with escheatment rules written in the 1960s, and that most institutions have no idea how large their own dormant balances really are.What We CoveredWhat escheatment actually is and how the state-by-state rules workThe $70 billion states are holding for more than one in seven AmericansMissingmoney.com and what happens after money is remittedOhio's fight over using unclaimed property to fund a football stadiumThe Walter story: an E-Trade Amazon account liquidated to DelawareWhat counts as a "dormant" account and why logins matterWhere Eisen plugs into the escheatment processWhy reactivation beats remittance, and the Binance.US 48% case studyWhy institutions are blind to their largest dormant balancesThe 12-to-24-month gap where accounts just age untouchedDisplacing big-four spreadsheets with a single pane of glass, forecasting, and access controlsData volume as the hardest engineering problem, and where AI earns its keepThe Claims Portal and QR-code reactivationWhy crypto makes escheatment far more painful, from volatility to dustThe coming wave of crypto liquidations and the tax problemChannel strategy with the cores like Fiserv, and the road to 1099 and tax reportingKey TakeawaysThe best escheatment outcome is no escheatment at all. Eisen's real value is retention: keeping customers, deposits, and assets in the institution rather than shipping them to the state.Institutions routinely underestimate their exposure. One prospect thought it had 10,000 accounts about to escheat, the real number was 100,000. The disconnect sits between the compliance team and the data on the ground.Crypto changes the stakes. States generally require liquidation, so a dormant token gets sold, creating an unwanted taxable event and, if the market rips afterward, another Walter waiting to happen.Stale data is the enemy. The information that comes due for escheatment is by definition three to five years old, so address enrichment (LexisNexis, Socure, USPS NCOA) and early engagement are what actually move the reactivation numbers.About Allen OsgoodAllen Osgood is the co-founder and CEO of Eisen, a compliance operations platform that automates escheatment and account offboarding for financial institutions. Before founding Eisen, he spent about five and a half years as a payments product manager at Coinbase, where he first ran into the strange world of unclaimed property and stayed through the company's IPO.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Solar lending may sound complex, but at its core it's all about understanding cash flow, risk, and project execution. In this episode, Jillian Wagner of North Easton Savings Bank breaks down how commercial solar projects are financed, what makes a deal bankable, and where lenders need to be cautious. From tax incentives and energy offtake agreements to construction challenges and policy changes, this conversation offers a candid look at the opportunities and realities of financing renewable energy projects.Send us Fan MailPresented by Remedy ConsultingFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

Compliance im Fintech: Enabler statt Geschäftsverhinderer Wie baut man Compliance in einem schnell wachsenden Fintech auf, ohne Innovation auszubremsen? In dieser Folge von Sound of Finance spricht Dr. Saskia Hohe, Partnerin im zeb, mit René Hofer, CRO und CCO bei Holvi. Gemeinsam diskutieren sie, wie eine risikoorientierte Compliance-Organisation entsteht, warum Kommunikation wichtiger ist als perfekte Frameworks und was etablierte Banken von Fintechs lernen können. Darum geht's in dieser Folge • Warum Compliance nicht mit dem perfekten Rahmenwerk beginnt, sondern mit dem Verständnis des Geschäftsmodells. • Wie Holvi Prioritäten entlang konkreter Risiken statt regulatorischer Idealbilder setzt. • Weshalb Akzeptanz im Unternehmen entscheidend für wirksame Compliance ist. • Warum der offene Dialog mit Aufsichtsbehörden ein Erfolgsfaktor sein kann. • Welche Herausforderungen durch AMLA, AMLR, FiDA und PSD3 auf Institute zukommen. • Was große Banken von Fintechs beim Thema Compliance lernen können. Drei zentrale Erkenntnisse: 1. Compliance sollte aus den tatsächlichen Risiken des Geschäftsmodells abgeleitet werden – nicht aus theoretischen Idealbildern. 2. Kulturarbeit ist keine einmalige Aufgabe. Vertrauen entsteht durch kontinuierlichen Austausch und frühe Einbindung aller Beteiligten. 3. Erfolgreiche Compliance braucht Empathie, Kommunikationsstärke und ein tiefes Verständnis für das eigene Geschäft.

Kemal Ahmedi erklärt, was das reformierte Fernabsatzrecht seit dem 19. Juni 2026 für digitale Vertragsstrecken bedeutet – von der neuen Widerrufsfunktion über Chatbot-Pflichten bis zu Dark Patterns.

Laurel Loomis Rimon has spent her career on the enforcement side of fintech. As a federal prosecutor she brought the first case against a digital currency company in the US, years before Bitcoin existed. She later served as an assistant deputy enforcement director at the CFPB, and today she co-chairs the fintech and crypto assets practice at Jenner & Block and founded the firm's payments practice.In this episode, Reggie Young talks with Laurel about how enforcement and prosecution of fintech actually work in practice. They cover what puts a company on an investigator's radar, what genuinely exposes fintechs and banks to enforcement, how regulators and prosecutors assess good faith, and how she is advising clients to navigate debanking, KYC, and a fast-moving regulatory environment.Fintech Layer Cake is powered by Lithic, financial infrastructure that helps teams build better card and payments products for consumers and businesses.Chapters: 00:00 – Cold open: the risk everyone underrates 00:22 – Meet Laurel Loomis Rimon: DOJ, CFPB, and Jenner & Block 02:15 – Prosecuting E-gold, the first digital currency case 04:24 – The legal hooks before crypto law existed 05:48 – Money transmitting becomes a baseline concern 06:10 – What actually makes a company a target 07:13 – Why the company is rarely the target at the start 08:02 – Don't become the platform of choice for illicit actors 08:25 – Regulators are consumers too 09:39 – When the complainant is the regulator's own family 09:57 – What fintechs worry about too much 10:16 – The most boring risk: documentation 12:06 – Product thinking as a compliance skill 12:26 – How regulators assess good faith 12:58 – Why staffing is always key, even in the age of AI 14:18 – When growth outpaces compliance investment 15:40 – Where debanking comes from: Operation Choke Point 17:45 – Reputation risk and the regulatory whiplash 21:02 – How KYC changes amid the debanking pushback 22:25 – The executive order tension banks are caught in 23:34 – Advising fintechs to build for the next administration 25:41 – Where to reach LaurelNothing in this podcast should be construed as legal or financial advice.Subscribe for new episodes every other Wednesday. If you enjoy the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help more people in fintech find it.

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere—but what does it actually mean for community financial institutions? In this episode, Keith Fulton, Chief Data Officer at Jack Henry, joins BankTalk to explore how core providers are leveraging AI to help community financial institutions improve operations, enhance customer experiences, and make smarter decisions. Keith breaks down the differences between machine learning, generative AI, and AI agents in a way that every community bank CEO and executive can understand. Tune in for practical use cases, real-world applications, and a look at what's coming next as AI becomes a bigger part of the banking landscape.Send us Fan MailPresented by Remedy ConsultingFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

At a May 19, 2026 Ballard Spahr webinar, "Cutting Out the Middleman: The Surge in FinTech Applications to Charter Banks, Industrial Banks and National Trust Companies," a distinguished panel of banking, fintech, crypto, and consumer financial services experts explored one of the most important developments currently reshaping the financial services industry: the growing movement by fintech companies, payments firms, lenders, and crypto-native businesses to obtain their own banking charters rather than relying on traditional bank partnerships. The message from the panel was clear: we are witnessing a significant shift in how nonbank financial services companies are thinking about regulation, growth, and market access. The podcast we are releasing today is part 2 of this series. We recommend that you listen to part 1 before listening to part 2.   Speakers:  Moderator: Alan Kaplinsky, senior counsel; founder and former leader of Consumer Financial Services Group, Ballard Spahr   Guest: Lee Reiners, Lecturing Fellow, Duke Financial Economics Center; founder and editor-at-large of The FinReg Blog; founder and host, The FinReg Pod; co-host, Coffee & Crypto with Lee and Jimmie (a podcast that covers the latest developments in cryptocurrency); co-organizer of Digital Assets at Duke (annual conference about crypto assets space) Scott Coleman, partner, Ballard Spahr  Joseph Schuster, partner, Ballard Spahr  Beau Hurtig, counsel, Ballard Spahr  Adam Maarec, counsel, Ballard Spahr  Key Takeaways A significant shift is underway. Fintechs increasingly want to internalize the benefits of banking rather than rely on partnerships. There is no one-size-fits-all charter. National banks, state banks, industrial banks, and national trust banks each serve different strategic objectives. The current environment appears unusually favorable. Regulators are showing greater openness to nontraditional applicants than at any point in recent memory. The trend extends well beyond crypto. Payments companies, lenders, fintech platforms, and other financial services providers are all exploring charter opportunities. Becoming a bank is a long-term commitment. The benefits are substantial, but so are the regulatory obligations. For firms willing to embrace that commitment, obtaining a charter may provide transformative advantages. But as our panel repeatedly emphasized, success requires careful planning, significant capital, experienced management, and a clear understanding that regulatory scrutiny continues long after the charter is approved.

At a May 19, 2026 Ballard Spahr webinar, "Cutting Out the Middleman: The Surge in FinTech Applications to Charter Banks, Industrial Banks and National Trust Companies," a distinguished panel of banking, fintech, crypto, and consumer financial services professionals explored one of the most important developments currently reshaping the financial services industry: the growing movement by fintech companies, payments firms, lenders, and crypto-native businesses to obtain their own banking charters rather than relying on traditional bank partnerships. The message from the panel was clear: we are witnessing a significant shift in how nonbank financial services companies are thinking about regulation, growth, and market access. Speakers:  Moderator: Alan Kaplinsky, senior counsel; founder and former leader of Consumer Financial Services Group, Ballard Spahr   Guest: Lee Reiners, Lecturing Fellow, Duke Financial Economics Center; founder and editor-at-large of The FinReg Blog; founder and host, The FinReg Pod; co-host, Coffee & Crypto with Lee and Jimmie (a podcast that covers the latest developments in cryptocurrency); co-organizer of Digital Assets at Duke (annual conference about crypto assets space) Scott Coleman, partner, Ballard Spahr  Joseph Schuster, partner, Ballard Spahr  Beau Hurtig, counsel, Ballard Spahr  Adam Maarec, counsel, Ballard Spahr  Key Takeaways A significant shift is underway. Fintechs increasingly want to internalize the benefits of banking rather than rely on partnerships. There is no one-size-fits-all charter. National banks, state banks, industrial banks, and national trust banks each serve different strategic objectives. The current environment appears unusually favorable. Regulators are showing greater openness to nontraditional applicants than at any point in recent memory. The trend extends well beyond crypto. Payments companies, lenders, fintech platforms, and other financial services providers are all exploring charter opportunities. Becoming a bank is a long-term commitment. The benefits are substantial, but so are the regulatory obligations. Part 2 of this webinar will be released next Thursday, July 2nd. Consumer Finance Monitor is hosted by Alan Kaplinsky, Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr, and the founder and former chair of the firm's Consumer Financial Services Group. We encourage listeners to subscribe to the podcast on their preferred platform for weekly insights into developments in the consumer finance industry.

