Pontera Adds Non-Discretionary Option for Advisors to Guide 401(k) Allocations<\/a><\/p>\nWM: Can you expand on that? What will the tech platform look like?<\/p>\n
SL: We have two different types of advisors who work with us. We have the independent RIAs that use us as a TAMP. Then we have about half of our advisors who are under our RIA as IARs. Every 1099 independent advisor can go and use what they want in certain areas, but if they\u2019re under our RIA, we have more supervision and things we need to do. But we want to be the place that they can go to do business and work across proposal planning, looking at recommendation opportunities for clients, that case design and helping understand how to invest that client portfolio and then connecting that into implementation, account opening, client reviews, ongoing reporting. We\u2019re not going to be a financial planning tool, and we\u2019re not going to take on things where there are great vendors and partners out there that we can work with. But we will be the experience layer on top. And if they want to go use something else that\u2019s not in that ecosystem, they can.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll be showing that portal to our advisors at our big conference in September.<\/p>\n
WM: How is that different than other firms that say they have an advisor portal?<\/p>\n
SL: The difference is that we don\u2019t have the same legacy that some other firms have. We\u2019re at $50 billion. It\u2019s not a small number, but we are able to move pretty quickly. We\u2019re putting on a layer of AI that\u2019s going to help advisors with it. And I do think that our advisors are more open to using what we recommend, so while they\u2019re totally independent, we offer them choice. I think we’re able to suggest, \u2018this is the tool you should use for this,\u2019 and we can embed it in the adoption.<\/p>\n
WM: Are there any specific vendors that you\u2019re working with?<\/p>\n
SL: We work very closely with Orion. We continue to partner with them, but again, we\u2019re trying to focus on where we add value. For example, when we think about our advisor portal, they can absolutely get into Orion, but we\u2019re focused on surfacing the insights and most relevant information for them and reports through that. So that would be an example of how we work with them.<\/p>\n
Also, we have a pretty sizable direct indexing and tax management platform, with $13 billion in assets in direct indexing strategies. We are partnering with Aladdin behind the scenes and we’re launching more capabilities through that partnership.<\/p>\n
WM: Are you partnering with anyone on the securities-based lending?<\/p>\n
SL: Yes, we’re working directly with Schwab and Fidelity for that.<\/p>\n
WM: Are you looking at building out a W-2 model?<\/p>\n
SL: I think everyone\u2019s kind of focused on a W-2 offering. We\u2019ve been more focused on, how do we help advisors if they have liquidity needs or want to take some chips off the table and possibly invest in even M&A? So we have built what we call our advisor support network, which will take minority stakes in advisors. But we don\u2019t have a W-2 model. I think we have an active succession process as well. I do think that\u2019s a place where we\u2019re a little more unique in where the industry\u2019s going. We\u2019re not purchasing their businesses outright right now.<\/p>\n
WM: When you say you\u2019re working with insurance-based advisors and helping them get into wealth, where are those advisors coming from?<\/p>\n
SL: We probably have around 800 advisors who are part of Advisors Excel. And many, many have over the last 10 years, gotten into wealth at different levels. But we started the RIA to help advisors expand beyond the retirement income planning they were already doing. They had an interest, and they wanted to do everything with one firm.<\/p>\n
One of the unique things that we do is that we have about 1,100 employees, 200 of whom are in marketing. So we are really helping our advisors market their businesses and build practices and systems to scale and grow. The advisors we work with, first and foremost, are coming over from the Advisors Excel insurance side of the business. And they are looking to expand or move their assets. Maybe they\u2019ve used an outside TAMP, but they want to do it all within one place.<\/p>\n
WM: The firm aims to reach $250 billion by 2035. What\u2019s the strategy for doing so?<\/p>\n
SL: The first thing is helping existing advisors grow, continuing to invest in them, and supporting them with our organic growth strategies. I mentioned we can help them with M&A, and we are actively doing that as well. Helping them grow with existing clients through things like aggregation. We\u2019re offering different ways to think about Experience Alpha. So how do you think about working with clients where you\u2019re not just talking about performance, but you\u2019re actually delivering and sharing the value you\u2019re providing them? For example, for advisors who use our tax-harvesting strategies, we have a quarterly report that\u2019s in clear, client-friendly language about the benefits of what we\u2019re doing there.<\/p>\n
The second is bringing more assets on platform. So for those advisors in our ecosystem that are RIAs or have advisory business, winning that business off other TAMPs is a big area of focus. We\u2019re continuing to improve our platform so that we win that business. We\u2019re also helping our advisors retain their clients and continue to have better client reviews and better client meetings through different technologies that we’re building.<\/p>\n
Lastly, we\u2019re focused on recruiting new advisors, not just on the insurance side, but on the wealth side. We\u2019re starting to see a lot of success and interest from advisors at independent broker\/dealers, other RIAs, where they really want a growth partner, and we\u2019re able to help them grow their business and then help them build their wealth management business as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year, AE Wealth Management brought on Shannon Larson, a former Osaic executive, as its new president.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[114,268,85,46,266,267],"class_list":["post-591894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}