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Synergy25 Live Ep. 7: Rich Cancro on using RIA Technology for Growth
24 Plays10 days ago
Growing your firm can often feel like you’re working against technology rather than alongside it. But reframing tech as a strategic enabler rather than just another expense can help unlock greater efficiency, deepen internal capabilities, and drive long-term, sustainable growth. In this episode, Bill Coppel, Director of Client Growth at TradePMR, and Ryan Neal, Senior Editor at TradePMR, sit down with Rich Cancro, Founder and CEO of AdvisorEngine, to unpack why he believes technology isn’t here to replace human expertise, it’s here to amplify it.
Listen as they explore:
● How to choose technology that aligns with your firm’s vision
● Why the most impactful growth may start from within
● The power of proactively selecting and practically applying the right tools
AdvisorEngine and TradePMR are unaffiliated companies.
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.
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Transcript
Introduction to Synergize Podcast
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.
Interview with Rich Cancro from Advisor Engine
00:00:18
Speaker
We're at the JW Marriott in Tampa for our Synergy 25 conference and had a chance to sit down with Rich Cancro of Advisor Engine, one of our premier marquee sponsors.
00:00:31
Speaker
Rich, we heard you speak on the stage. So thanks so much for joining us here in the podcast booth. It's a pleasure to be here. Love being here and the with the TradePiMarch Synergy community. The energy is fantastic.
00:00:43
Speaker
Matter of fact, that you can probably here in the background, um but really the the clients here really enjoy your service, your platform, your people. It's really a pleasure to
Aligning Technology with Firm Vision
00:00:51
Speaker
be here. We're glad to have you. And for those of you who do may not know Rich, he is the CEO and founder of Advisor Engine, a comprehensive wealth management platform.
00:01:01
Speaker
To learn more about Rich's story, please visit our show notes. So Rich, technology options are multiplying, client demands are changing, and the industry pressures are evolving.
00:01:12
Speaker
How can advisors get sharper about how they select the appropriate type of technology to really run their business? Well, it's a great question, Bill. And the first thing I would say is take a deep breath.
00:01:25
Speaker
Take a step back. and And the first thing is every decision I think a firm should make, a CEO and the principles the firm, is is it aligned with your vision? And always stay true to your vision. because vision should never change.
00:01:38
Speaker
The second part of that is you should have a plan every year. should probably have a three-year plan and a one-year plan.
Tech as a Growth Enabler
00:01:43
Speaker
What you're thinking about is that what fill within that plan. right So whether you're you're you're thinking about growth, whether you're thinking about a client success, ah scale, right more operational efficiency, whatever those things that are you're focused on. And by the way, it's very hard to focus on all three at once.
00:02:01
Speaker
So I would suggest pick one at a time, focus on it, and does the the partner you're thinking about working with or the tool or the service, the solution, whatever it may be, does that align to your vision and your plan for your you one year and your three year plan?
00:02:15
Speaker
That's great great advice because you know my experience has been people start with the technology and not with the vision. Ryan. So I want to pick one of those, as you said. I'm going to pick growth. So let's talk about growth.
00:02:27
Speaker
What should firms be thinking about technology-wise to help achieve their growth objectives? This is gonna sound a little yeah selfish here, but that's okay.
00:02:38
Speaker
um I think everyone should be thinking about technology as a growth enabler. And I think that any finance person that thinks of technology as a cost first is fundamentally looking at the wrong the wrong way.
00:02:50
Speaker
should be 180 from that and that should be seen as a driver of your growth, driver of your client service, driver of your scale.
Connecting with the Next Generation
00:02:58
Speaker
Nice, that's good to answer. So, you know, Rich, we've heard you stress the need for advisory firms to connect with the next generation of clients.
00:03:08
Speaker
What can they do better to make that happen? Well, first is I'm going to say take a step back and I'm, um you know, I do talk a lot about this in industry. I don't think most, and I mean the vast majority of advisors are doing a great job of connecting the next generation.
00:03:24
Speaker
And it first starts with their own practice. but within their own practice is probably their greatest growth engine. It's the children and the grandchildren of your clients. And I'll just go through a real story, a very recent one, but I can rattle off five of these in the past 10 years where a relative of mine passed away. i am the personal representative for their state.
