Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Synergize. I'm Bill Koppel, Director of Client Growth at Trey PMR by Robinhood. And I'm Ryan Neal, editor Editorial Manager at Trade Pumar by Robinhood. And welcome to our... Synergy Summer Series. We're taping these.
Speaker: from the conference floor at Synergy 26 in Washington, D .C. That's right, Ryan. We're live here in Washington, D .C. 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.
Speaker: Welcome back to the Synergize podcast. We're coming to you from the conference floor at Synergy 26 here in Washington, D .C. And we've got a special guest here at the podcast booth, Abhishek Bhattapuriya. He is the vice president of product management at Robinhood. He's handling all things tech, and he had a session today laying out all of the innovations that we're presenting here at the conference. So, Abhishek, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me.
Speaker: One of the comments you made which I thought was amazing was You were... You express to the audience the sense that Wow, your world is really complicated. You've got all these FinTechs all tied together. It's clunky. It's not easy to navigate. It's expensive. You bring a very different perspective to that whole conversation. Share with our listeners a little bit ah as to what your vision is for how we are going to change that dynamic.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I think... No. I think where it started was, I think someone on the team showed me this slide or this map. of like all the different services or vendors that advisors use. I know the map. Yeah, yeah. We won't say his name. We won't say his name. We know the map. You know the map. know it's It's crazy.
Speaker: ah like I can't even imagine having to tap through that many systems and having to use that many systems. And then when we look at the Robinhood app for retail, you know and we talk to those customers, the number one thing that they say is like, I just want everything in one place. I just want to...
Speaker: I just want to have everything in one place. I want it to be seamlessly connected. I don't think advisors are... that different. Like... they would love it if they could run their entire business.
Speaker: in one platform that did everything for them. they didn't have to worry about. tabbing over. Everything just kind of worked. And I think it's going to take some time to build.
Speaker: But that's like what we should aspire to, right? We shouldn't aspire to... Every time I want something new, I'm going out and doing another. ah RFP for like another five vendors and then figuring out what solution to buy and how to connect them and and then i'm like figuring out how to connect them that's that's awful Yeah, just not a good use of advisor's time, right? Not a good use of their time. probably not their expertise.
Speaker: ah Probably not what they should be spending time on. They should be spending time with their clients. which ro Right. So I know we our our time with you here is limited. You're a busy man. So I'd love to talk about Robinhood Cortex for Advisors. You've been working on the Cortex initiative yeah internally at Robinhood as well as some of our other AI initiatives. So yeah ah where is this product different and how do you think Advisors can be using AI in their in their work?
Speaker: Yeah, I think my the way I would think about it is... It is a way to augment. your your own office or your own team. I think one thing ah people are really talking about in tech companies,
Speaker: is like with AI, we might see the first single man. sort of single woman. billion dollar company. or the single person unicorn because they're just doing everything with ah these AI tools. and i i think the same conversation could be happening with advisors like why can't a small team of advisors.
Speaker: scale a business to billions of AUM or multiple tens of billions of AUM. with a reasonably small team. the reason why they need such huge teams.
Speaker: is in part because they have to use like 50 different things to piece everything together. So if you think about AI as a way to augment yourself to make yourself better at your job. and to augment your team.
Speaker: you can think about growing your business. without needing to add a bunch of operational overhead. And then... you know, you can just run a better business with it. so It's not really there to like...
Speaker: replace anyone. it's It's really a powerful tool to augment you. right You know what's unique about having you in the role you are at Robinhood is you are a customer.
Speaker: as well. as a thought leader in terms of shaping what we do at Robin Hood, not only for our clients, now we have an opportunity to do that. with advisors as a client. Yeah. Talk to our listeners about what you would expect from an advisor in terms of that ease of access and consolidation of information. Yeah.
Speaker: I think when... ah I think about what I look for. in an advisor. I think it's a few things. I think one is like... Are you getting me stuff that I don't have access to on my own?
Speaker: And, you know, Robin Hood. on the retail business aspires to do that but like I want my advisor. to get me stuff that I couldn't get by myself. So I want them to be well connected. I want them to get access to cool products.
Speaker: um now that Trade PMR is approved for. ipo access i want them to get me access to cool ipos so um that i that i maybe want to invest in so one thing i think about is can my advisor get me stuff that I otherwise couldn't get.
