WealthTech Today

The post Ep. 114: October WealthTech News Roundup appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . Come on in, sit back, relax and enjoy episode 114 of the WealthTech Today podcast. I’m your host, Craig Iskowitz, the founder and CEO of Ezra Group Consulting. Over the past 16 years, we’ve worked with hundreds of FinTech vendors and enterprise wealth management firms to guide them towards makin...

The post Ep. 113: Building a Seamless Tech Stack with Jeff Haines, Thrivent Advisor Network appeared first on and was written by Elana Iskowitz . “In the independent RIA space, there’s a great opportunity to provide a community for advisors. I know a lot of advisors that go independent miss the community that goes along with being part of a larger organization. And I know there’s been a lot of pla...

The post Ep. 112: Focusing on the Voice of the Client with Julie Littlechild, Absolute Engagement appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “Maybe it’s just me, but I feel different at this moment than I did yesterday. Things change, the context changes. I think this has raised an interesting challenge for advisors, how do I gather data from my clients that is in the moment and can sup...

The post Ep. 111: September Wealthtech News Roundup appeared first on and was written by Elana Iskowitz . Come on in, sit back, relax and enjoy episode 111 of the WealthTech Today podcast. I’m your host, Craig Iskowitz, the founder and CEO of Ezra Group Consulting. Over the past 16 years, we’ve worked with hundreds of FinTech vendors and enterprise wealth management firms to guide them towards mak...

The post Ep. 110: How the Risk Ecosystem Helps Clients Invest Differently with Jeff Schwantz, Morningstar appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “At the end of the day, Morningstar is a data company and we’re a research company, and we expose that through software. Twenty years of history and academically validated research is really hard to replicate in the FinTech space. And part...

The post Ep. 109: Building A Globalized Data Strategy Delivered Locally with Sabrina Bailey, LSEG appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “If we think about the underpinning of our future growth strategy we’re specifically looking to accelerate growth by developing and delivering on a globalized strategy that’s delivered in a local way to meet client needs. What I mean by that specif...

The post Ep. 108: Why a Digital TAMP is the Best Way to Invest in Cryptocurrency with Dan Eyre appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “Just buying Bitcoin and Ethereum, for some clients and for some advisors, maybe it is good enough. But at the end of the day, you don’t want to be the one that’s picking the AOL or the Yahoo of this age. If you look at the the whole Dot Com era and a...

The post Ep. 107: August News Roundup appeared first on and was written by Elana Iskowitz . Come on in, sit back, relax and enjoy episode 107 of the WealthTech Today podcast. I’m your host, Craig Iskowitz, the founder and CEO of Ezra Group Consulting. Over the past 16 years, we’ve worked with hundreds of FinTech vendors and enterprise wealth management firms to guide them towards making better bus...

The post Ep. 106: Uncovering the Lifetime Costs of Healthcare with Bipin Agarwal, AiVante appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “Healthcare expenses is the leading cause of bankruptcy in this country. And 95% of the people in our survey do not have any idea how much they’re going to spend on healthcare. Our goal is to help financial advisory firms to bring this cause in front of th...

The post Ep. 105: Merging Health & Wealth with Robert Kirk, InterGen Data appeared first on and was written by Elana Iskowitz . “When we started InterGen Data, what we did was to say give us your client data and we’ll turn it around and send you back a list of life events, especially around critical illnesses and how likely they are to happen. Because people don’t plan for those types of things, t...

The post Ep. 104: July Wealthtech News Roundup appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . Thanks for joining me on the WealthTech Today podcast, I’m your host, Craig Iskowitz, Founder and CEO of Ezra Group. We help wealth managers, asset managers, and wealthtech vendors make better business and technology decisions. This podcast features interviews, news, and analysis on the trends and...

The post Ep. 103: How to Purchase and Manage Protective Investments with Biju Kulathakal & Jason Barsema, Halo Investing appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “The first thing that Biju and I wrote down before we even wrote our business plan is that we want to create a positive impact in the world before we worried about profits. And from that perspective, we think that the state o...

