At the age of market turbulence, it’s important to gain advice from authoritative sources that are relevant to your business needs. This pick of influencers is here to help you navigate through complicated situations and problems. Follow the people from the list to stay updated and keep track of the direction the market is heading currently.
Heads of WealthTech corporations to follow
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Walt Bettinger, President & CEO at Charles Schwab |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/waltbettinger/ |
| About | Bettinger leads a workforce of approximately 20,200 full-time employees, with headquarters in San Francisco and branch offices in more than 360 locations across the United States plus London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and Puerto Rico. Bettinger’s duties include leading the development of strategies and services that assist millions of people worldwide in their efforts to save and invest – either directly, with the help of an independent investment advisor or through a company-sponsored retirement or benefit plan.
As measured by client assets, Schwab is the largest publicly traded investment services firm in the United States and one of the world’s largest financial services firms serving approximately $3.50 trillion in client assets,12.7 million client brokerage accounts, 1.4 million bank accounts, and 1.7 million retirement plan participants, as well as 8,000 independent investment advisors |
| Recent comments | “As I reflect on the last few weeks, I think it’s important to say this: we are not business people first, we are people first. We are parents, children (no matter your age), grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, spouses, partners & friends. Our jobs are an important part of our lives, but they are what we do, not who we are. Work doesn’t define us. These times make it clear that the role of a leader is 2 make sure our people have the time to appreciate & support those we love. Hope you have time to do that this weekend.” |
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Bill Crager, CEO at Envestnet, Inc |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamcrager/ |
| About | Bill drives the development of Envestnet’s innovative financial wellness solutions and is responsible for the market growth of its comprehensive wealth management platform, which supports over 3,500 financial enterprises and more than 99,000 financial advisors, who collectively manage over $3.3T in assets.
Crager and the team at Envestnet were first in the managed solutions industry to think more globally about how to streamline an independent advisor’s practice by offering a broad range of fee-based products side-by-side through an easily accessed, open-architecture portal. The experience of such a global company as Envestnet and a rich track record allow Bill to share unique insights and perspectives in his Twitter. |
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Kunal Kapoor, CEO at Morningstar |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunalkapoor3/ |
| About | Kunal Kapoor, CFA, is chief executive officer of Morningstar, Inc. Previously, he served as president of the firm, responsible for product development and innovation, sales and marketing, and driving strategic prioritization across the organization. Kapoor has also led Morningstar.com and the firm’s data business, as well as its global products and client solutions group. He has served on the board of PitchBook and is a member of the board of trustees of the Nature Conservancy in Illinois. Crain’s Chicago Business named Mr. Kapoor to its 2010 40 Under 40 class. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and environmental policy from Monmouth College and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. |
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Tash Elwyn, President and CEO, Raymond James & Associates |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/telwyn/ |
| About | Tash Elwyn has been a part of the Raymond James family for nearly 27 years. As a fresh graduate from Emory University in Atlanta, Elwyn started as a cold caller for Raymond James. A year later, he entered the financial advisor training program and became a financial advisor, a role he stayed in for 10 years. Elwyn continuously worked his way up the ladder and around the South, from Atlanta, to Tennessee and finally to St. Petersburg, where he became President and CEO of Raymond James & Associates in 2018.
One of the recent publications with Tash: https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/10/14/2-ceos-warn-of-retirement-tsunami-in-advisory-industry/ |
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Adam Antoniades, CEO at Cetera Financial Group |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-antoniades-1bb78a6/ |
| About | Adam Antoniades is Chief Executive Officer of Cetera Financial Group and a member of its Board of Directors. He is responsible for running all facets of the business, driving growth for the organization and its advisors. Adam leads Cetera in its mission to advance the profession of financial advice through the delivery of an Advice-Centric Experience. In support of this mission, he drives innovative programs and technologies that enable financial professionals to achieve greater financial well-being for their clients at each life stage. |
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Matthew Wolniewicz, President at Fi360 |
| URL | https://twitter.com/mwalno |
| WealthTech Club interview | https://insart.com/wealth-tech-club/wealthtech-insights-with-matt-wolniewicz/ |
| About | Matthew’s passion lies in helping financial services professionals grow their practices and mitigate risk by providing them with the training, technology and resources they need to help their clients achieve financial success. As president of Fi360, Matt has pledged to deliver innovative solutions to the market that ultimately help investors retire with confidence while creating a strategic direction that drives every employee to exceed client expectations. He is responsible for spurring organizational growth and establishing Fi360 as the leading provider of services that empower financial intermediaries to profitably implement prudent fiduciary practices. |
| Comments | “The importance of technology is not only in helping advisors automate tasks, but also in adhering to this changing regulatory and legal environment.” |
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Jim Roth, Managing Director and Business Executive at BNY Mellon | Pershing |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-roth-b43a572/ |
| About | Jim leads Pershing’s relationship management of BNY Mellon’s largest, most strategic clients worldwide. He also is responsible for assisting Pershing’s clients in attracting advisors and advisors in transition.
