Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Synergy25 Live Ep. 5: Robb Baldwin Explores the Future of Financial Advice
30 Plays24 days ago
With AI becoming more integrated and widely available to investors, some advisors may wonder if their role is changing, or even threatened. With 40 years in the financial services industry, Robb Baldwin, Founder and CEO of TradePMR, shares his unique perspective on how the role of the advisor – and the expectations clients have for them – have evolved.
In this episode, Bill Coppel, Director of Client Growth at TradePMR, and Ryan Neal, Senior Editor at TradePMR, sit down with Robb to discuss the changing landscape of financial advice. Listen as they explore:
● What advisors need to be thinking about to prepare for the Great Wealth Transfer1.
● The impact AI is having on how financial advisors deliver value to clients.
● Why marketing and technology are more important to independent RIAs than ever before.
1The Cerulli Report: U.S. High Net Worth and Ultra-High Net Worth Markets 2024. Cerulli Associates, 2024.
If you want to join the conversation or connect with us, please visit us at synergizepodcast.com. This content is provided for general information purposes only. The views expressed by non-affiliated guest speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TradePMR or its affiliates. TradePMR and its affiliates do not endorse any guest speakers or their companies and therefore give no assurances as to the quality of their products and services. This channel is not monitored by TradePMR. TradePMR does not provide investment advice, tax advice or legal advice. TradePMR is a member of FINRA and SIPC. TradePMR, Inc. is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission {SEC) and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB). TradePMR provides brokerage and account services to registered investment advisors. Custodial services provided by First Clearing. Clearing is a trade name used by Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC, Member SIPC, a registered broker dealer and non-bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company. Copyright 2025. TradePMR, Inc. For a transcript of this episode with sources, visit synergizepodcast.com.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Synergize Podcast Live
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi, I'm Bill Capelle, Chief Client Growth Officer at TradePMR, a Robinhood company. And I'm Ryan Neal, Senior Editor at TradePMR slash Robinhood. And welcome to the Synergize Podcast live.
00:00:18
Speaker
Here we are at the JW Marriott in Tampa, Florida for TradePMR's annual conference, Synergy 25.
Challenges Facing RIAs in Finance
00:00:26
Speaker
And we had a chance to sit down with Rob Baldwin, founder of TradePMR, which was recently acquired by Robinhood Markets.
00:00:33
Speaker
So earlier this week, Rob kicked off the conference with a candid call to action keynote for RIAs who are navigating a rapidly changing industry. And we're excited to be able to share some of those insights with you here on the Synergize podcast.
00:00:46
Speaker
So let me share a little bit about Rob Baldwin for those of you don't know him. With more than four decades of experience, Rob is an industry veteran and a former RIA.
00:00:57
Speaker
He founded TradePMR to improve workflows and bring new levels of efficiency for RIAs, helping improve their margins, and more importantly, allowing them to spend more time with their clients and business development.
00:01:12
Speaker
To learn more about Rob's story, please visit our show notes. So let me kick things off with you, Rob, ah with this question.
Adapting to Client and Advisor Dynamics
00:01:20
Speaker
With $124 trillion in wealth transfer underway and the possibility that millennials will become the wealthiest generation on record, what do you see as the three most important factors for advisors and RIA firms to be thinking about, better yet embracing, to position themselves in a way that allows them to build enterprise value?
00:01:45
Speaker
Super, that's a great question, Bill. Number one, I think ah advisors need to, number one, think about how to attract this next generation. And when they attract that next generation, they're gonna do so in a scale ah like they've never been able to do before.
00:02:00
Speaker
We're gonna have so many new clients seeking advice in the next 10 years that we have to be able to scale and be able to handle larger amount of clients with our current amount of advisors.
00:02:11
Speaker
because the advisor base is shrinking while the client base is jumping ah leaps and bounds. So there's there's so much work we have to do to scale. um we We just got to focus on those things to make sure that in the future, we're able to handle a large amount of clients and we're able to consider continue to handle our current clients while bringing on these new clients that are desperately seeking seeking advice.
00:02:34
Speaker
So that the old ways are not necessarily going to support our ability to go forward. They're really not. There's no way to take the relationship model that we have today and scale that unless we want to double or triple the amount of advisors that we currently have in force.
00:02:49
Speaker
And I don't see that happening. So I think technology is going to play a much bigger role than most advisors are even planning for today. And I don't think they quite have grasped the the notion that that's the only way 10 years from now they're going to be able to compete nationally.
00:03:03
Speaker
Otherwise, there's going to be national firms that are going to really you outpace the entrepreneurs that we really want to succeed. Got it. So one thing we talk a lot about on the podcast, Rob, is new skills, advisors going beyond portfolio management in order to ah build new relationships and deeper relationships with their clients.