Speaker: ah The second thing is like, Or they... proactively providing me guidance and advice and finding opportunities for me. Uh... When? they can sense that I need something. you know It's not just every time they're waiting for my email yeah or they're waiting for me to do something.
Speaker: And the final thing is, like for me, I want all my money in one place. like I might want to self -direct some of my money. I may want to like manage some of my own investments and then I might want an advisor for the rest of my investments. I don't want that money on... three different apps or three different platforms. I want it all in the same place.
Speaker: Really easy to move it around. so Ah. That's kind of what I look for in an advisor And and then ultimately it's like, do I trust the person? Do they have good judgment?
Speaker: So. That's ultimately what I'm paying them for. That's right. and that's ah And that's really been a hallmark of what you have created at Robinhood from the app standpoint, the yeah efficacy of the app, the ease of it.
Speaker: What it can do for the client has created this enormous amount of trust. yeah You see that continuing to build and grow as we... introduce this robert re advisor network capability i'm excited for the advisor network i think it's gonna be really cool yeah well one thing we do on the podcast to wrap up is uh leave our listeners with like a one piece of actionable information so uh For those that couldn't make it today, i couldn't see your panel or your session, what do you want them to know? What did they miss?
Speaker: I think the sleeper of the of the set of announcements was probably just the better margin rates yeah and the better portfolio lending rates. you know, I think ultimately what we've learned at Robin Hood over all these years is like great financial products.
Speaker: means two things. best economics and best pricing and best experience. End. you know, when we lowered our retail margin rates. to bottom of the industry.
Speaker: the margin book just grew substantially. and people deepen their relationship with us and I think advisors are gonna see the same thing, so. I think that's probably the sleeper. Sleeper hit. Great.
Speaker: well i'm saying thanks for stopping my yeah podcast you appreciate yeah yeah thank you
Speaker: We're back from the Synergy 26 conference floor here in Washington, D .C. ah You're listening to the Synergize podcast, and we have a special guest with a new title. Head of REA Strategy here at Trade PMR by Robinhood. Kate Mapstone. Kate, thanks for joining us on the podcast. Thanks for having me here.
Speaker: So Kate had a session earlier today announcing some ah new innovations and products coming from Trade PMR by Robinhood. Before we get into that, Kate, you have a fascinating background, a career in finance, and a new role, right? This is a new role at Trade PMR, head of REA strategy that we haven't had before. So can you tell our listeners a little bit about ah your background and this new role with us? Yeah, I would love to.
Speaker: um So I started my career at Goldman Sachs as an engineer supporting the treasury team there. um After a while, I was like, oh I want to get more into the finance side, at which point I did a master's in finance. um And at the end of that, I went to Google to work on their treasury team, but from the business side, working on analytics, kind of like a data science role, um before moving over to Robinhood to build out the treasury team there. Yeah.
Speaker: and so when Robinhood was small Treasury jumped into lots of different areas, helped build products. after IPO and Extraordinary Robinhood became a more of a corporate function. I moved on to work for Steve Clark. Um...
Speaker: looking at different businesses within the brokerage and helping accelerate growth.
Speaker: which has led to this role of Head of RA Strategy, where I'm really here to lead the product and engineering teams and be that bridge between Robinhood and Trade PMR. um My background through engineering, some operational roles, and product growth at Robinhood gives me this kind of unique combination to talk to both the advisory side, the operations side at Robinhood, and engineering to make sure we can build the best products for the advisors. Yeah, so you we did you did finance. technology and now FinTech. Exactly. hu right So, you know, with that kind of background and particularly with the opportunities we're just talking about here at Synergy26 and the opportunity as it relates to serving the next generation of investors. and advisors.
Speaker: Kate, from where you sit in your new role, how do you see all of these things coming together? What are some of the... products and services you talked about today on on your panel. A couple of things that we talked about today was fed to bring better economics. to the advisors, something we've done at Robin Hood from the start. ah specifically on the the margin rates and the securities like that. Magnus. loans are rates, bringing those down similar to how we did on the retail side. So that's like the first layer.
Speaker: um The second one is growth incentives for the RAs themselves. Another thing we piloted at Robin Hood. for the retail customer and now figuring out how to.