Santhosh Srinivasan, VP of Treasury at Nium, joined us to discuss the firm's partnership with Coinbase to enable USDC payments for banks, fintechs, and enterprises worldwide.Topics:- Nium's partnership with Coinbase and Circle and enabling stablecoin payments - The future of payments with stablecoins and tokenized deposits - Institutions adopting stablecoins and cryptoBrought to you by

Dan Hartman, Of Counsel at Nutter, joins us to discuss the implications of Kevin Warsh's appointment as Federal Reserve Chair on May 22, succeeding Jerome Powell. We explore what Powell's next move could be, why his continued presence in the financial landscape matters, and how Warsh may reshape the Fed's approach to forward guidance, inflation modeling, and monetary policy. As leadership transitions at the Federal Reserve, important questions emerge about the future direction of U.S. economic policy and the broader financial framework.Send us Fan MailFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

Pretty much every sports fan dreams of owning their favorite team. Between the bragging rights and the courtside seats, who wouldn't want to be? While you may not be able to be a partial owner of your favorite team, there are a few opportunities to own a part of team in almost every league. We take a a look at what teams you can own through stocks and whether any are worth an investment. Plius, Robinhood's layoff announcement and listener questions Tyler Crowe, Matt Frankel, and Lou Whiteman discuss: - Robinhood's layoffs: Good move or bad move? - Fintechs going on a wild ride due to crypto trading - Publicly traded sports franchises - Why do sports teams make lousy investments - Mailbag: What happened to Alexandria Real Estate? Companies discussed: HOOD, COIN, SOFI, MANU, FWONK, BATRK, MSGS, ARE Host: Tyler Crowe Guests: Matt Frankel, Lou Whiteman Engineer: Dan Boyd Disclosure: Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement. We're committed to transparency: All personal opinions in advertisements from Fools are their own. The product advertised in this episode was loaned to TMF and was returned after a test period or the product advertised in this episode was purchased by TMF. Advertiser has paid for the sponsorship of this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Asset-based lending is booming—but one key challenge remains: can you actually trust the value of your collateral? In this episode, Charlie sits down with Thomas Galbraith, CEO of Barkr, to explore why asset valuations have historically been inconsistent, how private credit stepped in as banks pulled back, and how new, data-driven approaches are helping lenders better understand and manage risk in this growing space.Send us Fan MailFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

If you can't beat Wise on FX, and reality is most fintechs can't; then the smarter move is to partner with them. Let's go into the why!In this episode recorded live at Money20/20 Asia, I speak with Samarth Bansal, General Manager at Wise Platform.We go behind the scenes and I ask the questions I've always had hypothetical answers to. For years my mandate as a Neobank Product leader was to beat Wise, and I knew unless we were to change our business model to properly compete, the answer is we can't.But now, FinTechs and banks can partner with Wise through Wise Platform. It's a fascinating conversation!We cover:[01:00] How Wise approaches cost efficiency: the obsession behind the pricing model[02:30] What actually drives Wise's infrastructure advantage[04:30] Going direct into local payment rails and optimising treasury FX forecasting[08:30] How embedding Wise Platform made life easier for banks and their customers[09:30] Standard Chartered, Bank Mandiri, Morgan Stanley: who's using Wise Platform and why[17:00] How Wise prioritises market expansion, and what drives corridor decisions[19:00] Instant payment rails in APAC: PayNet, PromptPay, and what sits on top[21:00] How Wise achieves sub 20 second transfers: compliance, liquidity, and rail access[23:00] Where AI fits, and where Wise is being deliberate about deployment[25:00] Why APAC will redefine global cross border payments standards within three years

Banks are about to lose two of their biggest advantages: custody and payments. A new White House EO opening Fed master accounts to fintechs could be the catalyst. Thanks to our sponsor! Coinbase One Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan ⁠⁠coinbase.com/unchained⁠⁠ A White House executive order is pushing the Fed to open its master account system to fintechs and crypto firms, and the implications are bigger than most people realize. Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le trace what it would mean to plug crypto directly into the core plumbing of the US dollar system, why traditional banks should be furious, and where the guardrails are missing. They also dig into the NYT's scathing CFTC piece and whether the snark undermines the serious allegations. Plus the SEC's delayed innovation exemption, Commissioner Hester Peirce's departure, and the White House AI EO that collapsed in eighteen hours. Jessi maps the four White House factions fighting over AI governance, and argues crypto's "don't trust, verify" model is exactly the accountability layer AI needs. Hosts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at StarkWare. Previously held senior legal roles across DeFi and centralized exchanges. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessi Brooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Ribbit Capital ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TuongVy Le⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, General Counsel at Veda Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cannabis banking is complex, highly regulated, and full of opportunity. In this episode, Kristin Stowe of Credit Union 1 shares what it really takes to serve this underserved industry—from compliance and operational challenges to pricing and long-term strategy.We cover key differences from traditional banking, why starting with deposits matters, and what's ahead as the industry evolves. Whether you're exploring cannabis banking or refining your approach, this episode offers practical, real-world insight.Send us Fan MailPresented by Remedy ConsultingFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

Fintechs suspeitas por esquema com PCC movimentaram R$ 26 bilhões. Trump pressiona por criação de nota de US$ 250 com o rosto dele. Imposto de Renda 2026: o que fazer para preencher mais rápido. Casos graves de Influenza dobram no Brasil: quem deve tomar Tamiflu e quando o antiviral funciona. Lesão grau 2: o que é problema que pode deixar Neymar de fora da estreia na Copa do Mundo.

Alex Fine joins this episode of Stabled Up and explains how fintechs are going on chain.Alex Fine is Founder of Fun, the highest-converting on-chain payments platform.The Rollup is where the leaders of digital assets and finance converge. Live from the financial capital of the world.Timestamps00:00 Intro And Recent Raise00:38 Fintechs Going On Chain01:27 Fun: Highest Converting On-Ramp03:55 Three Eras Of On-Chain Payments05:38 KYC Bad Risk Models06:01 99% Fiat To Stablecoins06:39 The Costco Revenue Model07:49 $40M Deposit Must Clear09:30 Smart Personalized Deposit Flows23:54 AI At Fun Discussion25:07 AI Plus Six Nines Caution26:37 Separating Self From Company27:30 Stress Is Probably Accurate29:46 Agentic Payments Are Coming31:03 AI Needs Blockchains For Money33:36 Fintech 50 H2 PlanGuest Socials:Alex Fine: https://x.com/AlexKFineFun X: https://x.com/funFun Website: https://fun.xyz/Partners:Better than Banks. Transparent capital efficiency earning the highest yields in DeFi. Learn more here: https://infinifi.xyz/---APYX - Enhanced Digital Credit Yield, Onchain | On Track to Become the Largest Holder of STRC. https://apyx.fi/---Dinari - Over 230 1:1 backed tokenized stocks, ETFs & more with dividends. US-based SEC transfer agent. Available on 5+ chains & via API. https://dinari.com/---Relay is the fastest and most reliable way to swap any token on any chain. Learn more here: https://relay.link/bridge---Zama is an open source cryptography company that builds state-of-the-art Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) solutions for blockchain.Learn more here: https://www.zama.org/---Trezor is the creator of the first-ever hardware wallet. Securing crypto for 2M+ users worldwide. 100% open source. Learn more here: https://affil.trezor.io/aff_c?offer_id=133&aff_id=36664---

Most banks and credit unions say growth is the top priority heading into 2026. At the same time, fintechs are winning the relationships that drive future deposits, payments, and engagement. In this episode, Lee Wetherington from Jack Henry joins me to break down the findings from their 2026 Strategic Benchmark Study and explain why many financial institutions still struggle to act on signals already sitting in their own data. We discuss silent attrition, payment flow analytics, Gen Z deposit growth, AI investment priorities, and why payments have become the control point in the customer relationship. This conversation is not just about technology. It's about how the game of banking is changing. This episode is sponsored by Jack Henry®. At Jack Henry, we believe the world is a better place with community and regional banks and credit unions. For 50 years, we've put financial institutions at the center of our modernization. We're here to help you innovate faster, differentiate strategically, and compete successfully – with one goal in mind: to improve the financial health of the people you serve. To learn more about the findings discussed in today's episode, download the full Strategy Benchmark study here: https://discover.jackhenry.com/strategy-benchmark-study-2026 Subscribe to Banking Transformed for new episodes published multiple times weekly. #BankingTransformed #Banking #DigitalBanking #Fintech #AIinBanking #Payments #BankStrategy #CustomerExperience #FutureOfBanking #GenZBanking

