Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Synergize. I'm Bill Cappell, Director of Client Growth at Trade PMR by Robinhood. And I'm Ryan Neal, Editorial Manager at Trade PMR by Robinhood. And welcome to our Synergy Summer Series. We're taping these from the conference floor at Synergy 26 in Washington, DC. That's right, Ryan. We're live here in Washington, DC.
Speaker: And all summer long, we're going to be sharing plenty of insights and actionable ideas that you can use to build your business. So let's get into the episode. And welcome back to the Synergize podcast. We're coming to you from the conference hall floor here at Synergy 26 in Washington, D.C. I'm flying solo. Bill Capelle, my co-host, is on assignment.
Speaker: But we're bringing in one of our local D.C. guys here. He is the senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary at Robinhood, Mr. Lucas Moskowitz. Lucas, thanks for for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker: So we have at Robinhood an impressive, to say the least, lineup of of a regulator folks and and lawyers everything. And your career, I'm just going to read it off here, you worked at a major big law firm, went to the scc worked on Capitol Hill, and now you've rejoined your old boss, Mr. Dan Gallagher, who also came on the podcast with us at Robinhood. So I'm just curious about, you know,
Speaker: Learning from your experience, what can you tell the the financial advice audience about what they need to know terms of the regulatory environment? So you mentioned I used to work for Dan, work for him now. I've had the privilege of working with some some great folks over the years, some great mentors, Dan being one of them, Jay Clayton, who was former SEC chairman, and and a number of others, too many to list, but you know you learn a lot from those folks about not only the how to practice law, but you know they're very pragmatic people, they're problem solvers, they're markets people, they understand how markets work, and I've tried to you know learn from that and bring that into these various roles you mentioned in government, yeah outside of government. I had you know the good fortune of spending a number of years on the Hill at the SEC and then you know of course in private practice and now at a very innovative company, Robinhood. and so you know There's a lot going on all the time. All the time. All the time. and and Now it's a a little bit more on the front foot, more innovation, more growth than there there was in
Speaker: in years past with the change of administration, which is very exciting. But of course, all of that brings with it regulatory and legal considerations, which are hard at work on every day. The regulators are, i think, you know very amenable to having these conversations now and and figuring out, hey, what's the path forward on all of these big issues? We're talking about crypto prediction markets, AI.
Speaker: And so again, very exciting time. There's lots happening on the regulatory front here yeah in DC. And and you know hopefully we'll start to see some some movement on on some big initiatives that want to get done soon. What can you tell us about how that career you've had has helped shape your perspective around you know guardrails that protect investors versus and and allowing that innovation and and and balancing those things. How has your perspective been shaped through your career? It's great question, and you you know the way you put it, it's balance, right? You have to yeah to balance having the right safeguards in place, but also innovating, giving customers more choice, more access. That's what this country is all about. That's what we're all about at Robinhood. And so you know I had the good fortune of seeing it on both sides. I sat in the enforcement division at the SEC or or you know working for Commissioner Dan working for the chairman and seeing you know some really good stuff and some really bad stuff.
Speaker: and so That gives you a real appreciation. there There are a lot of bad actors out there, and there always will be, and it's unfortunate the capital markets are inherently in some sense risky. and so You see that and and you got to carry that over when you come to ah into the private sector and you're trying to grow and innovate again, trying to provide access and choice.