00:03:20
Speaker
ah You've been an r RAA in this industry, grew up in this in this space. What do you think about the skills that will be needed to compete tomorrow with the skills that were needed yesterday? Wow, well, the simple ah simple answer to that, Ryan, is marketing.
00:03:36
Speaker
The best RIAs today are great marketers. um Contrary to what everybody likes to think when they think of a financial advisor, financial advisor has to have some really core knowledge and they have to have an understanding of all the financial tools ah that are necessary to help a a client navigate any kind of situation.
00:03:54
Speaker
but they also have to have a great ability to market their firm and to market that firm to to to grow. The greatest advisors today, course, have the base skills of handling financial plans and navigating clients ah through all different situations, but they also are great marketers, and they've figured out how to attract clients in mass and in scale.
00:04:16
Speaker
Are you only saying that because I'm on your marketing team?
00:04:21
Speaker
not No, I'm not. But you you and I both know that you know you know in business, you've got to be growing all the time. You've got to be out there. You've got to have a reach. You've got to keep climbing the hill. And ah that's the only way to keep a business afloat because...
00:04:36
Speaker
There are times when advisors business goes down, every business has downturns, and you don't want to be trapped in that in that situation with a 50% reduction in in your revenue.
00:04:47
Speaker
um So you got to be able to continuously build and continuously grow doubt to overcome those situations.
Technology's Role in Financial Advising
00:04:54
Speaker
So, Rob, we talk a lot about technology, and it continues to be a game changer for wealth management.
00:05:00
Speaker
You know, clearly, it's changed the expectations of clients, all of us for that matter, across all age cohorts. And more and more, we see artificial intelligence even becoming a bigger issue. It's affecting how we learn, how we interact, how we solve problems.
00:05:17
Speaker
um So when I take a step back, it really begins to put pressure on the value of the human being. So much of what clients can get today, they can get on their own.
00:05:29
Speaker
So my question is this, is there still room for the traditional financial advisor? And what role will they play into the future? Oh, they're going to play a huge role. It's going to be much more in an emotional coaching role than I think historically we've done in the advisor world.
00:05:47
Speaker
The money management side, the financial planning side are going to be base common things that anyone can get through AI. um I think that's that's not going to be the role that that most advisors play 20 years from now.
00:05:58
Speaker
They're going to be more in the role of... holding the hand of people who are literally trying to make determination about things that AI can't make a determination of. You can't help AI determine whether you need long-term care or your parents need to to have Medicare supplements and things like that.
00:06:15
Speaker
those Those are things that it takes a human being to do. You can't help a widow determine ah whether she's going to outlive her her money. You know, that takes a a human to intercede and to and react and to help coach individuals through that, to help them budget, and to take those emotional situations out of play.
00:06:31
Speaker
You know, it's ever and in all scenes, we've always heard this, that If you're going to use a computer to try to coach you through down markets and bad scenarios where normally, so emotionally, you want to bail out, you want to you want to get out of the market, you want to avoid trouble, further further downside, and yet the market turns around and goes right back up and you're out,
00:06:52
Speaker
um You know, it's it's overcoming those emotional footholds that trap us sometimes to make bad decisions. And that's what an advisor is for. AI is never going to be able to do that. That's going to take a human holding their hand with confidence saying, we'll get through this.
00:07:06
Speaker
So it's that emotional intelligence and that ability to really understand how someone feels. And that's where that's what's going be important. Absolutely. Yes. Good deal. So you guys talked a little bit about you know the technology and the human or or the human.
00:07:21
Speaker
How about coming together? How is that conversions of the the personalized human advice and the technology, how is that gonna change the the the the next generation of of wealth management?
00:07:33
Speaker
I think it's going to be a huge factor, Ryan. But to be honest with you, I don't think that solution has been created yet. And I think that hybrid scenario is what's going to lead us in the next generation from a custodial standpoint.
00:07:47
Speaker
And I think that's where we're going to shine. And what we do is creating the technology that does allow advisors to be ah provide the human element necessary to a client, but also puts out there the AI, puts out there the forward-thinking technology aspects that are available today for our end clients to be able to utilize, but also providing that human advice as well.
00:08:09
Speaker
I don't think that technology has quite been created yet, but it's something that we're dreaming about right now and what we're trying to do at Trey P. Moore Robinhood. Great. So let me talk a little bit about the future for a moment, Rob. You know, you've been in this business a long time.
00:08:23
Speaker
You've built a very successful business in Trade PMR. Prior to that, you were successful as an advisor when you started your ah RIA. If you were going to start over again today and build a firm for the future with everything you've learned,
00:08:39
Speaker
What I want to do is explore with you what that would look like. And I'm going to do it with three basic questions. Okay? So, you know, the first one is something we talked about a little earlier in the conversation, but clearly probably one of the most fundamental keys to the success of any new business, which are the people, the human capital.