With Rafael Loureiro, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Wealth.com Rafael Loureiro on why estate planning is shifting from a static legal exercise to an AI-powered, advisor-led planning process. In Summary Estate planning has traditionally operated outside the core advisor workflow—handled through attorneys, revisited infrequently, and often disconnected from the broader client relationship. Louis speaks with Rafael Loureiro, Co-Founder and CEO of Wealth.com, about how AI is beginning to change that model. The conversation explores how advisors can use tools like Ester to surface planning gaps, stay ahead of client changes, and deliver a more continuous planning experience. For advisors, the broader implication is strategic: as investment management becomes increasingly commoditized, integrated planning and ongoing coordination may become a far more meaningful differentiator. The Storyline Most advisors already discuss estate planning with clients. The challenge is what happens next. In many cases, the process still moves outside the advisor relationship: clients are referred to an attorney, documents are created, and the estate plan becomes something revisited only after a major life event or liquidity event forces an update. Louis and Rafael explore why that structure is starting to break down. Rafael's own estate planning experience following the sale of Emailage to LexisNexis exposed how fragmented the process could feel, even for highly engaged clients working with sophisticated advisors. That experience ultimately became the foundation for Wealth.com and its AI-powered planning platform, Ester. The discussion focuses less on AI as a headline topic and more on how it changes advisor workflow in practice—from document interpretation and planning summaries to surfacing next actions and helping advisors stay proactively engaged as client circumstances evolve. For advisors thinking about the future of planning, the conversation raises a larger question: if financial planning itself becomes increasingly standardized, where does the next layer of differentiation come from? Topics Covered Continuous estate planning AI-powered advisor workflows com and Ester Advisor-led estate planning Family office-style client service Trust and estate attorney collaboration Estate planning for mass affluent clients AI agents in wealth management Dynasty Financial Partners integration Advisor differentiation beyond investment management > Download a transcript of this episode… Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors Why did Rafael decide to build Wealth.com? (06:04) Rafael explains how his own estate planning experience after a liquidity event exposed major disconnects between advisors, attorneys, and clients. Why did Wealth.com choose an advisor-led model instead of direct-to-consumer? (14:28) The platform was designed around the belief that advisors (not marketing campaigns) are best positioned to initiate estate planning conversations with clients. What does “continuous estate planning” actually mean? (20:13) Rafael describes a system where client life changes, tax events, and asset activity can trigger proactive advisor engagement rather than periodic document reviews. How does Ester move beyond document summarization? (32:30) The platform now identifies planning opportunities, prepares tasks and reports, and increasingly helps advisors automate portions of the planning workflow. Why are enterprise firms and large banks adopting platforms like Wealth.com? (24:57) Many firms were already producing estate planning summaries manually for ultra-high-net-worth clients. AI allows those capabilities to scale much more efficiently. How should advisors think about the role of trust and estate attorneys going forward? (26:50) Rafael argues that AI enhances – not replaces – the attorney relationship by improving efficiency and reserving more sophisticated matters for specialized legal expertise. What may differentiate advisory firms as planning becomes more commoditized? (38:02) The discussion points toward responsiveness, coordination, personalization, and deeper client integration as the next major competitive layer for advisors. Key Takeaways Rafael believes estate planning is shifting from a one-time legal exercise to a continuous planning process supported by AI and advisor engagement. Wealth.com was intentionally built as an advisor-first platform rather than a direct-to-consumer business. Ester's AI capabilities now extend beyond summarization into identifying planning gaps, surfacing opportunities, and preparing advisor workflows. Many firms are using estate planning as a way to deepen relationships and expand into more family-office-style service models. AI may allow advisors to serve more clients while maintaining a higher level of personalization and responsiveness. Trust and estate attorneys remain critical for complex situations, but AI can improve efficiency and help clients arrive better prepared. Advisors who fail to expand beyond investment management risk competing in an increasingly commoditized landscape. https://youtu.be/BDI6XbEz_4E Quotable Moments “When AI moves from simply organizing information to helping drive decisions, estate planning stops being a periodic task.” “Investment management is becoming table stakes. Financial planning is becoming table stakes.” “Why does it have to be that way? Now with AI, why can we not have continuous estate planning?” “It is the intangibles.” “My goal is to empower the advisor.” Related Resources Human Intelligence in the Age of AI: Why Recruiters Still MatterArtificial intelligence can analyze firms and deals. It can't replace the insight and advocacy that help advisors make the right move. The Future of Prospecting: How AI Is Powering the Next Era of Advisor GrowthFINNY Co-Founder Eden Ovadia shares how AI is transforming advisor prospecting: automating outreach, matching advisors with ideal clients, and freeing time for deeper human connection. A forward-looking conversation on what growth will look like in the next era of wealth management. Rafael LoureiroCo-Founder and CEO Rafael Loureiro is a technology entrepreneur and product-focused executive with more than 20 years of experience across startups, growth-stage companies, and Fortune 500 organizations. He is Co-Founder and CEO of Wealth.com, a leading estate and tax planning platform powered by proprietary AI and purpose-built for financial institutions. Under his leadership, Wealth.com has expanded into a comprehensive planning platform, embedding deterministic AI to deliver precise, auditable outcomes across estate and tax workflows. Prior to founding Wealth.com, Rafael served as Chief Technology Officer at Emailage, a global fraud prevention SaaS company acquired by RELX in 2020. He is a member of the Forbes Finance Council and has been recognized across the industry, including CEO of the Year honors and Forbes' Top AI Founders to Watch. Originally from France and raised in Brazil, Rafael now resides with his family in the Phoenix metro area. NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation. View the transcript of this episode… Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com A conversation with Louis Diamond and Rafael Loureiro, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Wealth.com. Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com. It’s a conversation with Rafael Loureiro, the firm’s Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer. I’m Louis Diamond and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wire house, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned, and each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: In the wealth management world, estate planning has largely lived in a separate lane. It’s a topic advisors may raise with clients then hand off to an attorney and eventually a set of documents come back, filed away, rarely revisited, and often disconnected from the rest of the planning process. That structure has been in place for a long time and for the most part, it’s gotten unquestioned, but when you step back, it creates a gap between what do clients expect from their advisor and what actually gets delivered when it comes to estate planning. Rafael Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Wealth.com, ran straight into the gap after a planning event of his own which should have been a coordinated process, felt fragmented, manual, and surprisingly opaque. And likewise, I recall the same type of disjointed experience in my own estate planning process. It’s experiences like these that became the starting point for building Wealth.com. What makes this story interesting isn’t just that they’re using AI but how they’re using it inside the estate planning process, and it’s how AI allows the model itself to change from a one-time legal event to something that evolves alongside the client, from static documents to a system that can actually interpret, update, and surface what matters, from a disconnected handoff to something the advisor can actively lead. In my conversation with Rafael, we get into how that plays out in practice, how tools like Ester move from summarizing estate documents to identifying gaps, to prompting next steps, and eventually preparing action on behalf of the advisor, because when AI moves from simply organizing information to helping drive decisions, estate planning stops being a periodic task and starts to look more like a continuous part of the advice process. So let’s dive in. Rafael, thank you for coming on our show today. Rafael Loureiro: My pleasure, Louis. Thank you for having me here. Louis Diamond: Of course. Let’s jump in and in researching you and speaking to you in the past, I got to admit, you had a very different path into the wealth management industry probably than anyone I’ve ever interviewed. So can you walk us through your background briefly and early professional endeavors? Rafael Loureiro: Absolutely. The accent that you hear is Brazilian. So I’ve been in the US for 25 years. I’m a software engineer by trade, came here as a HMB, been involved with different companies over the years and then most recently before Wealth.com. I was a chief technology officer with a fraud prevention company, nothing to do with wealth management, but by selling that company, it’s how the Wealth.com story started. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And I was referring to also some of your early career endeavors even before founding your last company, if you’re comfortable sharing that. Rafael Loureiro: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been involved with four different startups in different spaces. One of them was in, if you remember all the way back to 2008, the real estate prices, the first startup with foreclosures. So when houses went into foreclosures, me and my partner, we created a system to index that. I also had work on a photo album company. It became a lifetime business. It’s still running. I was the CTO and I did my share of consulting. I used to work for Accenture, Avanade, and then a home builder Fortune 500 companies. So I have a ton of experience in the technology space before Wealth.com. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And you mentioned the last business that you started that I believe sold to LexisNexis. Can you walk through what that business was? Rafael Loureiro: Yeah. So I did not start the business. I joined the business before Series A. The person that started the business, Rei Carvalho, he’s actually Wealth.com chairman. So the team is still together. The US, San Francisco, New York, offices in Sydney, Singapore, London. We serve clients like Coinbase, grew very fast and then got acquired by LexisNexis in 2020 during peak COVID. Think about, we literally signed the documents, popped the champagne on March 2020. No vaccine. Louis Diamond: Oh, my God. Rafael Loureiro: We literally popped the champagne and we all went back home to work from home because that was the guy that’s from LexisNexis. Through that experience, selling a company, one thing you usually do, it’s a big liquidity event and estate planning is always related to big moments. You get married, someone in your family die, you have a new kid, you have a liquidated event. So I work with a financial advisor. They’re amazing. They helped me with financial planning, wealth management, saved me a lot of money insurance. But when it was time to do the estate planning, Louis, my experience was, “Hey, Rafael, we always work with this lawyer, go talk to the lawyer.” And then it was a completely broken process. First, because it was COVID and I had to go see the lawyer face-to-face. That was weird right there. Second, because I was expecting the lawyer to know everything about me because my advisor knows everything about me, know about my life situation, know about liquid event, know about my kids, rental houses, everything and then the engineer. I know what I told the lawyer, but do I know for sure that everything I told the lawyer end up in the document? No, I don’t. Long story short, otherwise it is a long story, we’re having a virtual coffee. I don’t know if you remember everyone, big beard, long hair, everyone working from home, and then somehow all the Emailage C-level team and founders, the co-founders, we start complaining about state plan. Even another example, my chairman, the Wealth.com chairman, Emailage CEO, Rei Carvalho, he was like, “Hey, Rafael, I’m done with the summer heat in Arizona. I’m moving to Denver. I’m going for cooler weathers.” Literally the moment he moved to Denver, he gets a call from his estate planning lawyer, welcome him to Denver and saying, “Hey, we need to update your documents. “But I just spent thousands of dollars creating my documents.” “Yeah, but you live in a new state, you have to optimize your documents.” At that moment, Louis, we’re like, “Where there’s a problem, there is an opportunity,” and the company was born. Louis Diamond: I find the best company origin stories, it’s you have that, you have a personal experience or a moment where you have a realization that there’s a problem that you have that others might have as well, so let’s create a business around solving this problem. It was legitimately at that point, it wasn’t a long burn, we’re going to research, we’re really going to think about this, it was just all of the core team that was fortunate enough to have a big liquidity event were complaining and commiserating about a similar problem on estate planning and then that launched into, let’s build a company, let’s build a platform, a product to solve this problem? Rafael Loureiro: Yes and no. We saw the opportunity. We had just finished selling a company. It takes a lot from you and your family to create a company and to sell a company. Before we started a new company, we said, “Hey, look, we feel like there is something here, but let’s do the proper groundwork, make sure that the market is right, that there is a need that it’s not only us complaining about these.” I’m going to say that we spend a good three month, we have vision document together, doing a market research and then we got excited. Literally my wife who was not super excited in the beginning said, “You guys just sold a company. You’ve been racing 100 miles an hour for the last seven, eight years and you guys going to do this again.” But I love it. It’s part of my DNA. I love the challenge. I love to build and it is a big problem. When you look at the US market, 67% of the population don’t have estate planning. You have to ask yourself, why? Is that because it costs too much money? Is that because people don’t know enough about estate planning that they don’t do it? Is that because people don’t have to think about that? So the opportunity is there. We did the groundwork. We got the team together, at least some of our eight players. We went to Altus Capital, that’s the same venture firm that led the Emailage series B and we said, “Look, we have a vision, we have a team and we believe the market is ready for it. There is no dominant player and it is blue ocean.” And then they gave us the initial funding, them and my chairman, and then we went from having an idea to launching the product in May 2022. Louis Diamond: Wow, that’s amazing. Before we dive into the rapid growth and what the platform looks like, et cetera, can you just give us a quick overview of what Wealth.com looks like today? Who are you serving? Who are you selling to and where does it fit into an advisor’s value proposition or their advice stack, if you will? Rafael Loureiro: Absolutely. So Wealth.com we empower financial advisors to provide a family office experience to their clients starting with estate planning and tax planning. What I’m trying to solve, Louis, is my situation. I want my financial advisor to be the hub of my needs. So if the need is financial planning, wealth management, insurance, estate planning, tax planning, I need my financial advisor to be aware of all these verticals, right? Because I know if something happens to one of us, my financial advisor is my person. He or she’s going to get my call from my wife and say, “Hey, am I all right?” I want to empower the financial advisor with all the tools to provide that family office experience to their client. So that’s first, we started by providing doc migration. So think of this, you are mass affluent client, between half a million dollars all the way to 10 million dollars. You don’t have your revocable trust, your will, your power of attorney, your advanced healthcare directive, your guardianship documents. We do that. We create those documents. You go to the workflow on the Wealth.com platform if you have an advisor, I need to make that clear, we’re not direct to consumer business. You have to have an advisor. So you go to that workflow and at the end of the workflow, you get the documents. Those are legally optimized, all the documents. The document you get in California is going to be completely different from the document you get in New York, from the document you get in Florida. I just want to make that point clear. What we noticed, Louis, working with these advisors is if you look at the average advisor, if you look at his or her book of business, 80% is mass affluent. So think lawyers, doctors, firemen, 20% high net worth. Usually the high net worth clients, ultra-high network clients, they already have the documents. They already paid $20,000 to have those documents draft and we were not doing anything for them. So in 2022, we had that light bulb moment even before LLMs. OpenAI launched in 2022, we actually used the Bertha model before OpenAI, but I know I’m digressing. Let me get back here. So I was not doing anything for these high net worth, ultra-high net worth clients. So we had this idea, what if we use AI to read their existing plans, all their grants, LATs, all this sophisticated irrevocable trust, connect to all their assets and then provide a summary of everything they have in place? So that was the idea in 2022. Can we do it? And we did it and that became Ester and that became our family office experience. So just to summarize, we help the advisor clients regardless where they fall in the wealthy spectrum. They don’t have the estate planning documents, we create them. If they already have the estate planning documents, we use AI to read this documents, summarize them and provide insight and observations. “Hey, here are ways that you can optimize these documents.” That’s what we do. Louis Diamond: It’s so valuable. I wish I met you a month ago because I went through a very expensive estate planning exercise with an estate planning attorney and my own personal experience is exactly the same that you had. It’s expensive. I have no idea what I was signing. It was a long questionnaire and it wasn’t driven necessarily by my advisor. They gave me the idea to get updated estate plans, but it was a disconnected process. So this makes a ton of sense. I think let’s pull on the thread of being a direct to advisor company rather than trying to pull an end around the advisor and going directly to a consumer. Why was that an important design decision for you? Because I would assume the total adjustable market might be a little bit bigger if you’re going direct to a retail client that may or may not have an advisor versus going directly to a business, an RIA, a wealth management firm, et cetera. Rafael Loureiro: Yeah. What we notice working within these spaces, something triggers you to do your estate planning. I’m not going to ask why you decide to do yours now, but usually it’s related to death in the family, a kid going to college, you buy a new house, you have a new baby, you’re getting married, you get a divorce. Direct to consumer, you have to find the client at that moment for them to consider estate planning as an important thing to do. There’s actually surveys. I think Fidelity put a survey out, that says family is the main reason why people do estate planning. And the second reason is the advisor. So if you work with a financial advisor, most likely he or she’s going to make you do your estate planning. So we did not want to be on the direct to consumer place spending millions and millions of dollars in marketing. We’d rather spend millions and millions of dollars in AI and technology and serve the advisor and empower the advisor to have this conversation and go to you and say, “Hey, Louis, how is it possible that you don’t have your estate planning document? Let’s do this now.” And I know this is uncomfortable. There’s another survey that came out recently saying that some of the advisors don’t want to talk about that. It’s still a hard subject to approach, but we have to have this conversation. Louis Diamond: I would say it almost sounds like an advisor not wanting to talk about their fees. Let’s not talk about that because it’s uncomfortable and no one wants to hear about it. Rafael Loureiro: Oh, you have to have it because they saw a huge lack of education. For example, one thing that we come across all the time, and I know it’s minor, is kids going to college. “Oh yeah, my daughter’s going to college. I don’t have to do anything.” Yeah, you do. She needs an advanced healthcare directive because if you don’t have one and something happens to her, you cannot just go to the hospital and ask for information. They won’t give it to you. We need to educate our clients. We need to do a better job. And I think advisors play that role and we want to empower them to talk about estate planning and tax planning. Louis Diamond: It makes sense. It’s a brilliant strategy because instead of advisors selling against Wealth.com as like, “I can do better and I have a estate planning guy I can refer you to,” it’s you’re working alongside them and you rely upon the advisor to provide the education to be the trigger moment. And I know again, from personal experience, if my advisor didn’t suggest that I should update my estate planning documents because I moved states, I wouldn’t have done it. It’s not like a fun thing to do. It’s an expense, et cetera. So that makes a ton of sense. You’re partnering with the hub or the influencers, if you will, of who’s driving estate planning in this country. It’s a great strategy. Rafael Loureiro: And you said something very important and I want to highlight, the world is very different after COVID. Before COVID, some of these advisors, all their clients were in the same city. I had one estate planning lawyer to help my clients, right? But now with after COVID or during COVID, people moved. “Oh yeah, I’m not living in a farm. Oh, I moved to Montana. Montana is beautiful. I saw Landman or Yellowstone. Now I’m leaving Montana. Landman is in Texas.” How? Now you don’t have estate planning lawyer in Texas. You don’t have estate planning lawyer in Montana. With the right partnership with Wealth.com, now you can serve all your clients regardless where they are in the US because we are present in every jurisdiction and we have lawyers in every jurisdiction. So we empower you to serve clients regardless where they are in the US. Louis Diamond: Very cool. And how about the pricing model? You don’t have to say what it costs, but is it one license that a firm is buying on behalf of their entire client base or is there an incremental cost for each client? And I’m throwing a lot at you. And then third part of the question is, are you seeing advisors charge directly for the Wealth.com estate planning output or are folks wrapping it into their fee as just a value added service as part of their planning and comprehensive wealth management process? Rafael Loureiro: Very good question. My goal, our goal, has always been we want to make estate planning available, democratized estate planning, make it more accessible to the population. So the way we charge is we charge the advisor annual recurring fee. We do not charge per document. I want you to provide estate planning to all your clients. That’s our goal. I don’t want you to think, oh, but that’s going to cost me money. No, all your clients set them all up with estate planning. Are they charging? It depends. So the way I’m going to say this is, I’m going to say that 60% of my advisors are charging not for the documents because they’re not lawyers, they’re charging to help educate you on estate planning. You as a client, you have to go to the process yourself to get the documents. So that’s where an advisor would send an invitation to Wealth.com. You and your wife or your partner, you’re going to go to the workflow and you’re going to get the document at the end. But the advisor is going to set up a call with you, the advisor is going to help you collect the documents. The advisor is going to educate you why estate planning is important. And some of them are charging for this. Some of our advisors, more on the high net worth, alternate high net worth space, you already charge a very good fee to provide your service so they probably provide Ester output, I should say, as a value added service. It depends on the use case. Louis Diamond: Makes sense. So I’ve heard you talk in interviews about a major gap in estate planning between client expectations and what a client is expecting, hoping to get with estate planning, especially when it comes to interacting with their financial advisor and what is actually fundamentally delivered by advisors. So I’m curious, why is there a gap and why do you think that gap has existed for so long? Is it as simple as people don’t like talking about death and it’s expensive or is there a deeper answer? Rafael Loureiro: I think it’s all of the above and your experience is amazing. You pretty much, you are the typical client. You took long to do it. It costs you a lot of money. You’re now like, next time you have to do an update, you’re going to wait five to 10 years to do it because we spend thousands of dollars to get it updated. Why does it have to be like that? And now with AI, and that’s what I think is going to change a lot in the next five years, is why can we not have continuous estate planning? What I mean by that is work with your advisor. I have connection to all your assets. I have connection to CRM. I have connection to your bank account. If you give me access, I don’t need password, but you can actually connect all your assets, I have connection to the portfolio management platform. So as you live your life, as you get married, as you buy a property… You finally decide to buy a property in Tahoe, I get these pings and then I can empower your advisors to say, “Hey, go talk to Louis and say, hey, it’s time to update your estate plan.” Or a rental property outside your home state in California, you need to update your… Or he has just crossed a tax threshold or he just got married or he just had a new beneficiary. My goal is to empower the financial advisor to provide more and more value to this relationship. I’m not trying to replace the financial advisor, but I’m trying to empower him or her to give you more value so him or her becomes more critical for your relationship. Why people haven’t done estate planning I think is a lack of education, is the fear of the cost. “Oh, I have to talk to a lawyer. Oh my gosh, that’s going to cost me $5,000.” I want to make this easier. I want to make this simple. I want to empower the advisor to demystify estate planning and tax planning, make it more accessible, bring the estate planning more to the middle. What I mean by that is why is this estate planning exclusive to the high net worth, ultra-high net worth? Because in that space, 90% of the people have estate planning, 90% of the people. It’s the fear of the cost, I think, and then people don’t want to think about that. Louis Diamond: Yeah. I think that’s exactly right. Yeah. It very much sounds like it’s a win-win. It’s like a next best action type event where you’re giving an advisor on a silver platter a way to add value, which is what I think every advisor wants to do and then it’s a massive value add to the end client. My guess is you don’t have much friction in delivering those sorts of insights to advisors that they can then deliver to their clients. Rafael Loureiro: I would say if you’re not doing it, there is a big risk. You’re going to lose your clients to people that are doing it and they are providing the family office experience. Yeah. Louis Diamond: Yeah. What about the competitive landscape for Wealth.com, whether it’s other FinTechs that are attempting to do something in the space or even just the legacy advisor, the estate planning attorney in town or an advisor’s preferred T&E attorney. How do you think about the competitive landscape in the trust and estate world today? Rafael Loureiro: There are competitors. From day zero when we came in, there were competitors. I don’t see an incumbent. I think now we have became the incumbent. I think there is a segment of the market, just to paint a picture, one third of the advisors are going to retire in the next 10 years. So there is a segment in the market where to your point, they already work