His focus is on helping Investment Firms, Broker-Dealers, Registered Investment Advisors and Hedge Funds strengthen their business and deliver more value to their clients by cultivating relationships, sharing expertise, and listening intently. Because before problems can be solved, they must first be understood. |
| Recent comments | “Leaders in the wealth tech space would do well not to tout themselves as “purely digital” or the first “all-digital” firm in a particular sector. As a colleague of mine likes to point out, anything that’s all-digital is devoid of any human beings. That’s why I prefer using the term digitized when describing the ecosystems that will dominate the coming year. The very best ecosystems will leverage an array of technology working in tandem—including predictive analytics, automation, and, at their centers, Artificial Intelligence—while retaining a human touch.” From Pershing’s blog. |
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William Capuzzi, CEO at Apex Clearing |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-capuzzi-8b1666/ |
| About | Bill sets the vision and strategy to help Apex identify and realize new areas of growth and opportunity. Under his guidance, Apex continues to be a proven leader in clearing and execution, helping power the digital revolution in financial services. Prior to his role as CEO of Apex Clearing Corporation, Bill previously worked at Convergex Group where he was Chief of Staff and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. |
Top media influencers
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Tim Welsh, CFP®, President and CEO at Nexus Strategy |
| URL | https://twitter.com/NexusStrategy |
| About | Tim consults for firms in the wealth management industry. Prior to founding Nexus Strategy, Tim was Director of Business Consulting Services for Schwab Advisor Services where he led the development and marketing of practice management resources for independent advisors. Before that. He was responsible for marketing, product development, and financial advisor training for the financial planning group at Merrill Lynch.
Tim is frequently quoted in the wealth management media on a wide range of business management and industry topics. He is the author of a number of industry white papers, a guest columnist for RIABiz, Investment News and wealthmanagement.com, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events. |
| Recent comments | “In the current world of wealth management, revenue opportunities derive from typical activities such as advisory fees, mutual fund investments, managed account enrolments, security transactions, platform fees, and other products and services, all neatly bundled up in the delivery of financial advice via a human advisor in some form of the financial planning process.
These traditional activities and revenue sources, however, are being disaggregated into their component parts, now more than ever, based on new technologies and emerging regulatory requirements creating disruption across wealth management. So much so, that a “Great Unbundling” is now changing the economics of manufacturing, packaging, and distribution across the industry forever.” |
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Lex Sokolin, CMO & Global Fintech Co-Head, ConsenSys |
| URL | https://twitter.com/LexSokolin |
| WTC interview | https://insart.com/wealth-tech-club/wealthtech-insights-3-lex-sokolin/ |
| About | Lex is a futurist and entrepreneur working on the next generation of financial services. He is the Global Fintech Co-Head at ConsenSys, a blockchain technology company building the infrastructure, applications, and practices that enable a decentralized world. Lex focuses on emerging digital assets, public and private enterprise blockchain solutions, and decentralized finance and autonomous organizations.
