Greetings from London.
I’m out for a few days supporting friends, meeting team members, and meeting with firms in London alongside my partner in life and business for the past 22 years, Kim.
London is a tremendous city, and I absolutely love how welcoming it is to the rest of the world.
This week, so many of my conversations and experiences have centered on just how far wealth management has to go to transform the client experience.
The industry is obsessed with agentic optimization and scale. But most of the people selling you these solutions have never sat across from a client. They're optimizing for their product, not for your experience delivering advice.
Seth Godin draws a sharp line between maximizing and optimizing. Maximizing ranks highest for one goal. It's simple. It's satisfying. It's easy to measure. But it neglects the system. Optimizing is harder. It finds the best set of tradeoffs. The client, the family, the legacy, the advisor's life's work. That's the whole system.
There is an incredible focus on selling you a product and a deep obtuseness with what it really looks like for you to deliver advice and sit alongside clients of all shapes and sizes. To know that your business is often not just your business, it's your family, your life's work, and something that really matters.
When you stick your neck out and work with people, it’s never just you. Maybe it started that way, but the experience you deliver is so much more.
Here are some really wonderful reminders of experience that I believe are fundamentally meaningful as we look ahead.
No one should ever care more than you.
Caring is multifaceted, but it's a key to delivering transformational advice. If we do our jobs and care all the way, not only does the client benefit, but so does their family and broader legacy.You already know the uncomfortable truth. Most wealth management shifts occur after the client's death. According to Cerulli, more than 70% of heirs are likely to fire or change their financial advisor after inheriting their parents' wealth. 70% of women change advisors after their spouse's death. And only 45% of advisory practices even have a relationship with their client's children.
With $84T (or whatever number we all pull out of our hats) set to transfer over the next two decades, it's today's problem with a long fuse.
Firms need to invest heavily to ensure that advisors spend in-person time with clients like never before. Meet with people. Meet their families. Go to their homes and workplaces. Live your clients' lives so you can anticipate as much as possible before they have to ask. You won't regret it.
Scott Belsky argues that as AI handles more of the mundane, the value of non-scalable, human-intensive experiences goes up. The firms that win won't use AI to replace the meeting. They'll use it to make the meeting better. More prepared. More anticipated. More human. The economics of high-touch are becoming viable again. The question is whether you'll invest in it.
We need deeper mastery of wealth management from our teams.
If you go to a Michelin-starred restaurant and have a question about wine pairing, you should have a best-in-class educational experience. The same should be the expectation we have for our teams delivering on all aspects of a client’s wealth experience.
Our teams should be passionate about details, nuance, and history so that we can give extremely clear direction and transformation.
But mastery alone isn't enough. The experience of expertise should feel effortless and delightful to the client. Think about the sommelier who doesn't hand you a textbook. They read the table, ask one question, and put the perfect bottle in front of you. Your team's knowledge should feel natural. Clients shouldn't have to work to access what your people know.Personalization is king
Your client experience can be 98% the same across the board, but the more you truly personalize to your clients' uniqueness, needs, and nuances, the more you can create something transformational.Getting back to those Michelin stars, I’ve experienced everything from chopsticks engraved with my name to a friend’s favorite songs on the playlist. There have been Polaroids with the chefs and extra boxes of items for the road. The personalization, combined with the unexpected, creates a memorable moment that no amount of your competitor's marketing can overcome.
Most personalization in wealth management today is really just segmentation. Gold, platinum, ultra-high-net-worth, but that's not really personal. That's just a tier. Real personalization means knowing the client well enough that 2% of difference feels like 100% of the experience. Belsky puts it simply. The future should be personalized to your preferences and always under your control.
What about you? How can you build in care, mastery, and personalization to revolutionize your client experience? What items are you working through right now to center your clients’ experience?
Reach out to [email protected] - it’d be fun to discuss.
On the Pod: How to Build a Scalable Firm Without Tech Overload
Episode 148: On this week’s episode, Kyle Van Pelt talks with Dan Johnson, Senior Managing Director and Head of Wealth Management Practice at F2 Strategy. Dan is an industry leader in portfolio management systems implementation, investment performance conversions, centralized portfolio management, and integrations with advisor-driven toolsets.
Dan talks with Kyle about scaling the wealth and asset management business without technology overload. From the pitfalls of shiny object syndrome in tech to the discipline required to scale, Dan discusses the real role of technology, not as a collection of tools, but as a strategic amplifier of a firm's value proposition. He also shares the powerful shift in the industry from "next best actions" to "next best experiences," where advisors use technology and data not just to optimize operations but to create meaningful, human-centered client relationships.
In this episode:
(00:00) - Intro
(01:13) - Dan's money moment
(03:56) - Are RIAs just reinventing wirehouses?
(06:06) - The challenges of becoming the accidental CEO and CTO
(10:22) - Scaling through discipline and reducing tech bloat
(14:18) - How to evaluate technology effectively
(19:40) - How AI is driving change in wealth management today
(27:52) - Why data strategy is the foundation of AI
(31:38) - Dan's outlook about the future of the financial services industry
(32:31) - Dan's Milemarker Minute
Milemarker Nominated for Two Wealthies
A quick note: Milemarker was nominated for two WealthManagement.com Industry Awards this year — the Wealthies. Kailash Duriaswami, our CTO, is nominated for Chief Technology Officer of the Year. And Data Engine is nominated for Data Lakes/Warehouses.
We share this because it reflects something worth naming: the industry is beginning to recognize that infrastructure is the right category for wealth management technology. Structured, normalized data at scale is not a feature — it is a foundation.
Thank you to every firm that has trusted Milemarker to be that foundation.
Milemarker on the Road
Catch my team on the road at the following events or cities:
London — June 10-14
New York — June 17-18
Omaha, NE — June 21-24
Kansas City - June 24
Madison, WI — June 27-28
If you would like to arrange a meeting time, please reply to this email, and we’ll schedule something on the calendar.
Jud Mackrill