with a estate planning lawyer. That’s not a bad thing. They’re like, “Oh yeah, I get leads from this lawyer. My clients are all located in my neighborhood. I don’t need to provide out of state estate planning,” then we’re not going to get there.” But at the same time, if you look at our growth, we’ve been growing and that’s why we just raised a series B, our growth is out there to prove it, we’ve been tripling the company size every year. There’s a need, there’s a demand. Financial advisors are waking up. They are in a very competitive market. They need to provide more to the clients because I feel like investment management, it is becoming table stakes. Financial planning, it is table stakes. So what else can I offer my clients? And that’s why you see some advisory firms offering BillPay. I file your taxes. I’ll get your estate planning done. You got to differentiate yourself. We’re seeing the need. If you look at our penetration, we have now 2,000 firms on the platform and the firms go from independent, a small SMB advisor with one or two advisors in the office, all the way to the top three, three out of the top five banks in the US. We are there, right? Louis Diamond: Wow. It’s interesting. Let’s talk about that. So on the bank side, it’s typically not a segment that is ripe for technological disruption or external tools like this to come in and make a dent. How are banks and very large platforms thinking about Wealth.com? Is it a similar kind of buying journey or decision that an individual RIA or an individual advisor would make or is it a little bit different? Rafael Loureiro: It’s a little bit different. So without mentioning names, these banks, some of these banks that work with high net worth, ultra-high net worth clients, they were providing this summary report that Ester put together, they were, before Esther, but it was taking them 30 to 50 hours. All human labor to put one together, Excel, Visa, PowerPoint, 30 to 50 hours. Even to these very expensive, very wealthy clients, they were only doing once a year. “Hey, here’s your report.” “Oh yeah, but I just sold the house in St. Barts. Can I get a new update?” “No. Next year you’re going to get the update.” I’m not even kidding. It was serious. So they were doing the work, but it was all labor-intensive. Now with Wealth, a much better output, I should say, it’s take minutes. And instead of only reserving these to the very, very wealthy clients, now they can go downstream and offer this to their mass affluent clients and then high net worth clients. They’re all seeing the need. They’re all waking up because they were doing the work, but it was all labor-intensive, like I said, all manual before and they want to automate. Louis Diamond: Very interesting. I definitely want to spend some time talking about Ester. You mentioned it a few times, but before that, I’d say two very real strategic areas that a firm might take on when it comes to estate planning. The first one is a lot of very successful advisors, they cultivate amazing COI referral relationships with attorneys and usually the attorneys are T&E attorneys for obvious reasons. Have you gotten pushback or have you seen that because of Wealth.com, these advisors now are referring less business to these high-powered trust and estates attorneys and then they’re not able to grow their business as much in return. That’s one question if you can weigh in. Rafael Loureiro: I have not heard that. And just to clarify, I think with Wealth, having Wealth as part of your tool framework, you’re going to be able to serve more clients and still leverage your trust estate attorney. And I’ll explain how. For example, we know how to stay our lane. So let’s say you go into the workflow and as part of the workflow, you say, “Hey, I have a special needs child.” At that moment we say, “Stop. Let me put you in touch with a lawyer.” You can decide to use your own lawyer or you can use one of in our network. We have lawyers in every jurisdiction, but it’s up to you. We focus on the revocable trusts and the wealth. If your client requires something more sophisticated, you can still use Wealth.com to map out the client’s situation using Ester. You’re going to be able to see everything they have in place at that moment and then use your relationship, your trust and estate lawyer to make the document update. So I think what we are doing is reserving the most complex case for the trust and estate lawyer if a document needs update, but I don’t think you are breaking that relationship. That relationship will stay there and you’re still going to have that lead exchange, but I don’t have any numbers to answer your question. Louis Diamond: I think that makes sense. It’s not like with Wealth.com, at least not yet. It’s not like there isn’t a role for a T&E attorney and especially for more complex esoteric type situations, an advisor could still refer some of their relationships to a T&E attorney, but they’ll come armed with better information. And also with more clients getting involved with estate planning, there’s also conceivably more opportunities that they can refer out to an estate planning attorney in turn. Rafael Loureiro: Can I use that? You did a much better job than I did. Exactly. Exactly what you said. The difference is now your advisor, your clients are going to be much better informed, that they know exactly what they need from the lawyer. So yeah, 100%. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And then the other one, which is I’d say less commonplace, but it’s a trend. The trend, and you hit on it, that as investments are becoming commoditized or not as differentiated, advisors are being called on to offer more and more services, whether it’s tax preparation in-house or bill pay or picking up clients’ dry cleaning, et cetera. But I think a big area that I’ve seen firms invest in is an in -house trust and estate attorney. Do you think Wealth.com is taking some of the sizzle out of that in-house service or is it just different? Is it two different use cases? Rafael Loureiro: It’s two different uses cases and we actually sell to that use case where if you have your trust estate attorneys in-house, we actually leverage them and they become users on the platform. Going back to my previous answer, now with Wealth.com, you’re going to be able to serve more clients with estate planning. You can actually route some of the use cases back to your trust estate team through Wealth.com. They do whatever they have to do and then you’re able to serve more clients. An example, trust and estate lawyers, they had to read the documents before Wealth.com. They would spend countless hours reading a hundred-page documents. Now with Esther, we do the summarization. We show your trust estate team where all the information was extracted. So instead of reading one document per hour, you’re going to be able to read three documents per hour and visualize the client estate plan and be able to optimize it because we’ve provided insights and suggestions and then the trust and estate lawyer can provide their own and say, “Hey, no, I agree with this one,” or “I think we should also do this.” I think you’re going to optimize the use of your trust estate team. You’re not going to get rid of them. No. Louis Diamond: It’s more so you’re automating the high value differentiated work. It also kind of sounds like, I don’t know when eMoney or MoneyGuidePro came into the mainstream, but it’s almost a difference between a paraplanner for a firm, manually creating pie charts in Excel and PowerPoint and analyzing a bunch of stuff and then eMoney and MoneyGuidePro and NaviPlan and all these companies come about and all of a sudden a lot of the work is automated. And it’s not like a paraplanner is out of work. They just become the experts, the users of the platform and they can allocate their attention to higher value, more bespoke work rather than we’ll say more of the factory kind of below the line things that was taking up a lot of their time. Rafael Loureiro: Absolutely. I like to use the analogy of the shoemaker. In the past, the shoemaker would make one shoe. It would be a beautiful shoe, but he would make one shoe a week or every two days. Now you have specialized agents. All that agent does is read estate planning documents. All that agent does is enriching the documents with insight and observations and looking to all the legal law changes that happened recently. So now you’re able to still make the same high quality shoe, but just at a higher volume. And you have a lot of dedicated workers doing one thing and doing one thing extremely well. So my goal is to empower the shoemaker. My goal is to empower the advisor and with a thousand analysts, a thousand paraplanners. So just making my job more efficient. Louis Diamond: I love it. You fit in Ester a good bit. It seems fairly clear what Ester’s doing. Sounds like an amazing value add. Just given the pace of AI innovation and I don’t think anyone knows where it’s going, but what are you most excited about Ester being able to do either now or in the future and what’s the vision if you can project out a year, which seems like an eternity in AI time, what’s on the dream board for what Ester’s going to be able to do for your Wealth.com clients? Rafael Loureiro: As a technologist, I love this question. I see AI in three distinct phases. You had the first phase of Ester in 2022, 2023 when we launched, which was summaries. It was amazing summarizing data. Some of these clients, Louis, think about this, some of these clients, they have 13 documents in place. They had every type of irrevocable trust you can imagine plus a revocable trust in place. They had very complicated assets, very complex assets. So Ester was amazing in summarizing. That was phase number one. Phase number two is now being able to augment. You read the data, you see an opportunity and you create a task that’s right there in front of the advisor saying, “Hey, I think you should reach out to this client and include this report with some of these observations. Click this button if you agree.” You still involve the advisor, the human is still in the loop. And that’s what we are with Ester right now. We do that. We assess the data, we see the opportunity, we involve the advisor, advisor get involved and say, “Yes, let’s do this,” and click a button, an email is triggered, our report is attached. Here we go. The third phase and that’s coming next and very soon is now you have an agent acting on the behalf of the advisor. I still want to make sure, and I want to make this very clear, I don’t want to get myself in trouble, the devices always evolve, but you have all these specific agents, that’s tax planning agent, that’s the estate planning agent, work independently, connected to the world, extremely well-trained with thousands and thousands of documents that we’ve seen over the years, finding opportunities, creating the tasks, creating the emails, creating the report, having everything ready to go, just waiting for the advisor to say, “Do it.” And we do this enough to the point where the advisor is going to say, “All right, you don’t need my permission anymore to do this specific task. Go.” You connect to the IRS, you download the text transcript, you crunch to this data, you create a report and it’s ready to go. The other thing too is I want to be able, my goal in the next year, a year and a half, is I want to continue estate planning. Up to this point, estate planning has been exactly like you described. You go to a lawyer, you pay thousands and thousands of dollars and those documents start collecting dust in a shelf somewhere while you live your life. And being from this space, that’s not how it works. There is new legislation being passed OBBA became like you crossed tax threshold, you have liquidated events, you get married, you get divorced, you buy real estate property, so on and so forth and that document is already stale. Why does it have to be that way? Now with AI, now with the technology we have in place, it won’t be. I promise you. Louis Diamond: Very cool. That’s exciting. That sounds like the perfect evolution of AI from summary, just here’s something you can read quickly to suggesting action, to then taking action. It does seem like the flow that it’s been and I’m sure there’s 15 other flows from here that we don’t even know yet. Or you probably do because you’re in this, but for me, I can’t even imagine what phase four and five are going to look like for you. Rafael Loureiro: Yes, it’s exciting. Louis Diamond: Definitely is. I saw, when I was doing some research for this that Wealth.com announced a fairly major strategic partnership with Dynasty Financial Partners, embedding Ester into their Dynasty desktop. What do you think this partnership says about where the business is going and how do you expect advisors to really take advantage of this in practice? Rafael Loureiro: It was a new development. We’re super excited about the Dynasty Financial Partnership. Before, if you look at before this partnership, we would have to empower advisor one by one with a Wealth.com license. With this partnership with Dynasty, every advisor in the Dynasty family or using the Dynasty desktop is going to be able to use Ester. So they’re going to be furnished with an AI intelligence that they can ask any estate planning questions, they can get tax planning questions answered. They’re going to be able to upload their clients’ estate planning documents and get a summary with opportunities, with everything that they can do for those estate planning documents. I think it fits perfectly well for enterprise IRAs, wire houses, this solution. Instead of doing one by one, you can actually have AI for all your advisors at once answering their most basic questions and taking action. That’s literally like the agents I was trying to describe. So that’s just the first step in that direction and we’re super excited about this. Louis Diamond: Very cool. Let me ask you another one. So you said earlier that as investment management becomes more commoditized that advisors not only have to offer more services and provide more value, but they also have to differentiate from the advisor or the firm across the street to provide more family office services, if you will. But let’s say, and this will be great for you, Wealth.com becomes like air that everyone’s breathing. It almost becomes like financial planning tool, e-Money. It’s commonplace. Now it’s commoditized across the space, it’s not a differentiator anymore to offer financial planning. As Wealth.com expands more firms work with the platform, what do you think is the next layer or next level of differentiation that your clients then can point to if it’s no longer maybe a couple of years from now that we use Wealth.com that we help with estate planning? Rafael Loureiro: Wow, that’s an interesting one, and approach my wife and bring ideas and suggestions. For me, if I can make that happen where the financial advisor is helping with my taxes, so when it’s tax time, we just have to have a one-hour meeting and we’re ready to click a button and have everything done, that can help me with BillPay. And think about like high net worth and ultra-high net worth people where it becomes extremely complicated to do BillPay properly because you have to pay from the right account, from the right trust. If they can take this off my plate so I can focus 100% in my business and my family, it’s mission accomplished. If that means that they’re going to walk my dog to make this happen, I know I’m exaggerating here, but pick up my laundry like the example you use, I think you’re going to have to do this. That in my mind is how these financial advisors survive the AI revolution. It is that personal relationship. It’s knowing me well. It’s spending more time with me than once a quarter. And with AI, with the right AI, and I know AI, there’s a lot of smoke in this space and very little fire, but with the right agents, with the right workflows, one advisor is going to be able to serve more than a hundred clients. Because right now the ratio is a hundred clients per advisor, maybe you’re going to be able to serve like 200, 250 well. Serve them well, knowing them well, knowing them personally. I think that’s going to happen in the next couple of years. Louis Diamond: I think that’s right. It’s more so like the intangibles that an advisor has. Their secret sauce isn’t going to be necessarily we offer these seven things. It’s going to be, I really get you. I understand you. It’s the advisor’s personal relationship and empathy with that client and all the years that they’ve known them. And then it’s just using all these different tools to aid that relationship. It kind of sounds like that’s what you’re saying. It’s all the other stuff that advisors do that might be different today, over time, people catch up and that becomes commoditized similar to we offer financial planning and that’s a differentiator. Now it’s, if they don’t offer financial planning, it’s a problem. Rafael Loureiro: Yeah, 100%. You got it. Yes, it is the intangibles. That’s perfect. Louis Diamond: Okay. I got two more questions for you. What’s one thing you wish more advisors understood about estate planning that they still miss today? Rafael Loureiro: I think there is an education component. Just deploying Wealth.com and expecting is going to work with your clients. It’s not like that. You need to be willing to have the conversation like your advisor did it with you. You need to have the tough call and say, “Hey, are you ready? Do you have estate planning in place? Why not?” And then having that conversation. Louis Diamond: And I would imagine too, it’s also cool, I got all these documents so instead of it getting locked in the safe or locked in the drawer, it’s also incumbent on the advisor to explain the documents. “Hey, these are a bunch of stuff in here that whatever, we don’t have to get into, but here’s the four key things about this document that you should understand. The power of attorney we’ve nominated is your father-in-law. Your proceeds are going to get distributed one-third to your son, a quarter to your daughter,” et cetera. It’s going to be those things and translating the documents into real words that clients are going to understand. Rafael Loureiro: 100%. That is critical because I’m a software engineer, I’m not equipped to be reading a hundred pages document and trying to understand everything that’s there without … Now with AI, you can actually ask Claude to summarize and Gemini to summarize it, but that was not the case three years ago. So that education component is critical. And some of my advisors are actually very successful, I should say. A smaller firm in this case, I’m not going to say the names, I don’t have that permission to say their name, but they are actually doing these estate planning webinars as a lead generation. Because clients are curious about this. Sometimes if you don’t ask them, you’re never going to know, but they’re probably very curious about estate planning. They’re probably very concerned they don’t have the documents in place. Even the ones that have the documents, they’re probably concerned that they need an update and they haven’t done it. So by doing this webinar, they feel more comfortable just going to the event. They know they’re not going to be the center of attention and then asking a question or hear people asking questions. Some of my most successful clients are actually using webinar as a lead generation to explain state planning. Louis Diamond: It’s a great idea. It’s like you’re empowering the advisor to talk more about estate planning. It’s no longer this bugaboo that was too complex or not in their swim lane. It’s empowering them to lead with, it sounds like. Rafael Loureiro: 100% Louis Diamond: Amazing. And last question, if you were an ambitious advisor building a new firm from scratch today, what would you tell them to focus on to create a more durable, harder to replicate future-proof business? Rafael Loureiro: That’s a great question because the factory floor of a hundred years ago, is no longer work. If you have a chance to start from the beginning, it’s a new world. It’s a new world for companies like ours. Even for companies like ours that are in the bleeding edge of technology, everything is changing with AI. How I organize my teams is changing with AI. So I would say select Wealth.com. No, that’s … I’m kidding. I’m kidding, but yes, I’ll say select the right tools, use AI properly, it’s no longer a headcount game. I’m not saying you’re not going to need help, you’re going to need help, but make sure the tools are talking to each other because it is a new age. It’s an agent about speed, about being able to offer more service quicker, about increasing the relationship, the intangibles, to your point. It’s no longer once a quarter call to your clients. So if I had the chance to do everything again, if I had a chance even to start Wealth.com again, it’s different how you organize your team in this age of AI. AI is going to be bigger than the industrial revolution. Trust me, the shockwave is huge. To your point earlier in this call, we’re getting a big jump every month. It’s no longer every year, every month there is something new coming from AI. So if you start your firm again, select the right partners, select the right tools and then hit the ground running. Louis Diamond: Perfect. That’s amazing. Rafael, this has been so fun. I learned a ton from you. You just have a way of storytelling and I absolutely love the why behind Wealth.com, the personal experience that probably a lot of listeners have had as the light bulb moment. And instead of just complaining about it, you actually took action and now are creating the future of estate planning, empowering advisors to offer estate planning to their clients, getting more folks in this country set up with trust and estates and wills, et cetera. So I think it’s amazing what you’re doing and I’m very excited to continue to watch your success. Rafael Loureiro: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunities and just to do a final plug, estate planning, tax planning, stay tuned. There is more coming. Louis Diamond: There we go. Thanks so much. Rafael Loureiro: Thank you. Mindy Diamond: As a financial advisor, you hold yourself to the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and credibility. You are successful because you take your professional responsibility seriously and are dedicated to your clients. But are you living your best business life? Are your goals aligned with your firms or could a better option exist? Should I Stay or Should I Go? is a book written with you in mind it’s a self-guided journey that walks you through the key steps that we take with our advisor clients. This strategic thought process and roadmap to professional self-discovery is designed to help you ask the right questions and think critically and objectively, whether you’re considering change or not. Learn how to get your copy at diamond-consultants.com/thebook. Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com A conversation with Louis Diamond and Rafael Loureiro, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Wealth.com. Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Why AI Matters Now: Filling the Estate Planning Gap with Wealth.com. It’s a conversation with Rafael Loureiro, the firm’s Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer. I’m Louis Diamond and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wire house, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned, and each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: In the wealth management world, estate planning has largely lived in a separate lane. It’s a topic advisors may raise with clients then hand off to an attorney and eventually a set of documents come back, filed away, rarely revisited, and often disconnected from the rest of the planning process. That structure has been in place for a long time and for the most part, it’s gotten unquestioned, but when you step back, it creates a gap between what do clients expect from their advisor and what actually gets delivered when it comes to estate planning. Rafael Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Wealth.com, ran straight into the gap after a planning event of his own which should have been a coordinated process, felt fragmented, manual, and surprisingly opaque. And likewise, I recall the same type of disjointed experience in my own estate planning process. It’s experiences like these that became the starting point for building Wealth.com. What makes this story interesting isn’t just that they’re using AI but how they’re using it inside the estate planning process, and it’s how AI allows the model itself to change from a one-time legal event to something that evolves alongside the client, from static documents to a system that can actually interpret, update, and surface what matters, from a disconnected handoff to something the advisor can actively lead. In my conversation with Rafael, we get into how that plays out in practice, how tools like Ester move from summarizing estate documents to identifying gaps, to prompting next steps, and eventually preparing action on behalf of the advisor, because when AI moves from simply organizing information to helping drive decisions, estate planning stops being a periodic task and starts to look more like a continuous part of the advice process. So let’s dive in. Rafael, thank you for coming on our show today. Rafael Loureiro: My pleasure, Louis. Thank you for having me here. Louis Diamond: Of course. Let’s jump in and in researching you and speaking to you in the past, I got to admit, you had a very different path into the wealth management industry probably than anyone I’ve ever interviewed. So can you walk us through your background briefly and early professional endeavors? Rafael Loureiro: Absolutely. The accent that you hear is Brazilian. So I’ve been in the US for 25 years. I’m a software engineer by trade, came here as a HMB, been involved with different companies over the years and then most recently before Wealth.com. I was a chief technology officer with a fraud prevention company, nothing to do with wealth management, but by selling that company, it’s how the Wealth.com story started. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And I was referring to also some of your early career endeavors even before founding your last company, if you’re comfortable sharing that. Rafael Loureiro: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been involved with four different startups in different spaces. One of them was in, if you remember all the way back to 2008, the real estate prices, the first startup with foreclosures. So when houses went into foreclosures, me and my partner, we created a system to index that. I also had work on a photo album company. It became a lifetime business. It’s still running. I was the CTO and I did my share of consulting. I used to work for Accenture, Avanade, and then a home builder Fortune 500 companies. So I have a ton of experience in the technology space before Wealth.com. Louis Diamond: Perfect. And you mentioned the last business that you started that I believe sold to LexisNexis. Can you walk through what that business was? Rafael Loureiro: Yeah. So I did not start the business. I joined the business before Series A. The person that started the business, Rei Carvalho, he’s actually Wealth.com chairman. So the team is still together. The US, San Francisco, New York, offices in Sydney, Singapore, London. We serve clients like Coinbase, grew very fast and then got acquired by LexisNexis in 2020 during peak COVID. Think about, we literally signed the documents, popped the champagne on March 2020. No vaccine. Louis Diamond: Oh, my God. Rafael Loureiro: We literally popped the champagne and we all went back home to work from home because that was the guy that’s from LexisNexis. Through that experience, selling a company, one thing you usually do, it’s a big liquidity event and estate planning is always related to big moments. You get married, someone in your family die, you have a new kid, you have a liquidated event. So I work with a financial advisor. They’re amazing. They helped me with financial planning, wealth management, saved me a lot of money insurance. But when it was time to do the estate planning, Louis, my experience was, “Hey, Rafael, we always work with this lawyer, go talk to the lawyer.” And then it was a completely broken process. First, because it was COVID and I had to go see the lawyer face-to-face. That was weird right there. Second, because I was expecting the lawyer to know everything about me because my advisor knows everything about me, know about my life situation, know about liquid event, know about my kids, rental houses, everything and then the engineer. I know what I told the lawyer, but do I know for sure that everything I told the lawyer end up in the document? No, I don’t. Long story short, otherwise it is a long story, we’re having a virtual coffee. I don’t know if you remember everyone, big beard, long hair, everyone working from home, and then somehow all the Emailage C-level team and founders, the co-founders, we start complaining about state plan. Even another example, my chairman, the Wealth.com chairman, Emailage CEO, Rei Carvalho, he was like, “Hey, Rafael, I’m done with the summer heat in Arizona. I’m moving to Denver. I’m going for cooler weathers.” Literally the moment he moved to Denver, he gets a call from his estate planning lawyer, welcome him to Denver and saying, “Hey, we need to update your documents. “But I just spent thousands of dollars creating my documents.” “Yeah, but you live in a new state, you have to optimize your documents.” At that moment, Louis, we’re like, “Where there’s a problem, there is an opportunity,” and the company was born. Louis Diamond: I find the best company origin stories, it’s you have that, you have a personal experience or a moment where you have a realization that t