Speaker: bring this to advisors to give them the best level of growth and then finally it's bringing the design and the products. that Robin Hood actually offers. um to to the advice of space where they've been left behind historically those things we announced today like IPL. Um...
Speaker: 24 -hour trading may come in the future when we have Robin Hood custody. There's so much we can bring from Robin Hood to the advisor to give them a differentiated. product. for them to give to their clients. Really excited to be able to bring these two worlds together. Right. So when we're talking about all this new tech and investment products and all these new things, what do you see out there that you think can really help advisors sort of cut through the complexity and and and and do their jobs better?
Speaker: Well, there's obviously AI. We announced today Robinhood Cortex for advisors. And so that is helping them to both be more operationally efficient and also cut through some of the complexity, especially as we launch more products.
Speaker: people's lives get more complex. um Using technology to simplify it is
Speaker: That's what Robinhood's been doing for the past 10 years with financial products for retail customers, and I think we can do the same on the advisory side. One of the things that we've been talking about here at Synergy, Kate, you've been at the center of this conversation for a while now, is the misconception that the world is binary when it comes to investing. Those that only do it for themselves and those that only have advice. provided by an advisor. What we're seeing emerge is this new generation of investors.
Speaker: which is beginning to bring the two together. And so one of the things that we've discovered at Robin Hood is that we have clients that have expressed an interest in getting some advice.
Speaker: You've been uniquely involved in delivering this new capability. Robin Hood Advisor Network. Share with our listeners a little bit about your perspective on how that is going to really... help change the trajectory, ah yeah not only of Robinhood, but also how we serve investors in the next generation.
Speaker: Yeah, so the advisor network is a very exciting um opportunity which will bring in leads to advisors but also out bringing some of the technology behind Robinhood such as easier account opening, allowing people to see their portfolios within an app on their phone.
Speaker: um in that beautiful Robinhood design. It does look great. It looks great. Yeah, and and even the meeting booking, really just using Robinhood's tech to round out this experience. So bringing them advice in a way that's native.
Speaker: to the Robinhood customer versus forcing them through the entire process that the industry has supported for so long. and that's exactly how we're thinking about it and and really trying to cut out layers of interaction that may may not be needed because we believe our clients want efficiency in getting their advice and so we're trying to deliver it in that way but we will learn as we launch.
Speaker: Right. That was something you mentioned on stage, right, is both at this conference and going forward, listening to advisors, learning from advisors, and using that feedback to sort of ah guide the roadmap ahead. Exactly. um At Robin Hood we iterate a lot. You know, we launch and we learn and then we keep learning and eventually we'll...
Speaker: have a product that people love. and then we keep have to change it to make sure they continue to love it so that's what will be happening with the advisor network and the other products too So, you know in in some senses, you know, The success of Robin Hood has been built around...
Speaker: of bringing the client into the conversation, helping us craft better solutions for them. Now we're bringing advisors into the conversation with with the Robin Hood Advisor Network.
Speaker: Um... Talk to us a little bit about what we hope to learn as we go forward working closely with the advisors that we are recommending or introducing, I should say, Robinhood clients to them as potential clients for the advisor.
Speaker: we We want to learn how the advisors are working with the clients. We give them what they find. useful, not useful information to come from the Rabin Hadath, how we can support them through data to allow them to provide a better service to the end client and also products that they might want that they may not be able to offer.
Speaker: either anywhere or um at 3PMR so we can prioritise building this. Great! Well, Kate, we're going to wrap up here. One thing we like to do on the podcast is leave our listeners with like a piece of actionable advice, something they can take with them. So for those that couldn't make the conference this year, what's like one thing you'd like our listeners to to take back with them?
Speaker: It would be this. um the theme of learning and iterating as you. And even for the advisors, that's probably different client relationships. At Robinhood, we've seen that through products. But I think that's really part of the magic of Robinhood and how we've seen so oh much growth is we're we're not stuck in our ways and we just keep learning and changing as we go.
Speaker: That's great. Thank you, Kate. yeah Thanks for joining the podcast.
Speaker: If you want to join the conversation or connect with us, please visit us at synergizepodcast dot com
Speaker: 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. 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. 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.
Speaker: Trade PMR provides brokerage and account services to registered investment advisors. Custodial services provided by First Clearing. 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 and Company. Copyright 2026. Trade PMR, Inc. For a transcript of this episode with sources visit synergize podcastcast dot