The post Ep. 102: The Rise of Alternate Marketplaces with Jason Broder, SIMON Markets appeared first on and was written by Elana Iskowitz . “Financial advisors are looking to differentiate their value to clients as we are on the precipice of the largest wealth transfer in history. I think the playbooks for the next 5, 10, 20 years in the financial advice business will most likely be different than...

The post Ep. 101: June WealthTech News Roundup appeared first on and was written by Elana Iskowitz . Thanks for joining me on the WealthTech Today podcast, I’m your host, Craig Iskowitz, Founder and CEO of Ezra Group. We help wealth managers, asset managers, and wealthtech vendors make better business and technology decisions. This podcast features interviews, news, and analysis on the trends and...

The post Ep. 100: The T3 Conference is a Wealthtech Startup Accelerator, with Joel Bruckenstein appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “One of our calling cards I think has always been that we try and showcase some of those firms that don’t get a lot of attention. I get calls from probably 30, 40, 50 of those firms. We don’t want them all at T3 because a lot of them, we just think,...

The post Ep. 99: Digitizing the Back Office of Wealth Management Firms with David Knoch, Docupace appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “When I say we digitized the back office of wealth management firms, the reality is we only digitized part of the back office of enterprise wealth management firms. So the question for me, having run Docupace for the past year, is do we change the...

The post Ep. 98 – Taking the Emotion Out of College Planning with Joe Messinger, CollegeAidPro appeared first on and was written by Elana Iskowitz . “There’s so much emotion wrapped up in this college buying decision, we’re saying can we help families shop smarter. You can be proactive instead of reactive using our predicted outcomes that provide about 90% accuracy for out of pocket costs, and we...

The post Ep. 97: When One Door Closes, Another Opens – May WealthTech News Roundup appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . Alexander Graham Bell made the famous announcement, “When one door closes, another opens.” While this may seem quaintly optimistic, many world-famous scientists and entrepreneurs who struggled through years or decades of failure have spoken about learning from th...

The post Ep. 96: Converting Tax Returns Into Actionable Insights for Advisors with Kevin Lozer, Holistiplan appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “How Holistiplan came about was we were looking for a way to automate tax planning a little more, to scale it so that as you grow as an [advisory] firm, and bring on more clients, you can support all of your existing clients without havin...

The post Ep. 95: Travel Gadget Geek-Out with Brian McLaughlin, Redtail Technology  appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine. It’s lethal.” – Paulo Coelho, author of ‘The Alchemist‘ This quote was written pre-pandemic, but it certainly fits.  We all created routines the past year or so while we’ve been stuck at home that we would love t...

The post Ep. 94: Building Invisible Digital Infrastructure with Tricia Rothschild appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “We think of ourselves as a technology company first, which you would think might be obvious, for somebody that’s providing digital infrastructure and back end pipes and plumbing, but I’ve observed that it is actually an area where there has been precious little i...

The post Ep. 93: Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together – April News Roundup appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle.” — Richard Dawkins, British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author This month, we cover six stories in wealth management technology related news.  Four of them are acquisitions.  This is not a new trend...

The post Ep. 92: Taming Your Company’s Technical Debt with Alex Sauickie, CircleBlack appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “The fact that we’re new technology and we have very low tech debt, our tech debt is measured in weeks not months or years, decades, in some cases with older companies, we think that’s an added advantage. With RBC BLACK, they’ve certainly taken advantage of th...

The post #ItzOnWealthTech Ep. 91: Creating a Gravitational Pull Towards Your RIA Platform with Jason Wenk, Altruist appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “The most compelling thing you can have when you go to market in any industry is simply providing immense value to your users. So the combination of people who are frustrated with their current solutions, so it’s not like we had t...

The post #ItzOnWealthTech Ep. 90: How Merrill Lynch Drives Digital Adoption with April Rudin appeared first on and was written by Craig Iskowitz . “I think that Merrill embraces that opportunity which has multiple entry points, Merrill Edge, Merrill One. They have something that they announced last year called the customer experience workstation. So in other words, they’re thinking about it from a...