  In this episode, Brian Tate, the IPA's CEO, discusses the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation's recent consent order against Yotta Technologies.   He covers what led up to the order, how it might herald a new age of regulation for Fintechs, and why it shows that companies shouldn't do business with jerks.  This podcast was recorded on May 19, 2026. Things may have changed by the time you hear it.   Listeners can learn more about the world of payments by attending one of our upcoming events:  2026 Education Forum Hosted by the Retail Gift Card Association and Best Buy, June 10, 2026, at Best Buy Headquarters in Richfield, Minnesota  IPA Payments Policy Briefing , July 9, 2026, at Bancorp's Offices in Sioux Falls, South Dakota  Compliance Boot Camp, September 10, 2026, at Discover's Headquarters in Riverwoods, Illinois, on September 10  

Los futuros de los índices de Wall Street caían y el Brent rondaba los US$110, mientras el estancamiento en la guerra con Irán aumenta las preocupaciones inflacionarias; Perú confirmó candidatos para la segunda vuelta presidencial; y Fabiola Zerpa, periodista de Bloomberg News, comenta por qué empresas fintechs de Estados Unidos visitan Caracas en busca de oportunidades. Newsletter Cinco cosas: https://bloom.bg/42Gu4pGLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bloomberg-en-espanol/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/BloombergEspanolWhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaFVFoWKAwEg9Fdhml1lTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bloombergenespanolX: https://twitter.com/BBGenEspanolProducción: Eduardo ThomsonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fintechs y firmas globales ya usan IA para evaluar créditos, asesorar inversiones y atender clientes en un país con baja inclusión financiera. (00:00) Bienvenidos (00:19) Asesoría financiera con inteligencia artificial (00:00) El primer contacto financiero