Previously, Lex was the Global Director of Fintech Strategy at Autonomous Research (acquired by AllianceBernstein), an equity research firm serving institutional investors, where he covered artificial intelligence, blockchain, neobanks, digital lenders, roboadvisors, payments, insurtech, and mixed reality. Before Autonomous, Lex was COO at AdvisorEngine, a digital wealth management technology platform, and CEO of NestEgg Wealth, a roboadvisor that partnered with financial advisors. Prior to NestEgg, Lex held roles in investment management and banking at Barclays, Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank. Lex is a contributor of thought leadership to the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Bloomberg, FT, Reuters, American Banker, ThinkAdvisor, and Investment News, among others. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences such as Money2020, LendIt, Schwab Impact, In|Vest, T3 Enterprise Edition, and Consensus. He earned a JD/MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics and Law from Amherst College. |
| Recent comments | “In order to differentiate, advisors and wealth managers will need to think seriously about blockchain-based investment assets. Those may be simple digital securities like equities, real estate, or municipal bonds. Or, they may be early-stage private equity in technology companies. Or, they may be digital currencies or other rendered valuable collectibles. As investment managers fail to generate alpha and compete against monolithic index providers, spending time to understand the frontier becomes increasingly important. For example, decentralized lending vehicles and exchanges are able to generate idiosyncratic alpha in a way inaccessible on traditional infrastructure. Custodians, brokers, and the rest of the value chain continue to be challenged in order to keep up. WealthTech needs to bridge the gap to digital assets, or be disintermediated by emerging players.” |
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Davyde Wachell, CEO at Responsive.ai |
| URL | https://twitter.com/davyde |
| WTC interview | https://insart.com/wealth-tech-club/wealthtech-insights-with-davyde-wachell/ |
| About | Davyde Wachell has spent the past twelve years in FinTech. He’s a wealth manager and second-generation quant finance specialist. Davyde studied AI in the Symbolic Systems Program at Stanford then worked designing investment management research and compliance platforms until he founded Responsive AI four years ago to solve wealth management for the future and optimize how advisors serve their clients. |
| Recent comments | “Radical disruption from the share economy, blockchain, AI, demographics and geopolitics are upon us, and once again it will not go down as the forecasters have predicted. We’d do well to remember that disruption issues forth from the scythe of Saturn during the depths of crisis, in shadowy ways that are only truly understood in hindsight.
Since there is no technology trend that can save you from this kind of disruption, and since I’m not smart enough to tell you what’s actually going to happen over the next decade, it is my conviction that you earnestly innovate your values and priorities before venturing to any hashtags du jour with unwarranted confidence.” |
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Josh Book, founder and CEO at ParameterInsights |
| URL | https://twitter.com/JoshBook10 |
| WTC interview | https://insart.com/wealth-tech-club/wealthtech-insights-with-josh-book/ |
| About | Josh Book is a Senior Management Consulting leader with nearly 20 years of global consulting and strategy delivery experience working in a variety of client-facing and leadership roles. At ParameterInsights, Josh helps to develop leading data and research products for the Financial Services space as well as helping their clients to innovate and grow their digital business models for the future.
Josh lives in Toronto, Canada. In Josh’s social media you can find much information about wealth management trends, FinTech, and digital strategy. |
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Nathan Stevenson, CEO, Founder, Forwardlane Inc |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanstvnsn/ |
| About | Nathan is supercharging financial services professionals with personalized insights for their clients. Speaker on AI in wealth and asset management at Yale, MIT, InVest NYC, Euromoney Global Private Banking conference, CFA Institute – AI in Wealth Management, Institutional Investor roundtable, featured by FORBES, World Economic Forum, American Banker and more. The company he founded, ForwardLane, is an applied artificial intelligence company that accelerates digital advisory and distribution in wealth management, asset management, and commercial banking. |
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Joe Kinahan, Chief Market Strategist at TD Ameritrade |
| URL | https://twitter.com/TDAJJKinahan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-jj-kinahan-191b218/ https://tickertape.tdameritrade.com/market-news/daily-market-update |
| About | JJ began my career as a Chicago Board Options Exchange market maker, trading primarily in the S&P 100 and S&P 500 pits. I’ve also worked for ING Bank, Blue Capital and was Managing Director of Option Trading for Van Der Moolen, USA. In 2006, I joined the thinkorswim Group, which was eventually acquired by TD Ameritrade. I am a 30-year trading veteran and a regular CNBC guest, as well as a member of the Board of Directors at NYSE ARCA and a member of the Arbitration Committee at the CBOE. My licenses include the 3, 4, 7, 24 and 66.