00:03:46
Speaker
It is a million plus dollar state. And I know for a fact that money is not going to it's stay with that advisor because they have not made any effort to create a relationship with both the surviving spouse nor the children.
00:04:00
Speaker
And I see this constantly where I think our industry knows this mis money is transferring, but it it's it's already started. And I think fundamentally isn't about just you know knowing do you have a child or maybe shaking their hand, but making them your client.
00:04:16
Speaker
Once they you make them your client and they feel your service, they build trust in you.
Estate Sales and Real Estate Planning
00:04:21
Speaker
And now you're a set to get that that that inheritance, and that transfer of wealth. That makes complete sense. And you know, it's funny the way you said it. I think it's very appropriate.
00:04:31
Speaker
Start at home. Start with your own business. Start with the people that you already know and start to go vertically into those relationships to get to know that next generation. And I'll give it another real-life story about this, because I think it's so critical for advisors. My wife and I have been looking for apartments, a new home and in New York City in Manhattan.
00:04:51
Speaker
And literally, I would say eight, maybe nine out of 10, the places that we've looked at are a estate sales. wow Wow. It is unbelievable how many are estates. And you know i think that What we hear, which is also another thing, by the way, for advisors to help your clients plan, the time be selling your apartment is not at the estate.
00:05:11
Speaker
Because what's happening is the the every single one of these apartments, value is being hurt because it's literally the last step in the process of closing out the estate. And that's the worst time you want to be selling a property.
AI Note Takers in Practice Management
00:05:22
Speaker
So whatever strategy an advisor can think about to talk to their clients about this, to help preserve what's probably their most valuable asset, which is their real estate,
00:05:30
Speaker
Ideally, you'd have that planned out well before it becomes an estate sale. Yeah. And I think that could probably apply to a lot of things with advisor value, getting proactive rather than reactive, right?
00:05:41
Speaker
Getting in there and and and and establishing your value. But I want to shift a little bit to talking about one of what what I think is one of the best examples of using AI technology, and that's note takers. or I use it for transcribing interviews and summaries. I think it's so helpful. It's it's awesome.
00:05:58
Speaker
And I know the Advisor Engine, you guys have been integrating with some AI note takers. um You want to talk a little bit about that and maybe how advisors are are using some of that technology? Yeah, 100%. So we recently did survey with John O'Connell from ah the Oasis group. And what I asked John to do is, say hey, John, could you create a study and you and look at all the note the all the key note takers in wealth management and run them through the exact same script. Because that's the kind of cool thing about testing AI notetakers, right? You can literally run the same script and see how they do.
00:06:30
Speaker
um And we we looked at Joel Bruckenstein's T3 tech survey and kind of took the top six out there. And what we found of the six, and you can look at the research at ah John's website on Oasis Group,
00:06:42
Speaker
um is basically most of them, or really all of them, did a really nice job of transcribing the the meetings. Where they all need to do better at is sentiment analysis.
00:06:52
Speaker
So for example, somebody's saying, isn't that great? Could have followed the sentence of, oh, I have to retire two years later. So it's not picking up, it's picking up the words, but not necessarily the sentiment as well as it could. So like sarcasm and things like that, they could do a little better job.
00:07:08
Speaker
They're also, you know, they're starting to move in, go broader than note taking, right? And um let me pause there too. Like, so for the Advisor Engine CRM and other CRMs, you know they're integrating. So it's it's in our case, it's creating a ton of practice management efficiency because it's creating automatic workflows into our system to go to the right people and follow up on all the takeaways.
00:07:27
Speaker
But the other part of that is they're starting now to get into meeting prep.
Technology in Meeting Preparation
00:07:30
Speaker
So collectively, between meeting prep and note-taking and the downstream impact of automating the workflows, it's bringing a lot of time back into the advisor's life, which allows them to either better serve their clients, do more with their clients, or, of course, find new clients.
00:07:44
Speaker
Right, right. Hey, let let me follow up on that, because the meeting prep is an important component of this. And, you know, the old days was... you had to have an agenda. And the agenda really never changed from meeting to meeting.
00:07:57
Speaker
Talk a little bit about how this new technology is creating and ah ah sort of a meeting agenda, if you will, that is more relevant. Yeah, that's a great question, Bill.