In this episode, we're joined by Sam MacPherson, Co-Founder and CEO of Phoenix Labs, to discuss Sky's evolution from MakerDAO, Spark's role as a prime agent SubDAO, and its approach to DeFi lending, liquidity management, and risk frameworks. We also cover governance restructuring, isolated lending markets, token buybacks, institutional liquidity products, fintech partnerships, and Spark's long-term vision for prime brokerage and USDT growth. Thanks for tuning in! As always, remember this podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice. -- Follow Blockworks Research: https://x.com/blockworksres Follow Spark: https://x.com/sparkdotfi Follow Sam MacPherson: https://x.com/hexonaut?lang=en Follow Luke Leasure: https://x.com/0xMether Follow Boccaccio: https://x.com/salveboccaccio -- Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3foDS38 Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3SNhUEt Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3NlP1hA Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ -- Timestamps: (0:00) Introduction (1:55) Why MakerDAO Became Sky (5:10) Spark's Role Under Sky (7:45) Spark Liquidity Layer (12:25) Conservative Collateral Strategy (17:35) DeFi Risk Ratings (24:38) Liquidity Intents Explained (27:37) Buybacks and Token Treasury (29:46) Spark's Real Competitors (32:51) Backend for Fintechs (35:56) SubDAO Competition Dynamics (43:20) What's Next for Spark (47:10) Closing Comments -- Check out Blockworks Research today! Research, data, governance, tokenomics, and models – now, all in one place Blockworks Research: https://www.blockworksresearch.com/ Free Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter -- Disclaimer: Nothing said on 0xResearch is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Boccaccio, Danny, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

Von Tesla bis Neura Robotics arbeiten mehr als 200 Firmen an menschenähnlichen Robotern, die unsere Wäsche falten oder Autos bauen. Ein Heer an Humanoiden soll die Deindustrialisierung stoppen. Kann das gelingen? Darum geht es im Podcast. Weiterführende Links: BMW, Siemens und Schaeffler: So sollen humanoide Roboter die deutsche Industrie retten Angriff auf Teslas Optimus: Neura Robotics – eine der größten Roboterhoffnungen Europas Optimus und Robotaxis: Teslas Robo-Bluff – wie Elon Musk die Anleger narrt KI-Innovationen: Warum Europa bei der Robotik Tempo machen muss Zum manager magazin Abo Finance Forward – der Newsletter In unserem kostenlosen Newsletter liefern wir Euch exklusive Recherchen und News über Fintechs, Krypto, Fonds und Family-Offices. Jeden Mittwoch vor dem Frühstück, direkt ins Postfach.Hier geht es zur Anmeldung! Alle manager magazin Podcasts finden Sie hier.Alle Newsletter vom manager magazin finden Sie hier. Host: Henning Hinze (Redakteurin manager magazin)Gast: Franz Anko-Hubik (Redakteur manager magazin)Schnitt und Mastering: Felix KleinProduktion: Nele Geiger, Julia Wehmeier, Sven Bergmann+++ Alle Infos zu unseren Werbepartnern finden Sie hier. Die manager-Gruppe ist nicht für den Inhalt dieser Seite verantwortlich. +++ Alle Podcasts der manager Gruppe finden Sie hier. Mehr Hintergründe zum Thema erhalten Sie bei manager+. Jetzt drei Monate für nur € 10,- mtl. lesen und 50% sparen manager-magazin.de/abonnieren Informationen zu unserer Datenschutzerklärung.