00:08:59
Speaker
Starting today, two things. What would you look for in someone who you wanted to bring on as an advisor and where would you go to find them? That's the first question. I'll come back with the other two.
00:09:13
Speaker
Truthfully, it it goes back to what we just talked about earlier. I would find a brilliant marketing person and I would find a technologist who was very adept at i AI and how to utilize some of those services.
00:09:27
Speaker
I think those are going to be the two key components going forward. You're going to have to blend those two together. And, you know, i and what would I do differently than I did back in my advisor days? I focused on trying to be an expert at what I did, an expert at money management. I studied technical analysis.
00:09:42
Speaker
I studied fundamentals and of ah companies. I ordered prospectuses at any one day. I'd have a thousand prospectuses inside my office from various companies that I would go through.
00:09:54
Speaker
Waste of time. In the future, that's never going to be necessary. You're going to have AI be able to do all of that work in four seconds or less. Right. While we were spending hours and weekends and days doing that work, thinking that's what made us good advisors.
00:10:09
Speaker
But the truth of the matter is marketing and and and and and AI technologists are going to lead the way in the future. Got it. Second part of that question. Obviously,
00:10:21
Speaker
You've been involved with technology a lot. A fundamental ah core value of Trade PMR is its dedication to Fusion, its platform, its technology platform that allows RIAs to do their business.
00:10:33
Speaker
Today, knowing what you know based on what you've learned, how would you approach technology going forward?
Innovation in Financial Services
00:10:40
Speaker
um Every day is a new day when it comes to how we think about technology and the things that are introduced to us and how we feel can we can apply it.
00:10:50
Speaker
I think we are starting from a clean slate in so many ways in what we can think about the future and what the needs are of the end client and how we can develop technology.
00:11:02
Speaker
ah You know, the the world is just is so... in flux as far as how to put those things into play right now. But I think that's really the question in the back room of every firm that is trying to be successful is what can we do? What can we build? what Where is that advisor going to be you know three years from or three years from now? Where's that incline expect us to be three years from now?
00:11:26
Speaker
As Gray and Gretzky said, you know you gotta skate to where the pluck it puck is, and that's really what we have to do right now in our business. We gotta look ahead and figure out where does the end client want us to be, and what are the services they want to have delivered to them three, five, or 10 years from now?
00:11:44
Speaker
Well, you know, that's a great point. and There was an interesting article today in the journal ah around the challenges that Apple is facing right now with the various tariffs and some of the regulatory challenges they're facing globally.
00:11:58
Speaker
And what's unique is that ah the founder of OpenAI, i Sam Altman, thank you. I had a senior moment. My apologies. It's all good.
00:12:09
Speaker
You know, he he said recently, he goes, the the approach here is not think conventionally. They believe that there'll be a new device that does...
00:12:21
Speaker
it It doesn't even require a screen. It doesn't require a screen. And the point being is that, you know, a lot of times when it comes to technology, we keep trying to create more. And I guess the answer you're saying is, you know, there's plenty out there. Figure out what you want to deliver as a service and then build a tech stack that's going to support that. Yeah, there's a ton of things out there, but there's a ton of things unperfected.
00:12:48
Speaker
And I think as these things get perfected, we will have already started to figure out how they can intertwine and how they can link together to help us build next generation technology.
00:12:58
Speaker
And I think that's true across the board, not just in financial services, ah but across the board. So really that's that's the vision that I think we all have to have. We have to have a ah different lens on whenever we look at all these things things that the this technology can do and and and figure out ways that we can integrate it within our systems to enhance not just the advisor's experience, but the end client's experience.
Focusing on Client Growth Over Revenue
00:13:20
Speaker
Okay, here's the third and final part of that question. 25 years from now, right? What is the legacy that this new firm you're starting is going to be leaving behind?
00:13:32
Speaker
Big question there, big question. That is a huge question to think 25 years away. and to think what that legacy would be. But you know the end goal of every financial firm should be one thing, and that is to in betterment the end client financially and and in life overall.
00:13:51
Speaker
And you know i think that should be the goal of every financial advisor. It shouldn't be their revenue, shouldn't be their assets under management. It should be, did I, at the end of the day, have a client base that ended up in a much better place because I was involved and and i was their advisor.
00:14:08
Speaker
And if you can retire 25 years later and have that in your pocket and be able to go to sleep at night knowing you did a great job, there's no greater reward in our business. And now, I love that, Rob, because that really underscores the point you made earlier about the value of that human intermediary, the value of advice from a human.
00:14:29
Speaker
It's great stuff. Ryan. Well, Rob, we covered a lot of ground on this short little podcast, a lot of stuff. So I guess as we wrap up our conversation, what's one challenge that you would issue to any advisors that listen to this as they navigate this rapidly changing landscape?
