Conference Report

We’re in the final hours of another good quarter. I’ll send out my Quarterly Update next week but I can’t help starting this post out with some appreciation for how resilient the markets have been.

In just the past three months we’ve had tariff news, mixed economic messages, acts of domestic terrorism, whacky headlines, and now a potential shutdown of the federal government (at least as I type). The major indexes have risen through it all, with the S&P 500 up around 8% this quarter. Foreign stocks are up nearly 5% and bonds are up almost 2%. It’s amazing how investors (collectively) can look past these issues, but that’s the public markets for you. I find this collective rationality comforting in an otherwise crazy time.

Okay, this morning I’d like to share some inside baseball after attending an industry conference in New Orleans last week. The conference had less to do with market predictions and more to do with the planning profession itself – where we’re headed with tech innovations, how to serve clients better, and so forth. This is different from my typical post but maybe it helps you understand what professional planners are talking about.

First I’ll say that New Orleans is an interesting town. I had never been before so I spent time on several occasions walking throughout the French Quarter. It was a good way to process conference sessions while getting my steps in each day. I’m not much of a drinker but I still traversed the length of Bourbon Street several times as I crisscrossed the Vieux Carré – wow, it certainly lived up to its reputation! Conferences tend to be in places like Denver, Phoenix, or San Diego, so being in NOLA added an interesting twist. Beyond the craziness of Bourbon Street, there was plenty of architectural beauty and centuries of history to soak up. Unfortunately there wasn’t time for an organized tour. Maybe next time.

The conference, known as the Insider’s Forum, was hosted by a long-time industry journalist and publisher of Inside Information. This has nothing to do with insider trading or other nefarious market conduct. Instead, for decades the newsletter and associated conferences have covered the evolution of the planning profession and the firms and service providers moving it forward.

As you’d probably imagine, the rise of artificial intelligence permeated just about every conference session. There was worry and concern, but otherwise the sentiment around AI was positive. The number of planners who are trying to leverage (or at least learn more about) AI rose substantially from last year’s conference, with maybe 90+% now in that camp.

The primary use of AI currently is as a notetaker, which is considered the simplest way to integrate it into our back offices. There were two AI notetaker vendors at the conference and the idea is that they are linked to our phone system and Zoom (or other video conferencing app) and transcribe conversations. One company stores the video and audio while the other only transcribes and autodeletes the original. Each service can then do all sorts of things with the data, like linking the notes to a client’s file, creating summaries and follow-up tasks. I’ve seen both companies at another conference earlier this year and the feature sets have expanded dramatically since – that’s how fast the tech is improving.

I’m waiting and watching services like these because the regulatory, security, and quality issues are in flux. Early adopters at the conference spoke of transcription errors and other issues, although not as many as you might imagine. I may end up adding this in the months ahead but only when I feel confident that data security is rock solid.

Other AI use cases centered around client experience. For example, some firms are now (or planning on) using AI to write blog posts and newsletters and even respond to client emails. Apparently this is pretty basic in terms of AI capability, but the aforementioned security and quality control issues still have to be addressed.

There was much discussion about the importance of understanding prompts to get accurate information from AI platforms. We’ve all heard stories about how ChatGPT, etc, can hallucinate answers or simply be inaccurate. This is often due to the end user misunderstanding how to guide the tool through its “thought” process. We also need to be specific about where to find our information versus telling the AI engine to search the whole web. Otherwise, it’s garbage in and garbage out, and it can be impossible to tell what’s garbage if you don’t already understand the context.

Apparently, in the short-term (some now and others over the next year or so) we’ll see more industry-specific AI versions. Your information could reside in a “data lake” that reaches across platforms to be accessed by AI agents (“Agentic AI”, like a digital employee), presumably provided by third-party industry-specific apps. Essentially, one information request could search multiple data providers simultaneously and make back-office tasks much faster.

There was lots of discussion around trust. Data governance and who’s ultimately responsible for it is obviously critical. Various panelists and presenters suggested that trust will come with time and understanding. It was suggested that everyone learn more about these technologies, at least in general, because they’re here to stay and the growth rate is so rapid that many of us are being left behind, we just don’t know it yet.

We also discussed job security. Our collective opinion may be biased but the thinking is that human experts will become more valuable as we rely more on technology. If true, this bodes well for financial planners who can leverage these changes in a prudent and secure way. However, the more basic customer service tasks will be done by AI in the very near future – the agentic IA already mentioned. Traditional client service roles would obviously be impacted by this.

Other discussions included:

Integrating crypto currencies into our firms – pros and cons, regulatory issues, etc – “be very cautious” was the main takeaway.

AI will assist in determining long-term care coverage and creating cost-effective estate planning documents. An interesting company, Waterlily, recently came to market and was at the conference. More to come on this in a future post.

Big custodians like Schwab (and new entrants like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo) want to increase their profit margins by asking us to offer banking products to our clients.

We discussed cybersecurity and how current threats are often fancy versions of old threats, such as getting us to click links in phishing emails. Fraudsters are using AI to impersonate emails, phone calls, even adding in human tells like throat clearing to fool people. I’m considering keeping track of unique verbal code words that we’d verify prior to starting any new request.

Beyond that, I kept coming back to one thought throughout the conference: It’s good to be small. There’s so much change happening that it’s good to be nimble and unconstrained by bureaucracy and outside interests. The best technology, consulting, and security measures alluded to above are available to me, even as a small firm.

Another thought is that I’m definitely mid-career, although I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. Technology will keep improving and change can be scary, but I’ll keep adapting and improving along with it. We all will. That’s empowering as I look ahead to a long career.

Otherwise, please know that I won’t use third party AI services until I feel confident about the security of your information. And I won’t use AI to write these posts, even if it has better grammar.

Have questions? Ask us. We can help.