Joe Bergquist of The Banker Next Door joins us to unpack the FDIC's recent report on bank lending to non‑depository financial institutions (NDFIs). Joe walks through the supercharged growth within the NDFI space, highlighting what's driving expansion and where banks are placing their bets.We break down the types of borrowers, examine concentration trends across banks, and discuss what these findings mean for balance sheets, risk management, and future regulatory focus. Whether you're tracking indirect exposure or actively lending into the space, this conversation provides timely context and practical insight into one of banking's fastest‑growing segments.Send us Fan MailPresented by Remedy ConsultingFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

Crypto regulation in Q1 2026 reshaped the stablecoin and digital asset markets with the OCC's 376-page Genius Act proposed rule, the SEC's five-category crypto asset classification, and new AML data from FATF and Chainalysis. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, breaks it all down with Robert Musiala, Partner at Baker Hostetler and co-lead of their Web3 practice.The OCC introduced the PPSI framework that every future stablecoin issuer must follow, while at least 15 crypto-native companies raced to file trust charter applications. The SEC named 18 tokens as digital commodities, replaced the "decentralization" test with a central party control standard, and Chairman Atkins previewed up to three safe harbor proposals under a tentative Regulation CA. On the enforcement side, 84% of illicit crypto transactions in 2025 involved stablecoins, the DOJ seized $61 million in USDT, and North Korea expanded state-sponsored theft into remote IT worker schemes targeting US businesses.Find out more1️⃣ Map your Genius Act transition now; the 18-month implementation window is closing fast and companies that filed trust charters in late 2025 are already positioned.2️⃣ Vet every outsourced IT vendor accepting stablecoin payments for shell company ties to state-sponsored actors.3️⃣ Audit your tokens against the SEC's five-bucket test before the safe harbor proposals drop.4️⃣ Stress test your AML program against stablecoin-specific risks like peer-to-peer transfers, multi-hop wallet chains, and shell IT vendor payments flagged by the DOJ and FATF in Q1.5️⃣ Model your Q3 budget with and without yield revenue in case the OCC's related third-party restrictions survive.LINKSGuestRobert MusialaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-musiala/Baker Hostetler: https://www.bakerlaw.com/people/robert-musialaBlockchain Monitor: https://www.blockchainmonitor.com/CompanyBaker HostetlerWebsite: https://www.bakerlaw.com/Web3 & Digital Assets Team: https://www.bakerlaw.com/practices/web3-digital-assetsLegal Resources: https://www.bakerlaw.com/insightsHostTedd Huff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teddhuff/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidentialFintech ConfidentialYoutube: https://youtube.com/@fintechconfidentialPodcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listenNewsletter: https://fintechconfidential.com/accessLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidentialX: https://x.com/FTconfidentialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidentialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidentialSUPPORTERSDFNS: Wallets as a service, API first, multi-chain, secured with MPC across 50+ blockchains - fintechconfidential.com/dfnsSkyflow: Zero trust data privacy vault for PCI, CCPA, GDPR, SOC 2 compliance - skyflowsecure.comHawk: AI tools for real-time payment screening and fraud prevention - gethawkai.comABOUTRobert Musiala is a Partner at Baker Hostetler where he co-leads the firm's Web3 practice. He authors The Blockchain Monitor, one of the longest-running legal blogs covering crypto regulation, enforcement, and policy developments. His practice spans both traditional financial institutions and crypto-native companies.Baker Hostetler is a national law firm with deep expertise in financial services, securities, and emerging technology law.Tedd Huff is the CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential. The show is produced by DD3 Media and brings you the people, tech, and companies that change how you pay and get paid.CHAPTERS00:00 Episode Highlights01:18 Welcome to Fintech Confidential01:27 Dfns: Wallets as a Service (sponsor)02:47 Show Intro And Guests05:30 Genius Act Rulebook07:38 Reserve Rules Explained13:08 Charter Rush Begins18:11 Banks Vs Crypto Score20:49 Deposit Flight And Yield25:58 Wyoming And SoFi Models29:38 SEC Five Bucket Guide32:49 Digital Commodities Line37:35 Munchee Vs Meg Prime39:21 Sky Flow: Building Fast and Secure (sponsor)40:23 Back To Atkins Agenda40:58 Atkins Next Moves43:21 Regulation CA Safe Harbors45:39 Stablecoins And Illicit Use50:25 Freezing Burning Reissuing54:13 Offshore Crackdown FATF56:24 North Korea Crypto Threats59:28 Q2 Watchlist OCC Yield01:05:11 Safe Harbor And CLARITY01:10:33 Advice For Builders Q201:13:20 Wrap Up And Sponsor01:14:08 Hawk AI - Realtime Fraud Monitoring (sponsor)01:14:53 Disclaimer

Googles Börsenwert nähert sich erstmals der 5-Billionen-Dollar-Grenze. Wie ist es dem Konzern gelungen, den ChatGPT-Angriff auf das Kerngeschäft nicht nur abzuwehren, sondern auch noch zum eigenen Vorteil zu nutzen? Darum geht es in diesem Podcast. Weiterführende Links: KI-Angriff auf ChatGPT: Inside Google – das spektakulärste Comeback der Techgeschichte Fehlende Strategie: Investoren zweifeln an Bewertung von OpenAI Künstliche Intelligenz: Code Red bei SAP und Investoren – KI-Alarm in der Softwarebranche Zum manager magazin Abo Finance Forward – der Newsletter In unserem kostenlosen Newsletter liefern wir Euch exklusive Recherchen und News über Fintechs, Krypto, Fonds und Family-Offices. Jeden Mittwoch vor dem Frühstück, direkt ins Postfach.Hier geht es zur Anmeldung! Alle manager magazin Podcasts finden Sie hier.Alle Newsletter vom manager magazin finden Sie hier. Host: Sarah Heuberger (Redakteurin manager magazin)Gast: Jonas Rest (Redakteur manager magazin)Schnitt und Mastering: Felix KleinProduktion: Julia Wehmeier, Sven Bergmann+++ Alle Infos zu unseren Werbepartnern finden Sie hier. Die manager-Gruppe ist nicht für den Inhalt dieser Seite verantwortlich. +++ Alle Podcasts der manager Gruppe finden Sie hier. Mehr Hintergründe zum Thema erhalten Sie bei manager+. Jetzt drei Monate für nur € 10,- mtl. lesen und 50% sparen manager-magazin.de/abonnieren Informationen zu unserer Datenschutzerklärung.

Recorded live at Money20/20 Bangkok, 2026What if the next big embedded finance opportunity isn't payments or lending, but connectivity?In this live conversation from Money20/20 Bangkok I sit down with Vince, Co-Founder of Fristy, to unpack why the world's leading neobanks and super apps are quietly embedding telecom into their product stack.Fristy is building what Stripe did for payments and Wise did for FX; but for global telecom infrastructure. Already live with Grab, Uber, GXS Bank. Firsty is turning connectivity from a consumer pain point into a retention and revenue driver for FinTechs.In this episode:How Grab and Uber are using embedded connectivity to reduce revenue leakage from traveling usersThe B2B infrastructure layer that lets neobanks offer seamless global connectivity without building it themselvesWhy connectivity should be on your product roadmapThe founder mindset on failure: VInce shares how he turns setbacks into forward momentumWe cover:(00:00) Telecom meets FinTech: The opportunity nobody's building for(01:30) The consumer pain point: roaming fees, SIM swaps, and broken experiences(02:30) The B2B problem(03:30) Why neobanks should embed telecom; the Grab and Uber case study(05:30) How Fristy works: one connection, every operator, local pricing globally(06:30) Where to access Fristy today: Grab, GXS Bank, KBC(07:30) The commercial case: retention, revenue, and user experience metrics(09:00) Founder mindset: How Vince approaches failure and keeps moving forward

As sanctions risk intensifies and regulatory expectations grow more complex, financial institutions are under increasing pressure to strengthen and defend their compliance programs. In this episode of Ahead of the Curve, we sit down with Greg Pinn of Abrigo and Sarabjeet Singh, Founder and CEO of RZOLUT, to explore how data quality, risk visibility, and AI are reshaping financial crime compliance.Listen in to learn how expectations around data have evolved, why a unified view across sanctions, PEPs, and watchlists is critical, and how banks and credit unions can responsibly adopt AI while maintaining trust, transparency, and defensibility.About the guests:Sarabjeet Singh is the Founder, CEO, and Chief Product Architect of RZOLUT, bringing more than three decades of global experience in financial crimes compliance. With a strong Big 4 background, including leadership roles at KPMG and EY, his expertise spans AML, KYC, sanctions, and regulatory transformation. Sarabjeet has designed and operated large compliance Centers of Excellence for global banks and FinTechs, including multi-year programs for Top Wall Street banks and global payment providers, combining operational scale, machine learning, and automation. His teams have built and maintained global AML datasets for more than a decade. Through RZOLUT, he enables institutions to leverage high-quality data and adopt enterprise-grade screening and due diligence aligned with modern regulatory expectations.Greg Pinn has spent over 20 years building software products and data solutions to solve AML and financial crime challenges for global financial institutions. His work has included developing sanctions, watchlist, and PEP screening solutions, cryptocurrency compliance tools, adverse media offerings, and advanced risk data products. At Abrigo, Greg leads the development of innovative scan solutions that help banks and credit unions confidently navigate regulatory and operational challenges.Helpful links:Rzolut | Compliance, ConnectedWhat happens when sanctions screening failsThe new sanctions reality: Why community financial institutions need enterprise-grade screening Modernizing sanctions screening for U.S. community financial institutions - Abrigo

Der Berliner Neobroker ist zu Deutschlands wertvollstem Start-up aufgestiegen. Doch eine neue EU-Vorgabe bedroht eine wichtige Erlösquelle, und die Konkurrenz macht Druck. Was auf Trade Republic zukommt und wie das Unternehmen damit umgehen will, erfahren Sie in diesem Podcast. Weiterführende Links: Stresstest der eigenen Philosophie: Die neue Volks-Bank – Trade Republic vor dem Moment der Wahrheit Ende der Funkstille: Trade Republic ersetzt Chatbots durch Menschen Altersvorsorgedepot: Aktienbroker bereiten sich auf „größeren Boom als bei Corona“ vor Zum manager magazin Abo Finance Forward – der Newsletter In unserem kostenlosen Newsletter liefern wir Euch exklusive Recherchen und News über Fintechs, Krypto, Fonds und Family-Offices. Jeden Mittwoch vor dem Frühstück, direkt ins Postfach.Hier geht es zur Anmeldung! Alle manager magazin Podcasts finden Sie hier.Alle Newsletter vom manager magazin finden Sie hier. Host: Henning Hinze (Redakteurin manager magazin)Gast: Katharina Slodczyk (Redakteurin manager magazin)Schnitt und Mastering: Felix KleinProduktion: Julia Wehmeier, Sven Bergmann+++ Alle Infos zu unseren Werbepartnern finden Sie hier. Die manager-Gruppe ist nicht für den Inhalt dieser Seite verantwortlich. +++ Alle Podcasts der manager Gruppe finden Sie hier. Mehr Hintergründe zum Thema erhalten Sie bei manager+. Jetzt drei Monate für nur € 10,- mtl. lesen und 50% sparen manager-magazin.de/abonnieren Informationen zu unserer Datenschutzerklärung.

In today's Tech3 from Moneycontrol, Cognizant reports steady growth but flags a cost reset with restructuring plans. Karnataka flags AI's potential impact on jobs while pushing ahead with infrastructure and an AI City plan. NPCI explores giving smaller UPI apps early access to features to reduce market concentration. Heatwaves drive new safety measures for delivery workers across platforms. And Sahi raises $33 million as broking startups continue to attract investor interest.

Lori Wilson of Remedy Consulting joins BankTalk to break down key trends reshaping the software ecosystem for community financial institutions.In this episode, we explore the growing influence of private equity ownership across banking software providers and consulting firms—and what that means for long-term partnerships, pricing, and product direction. We also take a closer look at open banking initiatives and the digital migration strategies underway at the largest core providers, unpacking how these shifts could impact your next software contract.Whether you're planning a core renewal, evaluating fintech partnerships, or simply trying to stay ahead of industry change, this conversation offers practical insights to help community banks make smarter technology decisions.To connect with Lori Wilson or continue the conversation, you can reach her at lwilson@remedyconsult.net Send us Fan MailPresented by Remedy ConsultingExecutive Wins PodcastThe Executive Wins Podcast features inspiring Executives who share their biggest wins.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifyFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

In this episode of AML Conversations, Elliot Berman is joined by Jennie Jonas, Senior Vice President of Financial Crime Advisory, to discuss the recent surge in fintechs pursuing OCC limited-purpose trust charters. They explore what's driving this trend, how limited trust charters differ from full bank charters, and why these structures are especially attractive for fintechs operating in payments and digital assets. The conversation also dives into common misconceptions, the reality of “bank‑grade” AML and governance expectations, and what fintechs should prepare for before—and after—receiving a charter. From compliance program design and OCC examination rigor to risk governance, board expectations, and the future evolution of charter authorities, this episode offers practical insight for fintechs considering a charter and for institutions working with chartered fintech partners.