As Chief Market Strategist at TD Ameritrade, JJ is a frequent contributor to The Ticker Tape. His column, Daily Market Update, helps readers prepare for the trading day ahead. |
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Michael Kitces, Head of Planning Strategy at Buckingham Wealth Partners |
| URL | https://twitter.com/MichaelKitces |
| WTC interview | https://insart.com/wealth-tech-club/our-experts/michael-kitces/ |
| About | Michael Kitces has nearly 20 years of experience in finance. He is currently a partner and the director of wealth management for Pinnacle Advisory Group, a private wealth management firm with approximately $1.8 billion AUM. He is the co-founder of the XY Planning Network, AdvicePay, New Planner Recruiting, the publisher of the e-newsletter, “The Kitces Report,” and the author of the popular financial planning industry blog, “Nerd’s Eye View.” |
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Craig Iskowitz, CEO of Ezra Group |
| URL | https://twitter.com/craigiskowitz |
| About | Craig is the CEO at Ezra Group, LLC, a management consulting firm that provides business and technology strategy services to the financial services industry. Craig has over 20 years of experience in wealth management, retail and institutional brokerage, market data. He previously worked for ADP Brokerage Services (now Broadridge Financial) for almost 10 years before becoming a consultant. His clients include many Fortune 500 firms such as The Bank of New York, Fiserv, Standard & Poor’s, and J.P. Morgan Chase.
Craig speaks on wealth management trends a lot, participates in industry panels. He also heads Wealth Management Today, an information portal that delivers thought-provoking content and spreads good karma throughout the industry. |
| Recent comments | “Broker-dealers, large RIAs and RIA aggregators who build out their own advisor desktop software are disintermediating their external application vendors. They are increasing their operational risk but greatly reducing the inertia that has kept legacy systems from being replaced even when they are no longer delivering value.
It remains to be seen how much impact this trend will have on the incumbent category software providers. If enough firms stand up their own user interfaces and build out the underlying data infrastructure, we will see vendors less reliant on flashy UI features and shift their roadmaps to expanding their application programming interfaces (APIs), protocol support and integrations with other vendor products. This will also make their applications less sticky and return control of the advisor desktop to the people it should belong to… advisors.” |
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Gavin Spitzner, President, Wealth Consulting Partners, LLC |
| URL | https://twitter.com/gspitzner |
| WTC interview | https://insart.com/wealth-tech-club/wealthtech-insights-with-gavin-spitzner/ |
| About | Gavin Spitzner has 25+ years’ experience working in and consulting to Fortune 500 companies. He has worked in senior roles for Prudential Investments and Envestnet helping banks, broker-dealers and RIAs modernize their wealth management solutions. Over the course of his career, he has helped dozens of wealth managers improve their businesses based on his knowledge and insights related to business strategy, product development, digital strategy, marketing, and professional development. |
| Recent comments | “While AI is impacting everything from top of the funnel activities to process automation and portfolio management, the most important use cases revolve around augmenting both advisor and client intelligence related to behavior and, increasingly, to prescriptive, anticipatory actions that keep clients engaged in ongoing planning and beneficial actions that advisors can coach towards. We’re heading towards a world where our financial plan is a dynamic, living, breathing guide that, informed by hyper-personalized data and insights, impacts investor behavior, addresses the issues that are most important to them, and frees up advisor time to focus on higher-value activities that clients actually care about and will pay for. Technology won’t replace advisors but will instead augment their ability to serve. However, it will replace advisors who don’t leverage technology effectively.” |
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April Rudin, Founder and President of The Rudin Group |
| URL | https://twitter.com/therudingroup |
| WTC interview | https://insart.com/wealth-tech-club/wealthtech-insights-2-april-rudin/ |
| About | April is an acclaimed financial services and wealth management marketing strategist, who is distinguished by her ability to forecast, analyze and illuminate critical trends in the industry. The Rudin Group, founded in 2008, designs bespoke marketing campaigns for some of the world’s most prestigious banks, wealth management/family office firms.