00:08:09
Speaker
And I'd actually take it back to this transcription, then I'm gonna get to the meeting prep. The first part is the transcription would be, if you think about all of us humans, and my wife would confirm this to me, I can't multitask.
00:08:20
Speaker
I can either listen or I can talk. but me But me listening and taking notes, all of a sudden, my you know my typing or my handwriting, what I'm doing, goes way down. So now the fact, so now the takeaways that meeting, right, ah it is maybe lost or not as pristine as it could be.
00:08:36
Speaker
So note takers remove all that. And then the second part, which and and still we advisors today, we're not using AI note takers, maybe write down notes and give it to another person to put into ah into a system, right? So you can now another transcription label that may be missing information.
00:08:51
Speaker
So getting those those clear takeaways from those meetings, It's so important to actually do the meeting prep for the next time you meet with the client so you can talk about, hey, this is what we talked about, this is what we did together with you, and this is now where we're moving forward.
00:09:06
Speaker
So to me, it only starts with the prep of the actual meeting that you took last time, the notes, and then all the things that happened since then, and then a very organized way to go back
Integration with Trade PMR
00:09:15
Speaker
to the client. Great. That's good. That's good.
00:09:17
Speaker
So let me yeah change gears for a second and and and go down a slightly different path. You know, you recently announced an integration with Trade PMR. Can you talk us a little bit about what that means and how that will positively impact advisors that are using the Trade PMR platform?
00:09:33
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's very exciting. um you know you know I've known Rob and Monica for several years, known the team here for several years, really enjoy ah the community. you know So we as we've integrated over the past couple of years, you know we are announcing that, the formal integration while the conference here.
00:09:50
Speaker
But what it really means is i think it's an opportunity for us to work with both a like-minded culture of helping advisors grow and really scale and really putting the advisor first So that's so important to have that alignment.
00:10:05
Speaker
And then second, I think our combined capabilities, both from a service perspective and a technology perspective, I think elevates the experience an advisor can have and elevates but the advisor's experience with their client.
Enhancing Marketing with AI
00:10:16
Speaker
Got it. Great. Well, I'm going to move to wrap us up here. That's usually my job is to to end the podcast. What we like to do is give our listeners like an actual thing they can take home, listen to this, take that out of their practice and and enact it in their practice or enact it their firm.
00:10:31
Speaker
So for Rich, um how can advisory firms cut through some of that industry noise, focus their strategies and position themselves for growth? So um the first part, you know just going back a minute, and a few minutes ago, I do think so important to have that vision, stay true to your vision, not try to do too many things at once, right? So stay to your plan as well. yeah um But obviously the one main takeaway, and this um little story again, is I think most advisors can really up their game around marketing.
00:10:59
Speaker
So for example, I'm a high net worth investor. I live in Manhattan, not hard to find. i have a pretty big public persona, um but the only people connected with me so far is creative planning.
00:11:10
Speaker
and Fisher Investments. there No other RIA to my knowledge has ever reached out to me. I'm not asking anybody to do that now. I'm very happy with my my advisor who is an RIA, but I would say really take a step back and really think through how are you marketing. And certainly AI can sort of help there, um but really realize that while referrals are really important to your growth, moving forward, and I'd say it's already here,
00:11:34
Speaker
becoming really good at marketing, which is both science and art, is so important to the growth of the future your company.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:11:42
Speaker
Makes complete sense. Great. Well, thank you so much, Rich. Thank you for joining us here at Synergy at the Synergize podcast booth.
00:11:50
Speaker
It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks, Rich. Appreciate having you stop by. Oh, and we hope everyone enjoyed this conversation. If you like what you heard, just take um a quick second to like, subscribe, share, hit the the buttons, all that good stuff online.
00:12:05
Speaker
It helps the algorithm, helps get our podcast out there, and we appreciate of you. Thanks for listening and watch out for our next episode where we'll share more insight and ideas to help you grow your business.
00:12:16
Speaker
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Speaker
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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.
00:14:06
Speaker
Please contact the provider for information about their terms and conditions as well as any fees that may apply.
00:14:19
Speaker
If you want to join the conversation or connect with us, please visit us at synergizedpodcast.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.
00:14:37
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.
00:14:53
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.
00:15:11
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.