In a market defined by uncertainty, standing still on the balance sheet may be the biggest risk of all. Zach Zoia of Darling Consulting Group—and co‑host of the On the Balance Sheet podcast—joins us to unpack how financial institutions should be thinking about rate risk, balance sheet strategy, and margin pressures amid persistent yield curve volatility. We dive into how recent global events, including heightened geopolitical tensions, private credit stress, and shifting risk appetite, are influencing bank decision‑making today—and why loan and deposit pricing discipline will matter more than ever as we move into 2026. Whether you're re‑evaluating your tolerance for risk or wondering where margin tailwinds (and headwinds) may emerge, this conversation offers practical insights for ALCO and executive teams navigating what's next.Send us Fan MailPresented by Remedy ConsultingFor more information on BankTalk:BankTalk  WebsiteSubscribe to BankTalk NewsRemedy Consulting WebsiteRemedy LinkedInTo speak on the BankTalk Podcast, please  email us. 

In the ever-evolving world of digital banking, understanding the shifts and trends is crucial for industry practitioners and innovators. In this episode of One Vision, Theodora Lau hosts Dharmesh Mistry and Dave Wallace to explore the transformative moments in banking and fintech over the past decade, the impact of technology on the financial services industry, and the future of work. They discuss the rise of 5G, smartphones, digital banking, and the need for industry revaluation to adapt to rapid technological convergence.00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome02:20 The Game Changers and Misreads11:57 The Role of Fintechs and Neobanks21:24 The Future of Banking: A New Paradigm32:16 Rethinking Banking for the Future34:09 AI Native Banking37:03 Jobs and the Human Contribution 

In the ever-evolving world of digital banking, understanding the shifts and trends is crucial for industry practitioners and innovators. In this episode of One Vision, Theodora Lau hosts Dharmesh Mistry and Dave Wallace to explore the transformative moments in banking and fintech over the past decade, the impact of technology on the financial services industry, and the future of work. They discuss the rise of 5G, smartphones, digital banking, and the need for industry revaluation to adapt to rapid technological convergence.00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome02:20 The Game Changers and Misreads11:57 The Role of Fintechs and Neobanks21:24 The Future of Banking: A New Paradigm32:16 Rethinking Banking for the Future34:09 AI Native Banking37:03 Jobs and the Human Contribution

The latest episode of the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast being released today tackles one of the most consequential developments in bank–fintech litigation in recent years: the Los Angeles Superior Court's tentative decision in Opportunity Financial, LLC v. Hewlett (read more here). This case squarely addresses the long-debated "true lender" doctrine which has for decades bedeviled banks and Fintechs and "bricks and mortar" non-banks that have entered into joint ventures with one another to engage in interstate lending programs which take advantage of interest rate exportation rights afforded to banks. After applying application California and federal law, the Court granted summary judgment to OppFi and against the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) which unsuccessfully maintained that OppFi is the true lender and not OppFi's partner, FinWise Bank. In this episode, host Alan Kaplinsky, founder and former chair of the Consumer Financial Services Group and now Senior Counsel, is joined by two leading voices with sharply contrasting perspectives: Professor Emeritus Arthur Wilmarth, a prominent critic of bank–fintech partnerships, and Ballard Spahr Senior Counsel Ron Vaske, who regularly advises banks and fintech companies on structuring such programs. Their discussion offers a deep and balanced exploration of the court's reasoning and its broader implications.   A Tentative Decision with Significant Implications At the center of the case is a partnership between OppFi, a fintech platform, and FinWise Bank, a Utah-chartered, FDIC-insured institution. The program allowed FinWise to originate consumer loans at interest rates permissible under Utah law and export those rates nationwide under Section 27 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act. The DFPI challenged the arrangement, arguing that OppFi—not FinWise—was the "true lender," which would subject the loans to California's 36% interest rate cap. In a tentative ruling, the court rejected the DFPI's position and granted summary judgment in favor of OppFi. The court emphasized traditional indicia of lending authority, including: •           FinWise's role in funding the loans •           Its control over underwriting criteria •           Its retention of a 5% ownership interest •           Its ongoing oversight of compliance and marketing Critically, the court also relied on the longstanding California law principle that usury is determined at the inception of the loan. (See the discussion below.) Because FinWise originated the loans, the court concluded they were not rendered unlawful by OppFi's subsequent purchase of a 95% participation interest giving which gave it a predominant economic interest.   Competing Views on "True Lender" The podcast highlights a fundamental divide in how courts and commentators approach the true lender doctrine. Professor Wilmarth argues that the court failed to meaningfully engage with the "predominant economic interest" test, which focuses on who bears the majority of the economic risk and reward. In his view, OppFi's 95% participation interest suggests that it—not the bank—is the real lender in substance. He also raises broader concerns about whether such arrangements undermine state usury laws and expose consumers to excessively high-cost credit. Ron Vaske, by contrast, emphasizes the legal and structural realities of the transaction. He underscores that FinWise is the named lender, funds the loans, and remains legally responsible to borrowers. From this perspective, the allocation of economic interests after origination should not redefine the identity of the lender or override federal law permitting rate exportation.   The Role of "Valid When Made" Another key related theme explored in the episode is the "valid when made" doctrine—the principle that a loan that is lawful at origination remains lawful after assignment. The court's reliance on this concept reinforces the importance of determining lender status at the moment the loan is made, rather than based on subsequent transfers or participations. The discussion also touches on the interplay between state and federal law, as well as the continuing relevance of regulatory interpretations following the Supreme Court's decision in Loper Bright, which curtailed Chevron deference.   What Comes Next? It is important to note that the court's ruling is still tentative. In accordance with California procedure, OppFi must submit a proposed final opinion and order to the Court. If adopted, an appeal by the DFPI appears likely—potentially setting the stage for further appellate guidance on the true lender doctrine in California and beyond.   Why This Matters This case is part of a broader and ongoing policy debate: ·                 Supporters of bank–fintech partnerships argue they expand access to credit and operate within well-established federal banking frameworks. ·                 Critics contend they can be used to circumvent state consumer protection laws, particularly interest rate caps. As the regulatory and judicial landscape continues to evolve, OppFi v. Hewlett represents a significant—and closely watched—development. It may be significant to note that, unlike several other states, California does not have a statute stating that the holding of a "predominant economic interest" in a loan makes the holder the true lender  Be sure to listen to the full podcast episode for a deeper dive into the case and the competing legal and policy perspectives shaping the future of bank–fintech partnerships. Consumer Finance Monitor is hosted by Alan Kaplinsky, Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr, and the founder and former chair of the firm's Consumer Financial Services Group. We encourage listeners to subscribe to the podcast on their preferred platform for weekly insights into developments in the consumer finance industry.

In this episode, Lex chats with Marc Boiron — CEO of Polygon Labs. Marc shares his journey from law to blockchain, discussing the challenges of navigating crypto's evolving legal landscape and the complexities of structuring compliant DeFi projects. He explains Polygon's strategic pivot to focus on stablecoin payments, leveraging its proven blockchain and global partnerships. Marc highlights Polygon's real-world adoption, competitive edge, and vision to become the leading platform for on-chain payments. The episode offers insights into regulatory hurdles, industry trends, and Polygon's mission to transform digital money movement. NOTABLE DISCUSSION POINTS: The Labs-Foundation Structure Is a Frankenstein - and Its Creator Knows It: Marc helped architect the legal frameworks behind major DeFi token launches but openly calls the outcome a “complete Frankenstein.” The arm's-length separation between labs and foundations was necessary to survive regulatory hostility, but makes coherent execution nearly impossible. He argues projects still copying this structure today are doing so out of habit, not legal necessity. Generalist Blockchains Are Dead - Polygon Is Betting Everything on Payments: As chain architectures converge, Boiron believes differentiation through speed and low fees is over. Polygon analysed its actual usage, found stablecoin payments was the standout vertical - $2.3 trillion already moved, fintechs across LatAm, Africa, and Southeast Asia already on-chain - and went all-in. The thesis is binary: if all money moves on-chain within a decade, even the 50th-best payments chain wins big. Polygon's Real Moat Is Enterprise Trust Built During the NFT Era: The 2022–23 enterprise NFT push looked like a dead end after FTX collapsed, but it left behind institutional due diligence and credibility. Fintechs evaluating payments chains find that Polygon has years of live production use, Fortune 500 relationships, and Stripe already defaulting to it - a trust advantage no newly launched chain can replicate. TOPICS Polygon Labs, Polygon protocol, blockchain, crypto, decentralized finance, DeFi, legal frameworks, token launches, meme coins, stablecoins, payments, fintech, Ethereum, ICO boom, web3, NFT, Stripe, Circle   ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

In this episode, Lex chats with Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO of Alpaca — a brokerage infrastructure company that provides API-based trading and custody services to fintechs and developers globally. The conversation begins with their shared experience at Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis, where Yoshi worked in fixed income securitization and learned that even when market participants sense a bubble, they keep dancing because timing the exit is impossible. After Lehman's collapse, Yoshi pursued entrepreneurship, building a computer vision AI company acquired by Kyocera before founding Alpaca in 2017. Initially inspired by Robinhood, Yoshi pivoted after experiencing firsthand the friction of accessing brokerage infrastructure—realizing the deeper opportunity was building API-first brokerage rails for developers. Today Alpaca powers 9 million accounts through 300+ partners across 45 countries, recently raising $150 million at a unicorn valuation. The discussion explores how Alpaca follows Robinhood's product roadmap to anticipate partner demand, the challenges of adding crypto, and Yoshi's thesis that finance is undergoing a generational shift from digital to on-chain operations. Lex shares examples of legacy infrastructure dysfunction—from faxing PDFs to TD Ameritrade in 2012 to the Synapse collapse caused by manual CSV uploads—illustrating why Alpaca built its own custody and ledger systems as a path to competing in the $350 trillion global securities custody market. NOTABLE DISCUSSION POINTS: Alpaca's biggest breakthrough was not a better investing app idea, but recognizing that the real bottleneck was brokerage infrastructure. Yokokawa and team initially explored B2C product concepts, but pivoted once they experienced firsthand how painful broker-dealer setup, custody, and clearing integrations were. For readers building fintech, this is a huge lesson: the highest-value opportunity is often the “invisible” infrastructure pain, not the user-facing feature set. They found product-market fit by starting with a narrow wedge (API for automated traders) and only then expanding into a broader platform (Broker API for fintech apps). Alpaca did not begin by serving large fintechs; it first attracted power users who urgently needed programmable execution, then used inbound demand (“can I build my own Robinhood?”) as proof to build account opening, reporting, and full brokerage APIs. This is a valuable go-to-market pattern for infrastructure startups: win with a sharp use case, then expand into the system of record. Yokokawa's core strategic edge is full-stack control of licenses, memberships, and ledger technology rather than relying on legacy vendors. He explicitly ties this to lessons from historical fintech fragility (manual workflows, broken reconciliations, middleware failures) and argues that owning the custody/clearing layer is what makes Alpaca defensible long term. For readers, this is the key takeaway on moat-building in financial services: if you don't control the ledger and operational core, your product may scale faster at first but remains structurally fragile. TOPICS Alpaca, Lehman Brothers, Barclays, Nomura, Neuberger Berman, Blackrock, Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, BNY Mellon, Brokerage infrastructure, API, trading, tokenization, embedded finance, fintech, crypto, web3   ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

In this episode of the Wharton FinTech Podcast, Bobby Ma sits down with Dean Brauer, President & COO of Cybrid. Dean shares his experience building Cybrid, who combines stablecoin, fiat, and compliance into a single API-first platform helping financial institutions, FinTechs, and enterprises integrate stablecoin infrastructure and launch end-to-end cross-border payment solutions to more than 150+ countries, at up to 90% lower cost, and with full transparency. The Company raised a $10 million Series A funding round led by BDC Capital and has grown 5x in the last 12 months. We discuss: - Dean's journey building Cybrid and his deep entrepreneurship experience - The solutions Cybrid offers in orchestrating stablecoin payments - The Company's bespoke thought partnership with customers in creating and executing their stablecoin strategy - Recent regulatory & industry trends driving forward this rapidly growing space