Speaker: So how do you balance that? And that's what we do every day a Robinhood. And and it's ah it's not mutually exclusive by any stretch. Those are quite complementary goals. We can have the protections and guardrails in place both at the regulatory level and and the products we we you know offer at Robinhood, but also have them be groundbreaking products that get more people into the market, that save people money, that you know get people participating more. And so that is the foundation of actually what You know, the SEC's mission is, and our mission too, the SEC has a mission to protect investors, but it's also, part of that mission is fair and orderly and efficient markets and capital formation, just like ours, you know, to, you know, give customers access and choice, but have a safety first or a safety always approach to it. So with Trade BMR coming aboard, whole new world, right, of wealth advisors and with that comes new regulations, new things to consider. So I know talking from advisors from my days as a reporter that they're always watching the SEC, there's always moves going back and forth and what they have to keep up with. So what can you share them right now? What's on your mind? What do you think some of the biggest trends that are impacting advisors right now? Yeah, so it looks super exciting to have TradePMR on board with us. It's a massive need in the market across all kind of segments of the market is to have these various different offerings and different products and advisory is hugely important there. It's something that I, of course, spent many years on, in and out of government working on advisory type. and so it's very exciting. You're familiar with advisors. I'm familiar with yeah. Look, one of the biggest things now, and we have enough time to go through all of the different things that I'm sure advisors are focusing on and excited about and worried about, but AI is a huge one, right? And we've got, you know,
Speaker: A lot of different players in the AI space, you've got you know some that are regulated, some that are not regulated. the The kind of offerings in the financial space are starting to kind of, you know they're merging together for regulated platforms, unregulated platforms. And so, you know what's the future of of AI and in financial advice is,
Speaker: going to be, i think, a very, very interesting topic and and business opportunity you know over the next several years here. I'm not sure exactly how it's going to play out, yeah but you know I think there's a tremendous opportunity to kind of you know serve serve customers better with AI. I don't think we're ever going to lose the human element, and i don't think we should, but you know how do we provide even better products and services to customers using technology. That's kind of core to what we do, to what I think Trade PMR does too. So that's going to be a big opportunity. Cool, absolutely. So another thing that you've been ah ah talked about a lot in your career is modifying the accredited investor regulations. And we had a big announcement yesterday in our conference around bringing access, IPO access for advisors to our platform. Can you talk about this sort of changing environment for IPOs? I know our our Our compliance folks over here might get nervous. We'll keep it on the top level.
Speaker: um But what is that doing with changing the market, allowing more retail investors and financial advisors to participate in these markets? And and what sort of effect do you see that having? Yeah, so the back story here, right, is you have well back fewer public companies now than you had 20 years ago, significantly fewer. companies are staying private, they're staying private longer, and of course there's ah you know there are regulatory restrictions in place, the credit investor definition is the big one, that prevent the vast majority of retail customers from participating in the private markets where a lot of growth is happening. right That's just ah that's a fairness issue, that's an issue for the economy, that's an issue of course, for the end investor too. And so how do we, got back to your question about how do you balance yeah access and for innovation and protection, right? This is a key and really good example of that. How do we let more retail into the market, but continue to have the right guardrails around
Speaker: that participation so that people can do it as safely as possible. So we've been talking to regulators and policymakers about this consistently now for a while. It's really ramped up recently and and you know we're going in and and proposing a number of different solutions on how do we do this as safely as possible? Because it's a it's ah it's a big big gap in the market right now, and it's got to be fixed. And and we're doing it as well you know with market-driven solutions like Robin Adventures and things like that. But we also want to attack this from a regulatory standpoint and say, are our are our rules right now for the for the current age? Are they are they fair? they make sense with the way retail participates these days? And can we allow more access and participation, give people the opportunity to participate in these growth stories, you know, while having the right rules in place? Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker: Lucas, thank so much for joining us. I'm gonna move to wrap up and what we do on this podcast, we like to leave our audience with sort of an actionable piece of advice. they can take back home or if they're listening at home, take to their practice at work and put in place. I guess for you, maybe give it to what's one thing that you're gonna share on stage that you really want financial advisors to know and take home with them? Yeah, you know, I would say pay attention to what's happening here in Washington. Okay. It's become, you know, for better or worse, you know, maybe one of, if not the biggest financial capitals in the world right now because of the importance of the regulatory environment the government. Sure, sure. And so we'll talk a lot about
Speaker: some of these issues with Assistant Secretary Pettitte over at the Treasury. But there's a lot happening every day and it's developing really quickly. And if you don't pay attention to that stuff, you're really, yeah you're you're missing out on, you know, kind of where the future of all this is going because again,
Speaker: For better worse, DC plays a big role in the markets now. All right. Well, you hear it. Pay attention to DC. That sounds good. So, Lucas, thank you so much for taking time to join the podcast and go crush it up on the Synergy stage. We appreciate you being here. appreciate it. Thanks, man. Thanks.