April is a regularly featured source of expert commentary to international news and business outlets, trade publications, industry conferences, and broadcast media. She’s featured on Huffington Post, American Banker, CFA Enterprising Investor, Family Wealth Report, Fundfire, Investment News, Wealthmanagement.Com, and many other trade publications. April also heads the editorial board for NexChange, a global financial services’ networking start-up. |
| Recent comments | “Technology is definitely not going anywhere, and wealth managers are starting to wake up to the reality that they need digital offerings for their HNWI clients – if they want to keep them. Keep an eye on this space in 2020, as more partnerships between traditional technology companies and wealth management firms will pop up to quickly fill the tech gaps for establishment players. Those who don’t adapt quickly are going to fall behind.” |
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Alex Chalekian, CEO at Lake Avenue Financial |
| URL | https://twitter.com/AlexChalekian |
| WTC interview | https://insart.com/wealth-tech-club/our-experts/alex-chalekian/ |
| About | Alex is the founder and CEO of Lake Avenue Financial. He has been dedicated to assisting his clients in working towards their financial goals for over 20 years. Regarded by clients as “thorough” and “innovative,” Alex has served as a financial consultant to many successful professionals, business owners, and retirees. Alex is very active in monitoring innovations, trends, and overall wealth management technology. |
| Recent comments | “Back in the day, the client was willing to pay commissions. You know why? Because the financial advisor had more information than the client did. They were a resource for information. Now, investment management is turning into a commoditized industry. On top of that, regulation is going up, costs are rising, and fees are coming down. Advisors are starting to get squeezed out of the business.” |
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Urs Bolt, Expert Advisor, PMP® |
| URL | https://twitter.com/UrsBolt |
| About | Bolt helps financial service providers and tech companies to review/refocus business strategies, advises on strategic projects, develops solutions and markets and builds business partnerships. Active as a speaker, moderator, micro-blogger, and author; recognized as a global opinion leader in WealthManagement, WealthTech, DigitalAssets. |
| Recent comments | “Wealth aggregation for traditional and alternative assets will become critical for wealthy individuals and family offices. As low or even negative interest rates become widespread in many countries with a large population of high net worth (HNW) individuals, investments into alternatives, including non-bankable assets, will become more common. These assets are usually not serviced by traditional wealth managers and private banks and require new ways of aggregating the asset data, including pricing and other information to create the total wealth and its value.” |
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Chris Gledhill, Independent FinTech Advisor, Futurist, Writer & Speaker at Chris Gledhill |
| URL | https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgledhill |
| About | Chris Gledhill speaks and writes about FinTech, Banking and the future of financial services. Chris was lead mobile architect and led the disruptive innovation labs at Lloyds Banking Group before becoming CEO and Co-Founder of FinTech Startup Secco. He has both a technical & business background with expertise spanning a wide range of disruptive technologies including Blockchain, AI, API, Big Data, Deep Learning, Virtual Reality, CryptoCurrencies, Biometrics, Mobile & Wearables.
Chris is a regular blogger and his twitter feed and a ‘must follow’ for anyone in the industry looking to keep up to date with the latest FinTech developments around the world. |
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William Trout, Wealth&Asset management technology advisor at Celent |
| URL | https://twitter.com/williamtrout |
| About | William’s interests are focused on advice automation, managed accounts, and retirement solutions. He has particular expertise on automated advice delivery, data analytics and segmentation, retirement investments, the use of digital tools and wealth management platform technology. Within the wealth management arena, his interests include financial planning, investment advisory, retail brokerage, and trust. Prior to joining Celent, William was head of product and segment development for affluent and high net worth customers within BBVA Compass.
An authority on the robo advisory business, William has been widely quoted in publications such as Bloomberg, CNBC, Financial Times, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He is also a frequent speaker at industry conferences and keynotes client gatherings. |
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Steve McLaughlin, Founder, CEO, Managing Partner at Financial Technology Partners |
| URL | https://twitter.com/ftpartners |
| About | Steve is focused on helping the leading companies and their CEOs across the broad financial technology ecosystem raise private equity and debt capital, execute initial public offerings (IPOs) and conduct M&A transactions. He has been successfully running and growing the firm for almost 20 years and is one of the undisputable leaders in Fintech capital raising and M&A advising. McLaughlin has been recognized with multiple industry awards, including Investment Banker of the Year by The Information, and is consistently ranked as one of the most influential people in Fintech around the world. |
The bottom line
Fear and panic is the enemy; the information we gain from not authoritative sources also does harm to your business. The only way to protect yourself is to read posts of experts only. Follow the influencers we have gathered for you and keep following WealthTech Club to not miss anything important from the industry.
*Disclaimer: this influencers list isn’t a rating or chart. The order in which we present them doesn’t correspond to their influence or the number of followers.
