Earlier this week at Future Proof, Anthropic introduced Claude for Financial Advisors. I think it's a real moment, and I say that about very few announcements.

Of every major AI company, Anthropic has shown the most genuine interest in how advisors actually work. There's an empathy there for this business that stands out. Credit where it's due.

A group of early partners came along with it, bringing their data into Claude. That's how ecosystems start. Somebody has to go first.

But here's the thing I keep coming back to, and I'd be doing you a disservice if I skipped it.

Our industry has run on APIs for twenty years. I can count on one hand the firms I know that use them at enterprise grade. For everyone else, integrations have meant lukewarm execution. Things connect, sort of. Data moves, mostly. And every advisor I've met has quietly lowered their expectations about what the word integration even means.

Now think about what actually runs your firm. The bank. The broker-dealer. The fund administrator. The one legacy system nobody will rip out because it does its job better than anything else. The spreadsheet that holds the truth about your top twenty households.

None of that is showing up in anybody's connector list. Not this year, maybe not ever.

So when you connect a handful of platforms to Claude, what you get is genuinely useful, and it remains someone else's view of your business. It's the slice each vendor chose to expose, on their timeline, at the depth they decided was appropriate. Ask a question that crosses two of them and you're back to hoping the edges line up.

That's the part I want you thinking about.

The firms that win this next stretch will be the ones that own their own layer. Your data, in your control, complete, reconciled, and exposed through your own MCP. A layer that answers to you.

Because when you own that layer, the questions change. You stop asking what each system can tell you and start asking what's actually true. Every account, every household, every relationship, across custodians, across the brokerage side and the advisory side, back through history. One answer you can stand behind in front of a client.

And it compounds. Every system you bring in makes the whole thing smarter. Every question you answer gets cheaper to answer again. A connector can't do that for you. Infrastructure can, and this kind belongs to you.

Here's the other thing owning the layer buys you. Choice.

We love Claude at Milemarker. We also work with Gemini, with OpenAI, with Perplexity, with local open-source models running inside a firm's own walls, and yes, with Microsoft Copilot, which is admittedly more limited than its peers today. Your data layer should be indifferent to all of it.

Because the model you love this year may be your second choice next year. That's the nature of this moment. If your intelligence lives inside one vendor's product, their roadmap becomes your roadmap. If it lives in a layer you own, you plug in whatever wins and keep going.

This is what we've been building at Milemarker. A Snowflake-native data layer with 130+ integrations, so all of your data lands in one place that you own, clean and reconciled and complete. Our AI layer, Navigator, sits on top of it. When Claude talks to your firm, it's talking to everything you have, and when you want a different model in there tomorrow, you point it at the same foundation.

We built it this way because we believe the firm should own its data. Full stop. It's the position everything else at our company follows from.

So as you pick where to build the home for your firm's future, ask the question that matters most. Does this partner want me to own my data, or do they want to own it for me?

Everything else is a detail. That one decides the decade.

The tools have finally caught up to the ambition advisors have carried for years. Go take it.

Episode 162: This week on Next Mile, Kyle Van Pelt is joined by Brian Fernandez, President at Krilogy. Brian brings more than 20 years of experience working with complex family office needs and continues to serve clients as an advisor. As the firm’s integrator, he pairs that client perspective with a focus on operational excellence, helping translate its founder’s vision into execution.

Kyle and Brian explore how investing ahead of demand prepares an advisory firm for its next stage of growth. Brian explains how Krilogy uses EOS to create accountability, develops future partners through internal training, and reinforces culture as its team expands. They also discuss the ongoing responsibilities of building software, the importance of mastering tools before adding more, and the staffing demands behind family office services. Throughout the conversation, Brian considers how firms can expand their capabilities while remaining attentive to the people they serve.

In this episode:

(00:00) - Intro

(01:16) - Brian's money moment

(03:15) - Investing ahead of growth 

(04:59) - Building a culture of organic growth 

(08:05) - What makes a great integrator 

(13:18) - The meaning behind Krilogy's name and its core purpose

(16:27) - Developing the next generation of advisors

(19:28) - How Krilogy preserves its culture despite rapid growth

(21:08) - Building a platform for entrepreneurial advisors

(23:02) - Krilogy's current tech stack and how it's evolving 

(24:25) - Build vs buy: How Krilogy evaluates technology investment decisions 

(26:22) - What's next for Krilogy

(28:03) - Why customized advice is harder than scaling a manufactured product 

(29:07) - Brian's outlook about the future of the financial services industry

(33:44) - Brian's Milemarker Minute

We’re excited to share that Milemarker has been nominated for three 2026 Luminaries Awards, recognizing innovation across some of the most important areas of wealth management technology:

These nominations reflect what we’ve been focused on building at Milemarker: using better data infrastructure, AI, and technology to make wealth management more connected, efficient, and actionable.

We’re grateful to be recognized alongside companies pushing the industry forward—and even more excited about what’s ahead.

If you would like to arrange a meeting time, please reply to this email, and we’ll schedule something on the calendar.

Jud Mackrill