Road Trip to Tiburon

Vestigo was invited to speak on a panel at the recent Tiburon CEO Summit lead by Rob Klapprodt CEO of Vestmark. One of Vestigo’s premier portfolio companies, Vestmark is a leading SaaS provider of comprehensive unified wealth management for financial advisors and institutions. The Tiburon CEO Summit is a unique conference for a select cross-industry group of senior executives who discuss a broad range of issues on the future of the banking, insurance, brokerage, and investment management.

Vestigo was invited to speak on a panel at the recent Tiburon CEO Summit lead by Rob Klapprodt CEO of Vestmark. One of Vestigo’s premier portfolio companies, Vestmark is a leading SaaS provider of comprehensive unified wealth management for financial advisors and institutions. The Tiburon CEO Summit is a unique conference for a select cross-industry group of senior executives who discuss a broad range of issues on the future of the banking, insurance, brokerage, and investment management. Tiburon’s CEO Summit is a unique opportunity for us to keep a fresh perspective on finance while engaging our network of thought leaders.

In addition to Rob and myself the panel included:

- David Musto, President of Great-West Investments

- Aaron Schumm, CEO of Vestwell   
                                      
- David Stone, CEO of Aria Retirement Solutions            

Each panelist brought a unique perspective to the discussion that was centered around a few key problematic themes:

Participant-level advice is lacking

- Target-date funds are often the only option remotely tailored to what an individual participant needs.

- There are managed accounts solutions out there, but options rarely exist in smaller plans.

- With an increasing number of Americans dependent on individual and employer-provided plans to fund their retirement, there is a need for personalized participant advice

Core systems are decades old and hamper innovation.

- A simple exercise like adding new investment offerings (eg ETFs) is too difficult.

- Retirement assets are largely running on technology from the last century.

- Integration between payroll, retirement record keeping and portfolio management systems is cumbersome at best. This lack of integration leads to manual effort and risk throughout the investment process.

Platform consolidation is needed.

- Integration challenges carry all the way through to execution. It is challenging today for an advisor to implement and manage customized retirement portfolios with any degree of efficiency. There is a need to streamline the initial setup and trading required to get an account in-line with its targets and automate the handling of ongoing deposits and periodic rebalancing.

- In order to better serve the small plan market, part of a “platform consolidation” approach should also drive automation across plans where the available investment options differ. To take it a step further, a consolidated platform should also span taxable accounts.

The industry has a technology and culture challenge.

- Legacy technology — what kind of customer and talent does an old tech suite draw?

- Integration— Financial well being depends on it.

- Relationships — Is your firm a renter or owner? Are you building relationships?

- Culture — Talent is drawn to data and technology that lets you see signals and respond, i.e.not Cobol

- Customer intimacy matters — tech must eliminate friction points & “wow” end users

Finally, we all agreed that everything changes:

- The way we engage and service customers will change.

- The deliverables and information clients need and request will change.

- The information you need to run your business will change.

- Your staff and talent needs will change.

What I contributed to the panel and audience was the deep insights we are gathering every day at Vestigo. The solutions are here, we are simply looking for smart entrepreneurs to piece the puzzle together. It’s an exciting time in FinTech, and Vestigo is providing a big advantage that I did not always have in my corporate roles — the freedom to pursue innovation!

Ian Sheridan
Co-founder
Managing Director