00:14:46
Speaker
How would you address them? Very simple. You know, this is my tough part of of how I talk to advisors, but I'm very, very serious about it. It's time to get back and get focused and get to work.
00:14:57
Speaker
um Advisors growth rate is four or it right last year was 4.3%. That is horrid. And if you're as big of an advocate for the financial fiduciary space as I am,
00:15:09
Speaker
that that That can't be. We have the best model for the end consumer, bar none, and yet the wire houses are beating us at gaining new assets. It's time to get back to work. Advisors have a really bad habit of getting in the RA space, getting into independence and coasting, and not going to work, and not trying to double and triple their business, and not trying to better their their practice.
00:15:32
Speaker
They did it when they were... wire house reps because they usually had a manager overseeing them and over their shoulder. right But they don't do it when they get in become independent. And that's something we've got to get back to doing.
00:15:43
Speaker
If we want to have great advice going forward and we truly want to change the landscape of how people receive and get advice from a fiduciary standpoint, we've got to get to work. If we're the fiduciaries, we can't be fiduciaries fiduciaries that are not working at 100%.
00:16:03
Speaker
Great. Well, that's a great answer. And Rob, thanks again for for joining us here on the podcast, sharing your insights with our listeners. Thank you so much for taking time. Glad to be here, Ryan. And for everybody, I hope you enjoyed today's conversation.
00:16:15
Speaker
If you like what you heard, please take a minute to like, subscribe, share, all of that good stuff. Click the buttons. You know which ones I'm talking about. Follow us on social media. All of it helps get our podcasts out there.
00:16:27
Speaker
And thank you for listening. I'd like to offer my thanks as well to Rob and to our listeners, please watch for our next episode where we'll bring you more insights and actionable ideas to help you grow your business. And remember, the challenge is yours to capitalize on what the future holds ahead.
00:16:44
Speaker
This special episode of the Synergize podcast was sponsored by... Built for efficiency, designed for opportunity, AdviseOn is a transformative all-in-one platform that helps simplify advisor tech and modernizes the way you connect with clients.
00:17:00
Speaker
With a single source architecture, our unified platform is designed to bring portfolio management, reporting, billing, CRM, client portal, and more into one seamless experience.
00:17:11
Speaker
It's everything you need to help create a more personalized relationship with your clients and communicate more effectively without the chaos of disconnected tools. Discover more at Advizon.com.
00:17:22
Speaker
Trade PMR and Advizon are unaffiliated companies.
00:17:27
Speaker
Looking to grow your wealth management firm? Gladstone Group is a boutique investment bank that can help unlock the value you've built in your RIA with comprehensive investment banking, talent search, and valuation services all under one roof.
00:17:44
Speaker
With over 850 successful M&A transactions, valuations, consultations, and talent searches, we match great people with great companies and great companies with each other.
00:17:56
Speaker
So whether you're buying, selling, or building for the future, our expertise helps RIAs make informed decisions that work to maximize value. Discover why the most sophisticated firms choose Gladstone.
00:18:10
Speaker
Visit us at gstoneinc.com to start your journey. Since 1993, millions of investors have built their portfolios using tips from the Motley Fool LLC's online investment newsletters.
00:18:23
Speaker
As a sister company, Motley Fool Asset Management started with a simple question. How could we put the distinctive foolish investment approach to work for even more investors? answer ETFs built around the highest conviction stock picks from professional foolish analysts.
00:18:40
Speaker
These ETFs seek to outperform the market and deliver compounding returns for your client portfolios. Explore all of our Foolish ETFs at fooletfs.com.
00:18:51
Speaker
Motley Fool Asset Management and Trade PMR are unaffiliated companies. All third parties mentioned and Trade PMR are unaffiliated companies. The third parties mentioned are available for purchase and or a subscription through Fusion.
00:19:07
Speaker
Please contact the provider for information about their terms and conditions as well as any fees that may apply.
00:19:20
Speaker
If you want to join the conversation or connect with us, please visit us at synergizepodcast.com. This content is provided for general information purposes only. The views expressed by non-affiliated guest speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Trade PMR or its affiliates.
00:19:38
Speaker
Trade PMR and its affiliates do not endorse any guest speakers or their companies and therefore give no assurances as to the quality of their products and services. This channel is not monitored by Trade PMR. Trade PMR does not provide investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice.
00:19:54
Speaker
Trade PMR is a member of FINRA and SIPC. Trade PMR Inc. is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, MSRB, Trade PMR provides brokerage and account services to registered investment advisors. Custodial services provided by First Clearing.
00:20:12
Speaker
First Clearing is a trade name used by Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC. Member SIPC, a registered broker dealer and non-bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company. Copyright 2025, Trade PMR Inc. For a transcript of this episode with sources, visit synergizedpodcast.com.