Summary - Ensombl on Tour: Growth Series 1

In the dynamic world of financial advice and wealth management, it can be easy to feel that each new conference or trade show has the same familiar format. Typically, attendees gather in a hotel ballroom, watch a series of presentations, network over coffee breaks, and then head back to the office with a binder of notes that might—or might not—translate into practical changes.

Yet occasionally, an event stands out from the crowd, offering fresh ideas, new energy, and a glimpse of a different future. The Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, California, is one such event. Dubbed “the world’s largest outdoor Wealth Management Festival,” it aims to combine the lively atmosphere of an outdoor fair or music festival with forward-thinking content on finance, technology, business development, and broader societal trends.

This article draws on insights from day one at the festival, highlighting key themes that emerged around professionalism, ethics, philanthropy, technology, and how financial advisors can prepare themselves for a rapidly evolving landscape. We will explore how these discussions inform best practices in financial advice, with a particular focus on the advisor’s duty to act ethically and professionally while seizing opportunities to deliver better outcomes for clients.

Setting the Stage: An Outdoor Conference with a New Vibe

Future Proof is now in its third year, having rapidly grown from a smaller gathering of under 1,000 participants to a crowd exceeding 4,000 in 2023. Held on the expansive concrete car parks and walkways along Huntington Beach, the festival atmosphere is distinctly casual: attendees swap business suits for shorts, T-shirts, and sunglasses. Booths and “activations” range from wealth-tech demonstrations to mini-stages featuring live conversations.

While the festival vibe may be relaxed, make no mistake: the focus remains squarely on significant developments in wealth management, FinTech, and professional practice. As day one’s sessions unfolded, several thematic threads emerged:

1. Philanthropy and new ways of giving
2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an indispensable assistant rather than a replacement
3. The future of the wealth management industry, particularly around growth, intergenerational wealth transfer, and scaling
4. FinTech demonstrations that challenge traditional notions of client data management, communication, and service models

Across these themes, questions of professionalism and ethics loomed large. How do we adopt advanced technologies while respecting client privacy? How can advisors incorporate charitable giving strategies ethically and effectively, without straying beyond regulatory boundaries? And how might we ensure that evolving business models serve clients’ best interests, rather than simply chasing profitability or efficiency?

Daffy and the Donor-Advised Fund Revolution

One of the early sessions featured Adam Nash, the founder of Daffy, an emerging platform designed to streamline charitable giving. In the United States, donor-advised funds (DAFs) allow individuals to set aside money for future charitable contributions and receive an immediate tax deduction. Unlike a direct donation, where the funds go straight to a chosen charity, a donor-advised fund holds the money until the donor decides exactly where they would like it distributed.

While the specifics of DAFs may not translate directly into every regulatory regime outside the U.S., the concept sparked significant interest from an ethics and professionalism perspective. Consider how philanthropic giving fits into holistic financial advice:

1. Encouraging a Value-Driven Approach
   • Integrating philanthropy into a client’s financial plan underscores that money can be a force for good. This aligns with the advisor’s role of helping clients fulfill broader personal or family objectives, not just accumulating wealth for its own sake.
   • From an ethical standpoint, encouraging strategic giving helps clients connect their wealth to their values.
2. Fostering Family Engagement
   • Daffy’s platform allows multiple family members or close associates to co-manage or discuss giving goals. This becomes a practical way to involve adult children or extended family in philanthropic decisions.
   • For advisors seeking to facilitate intergenerational conversations, a tool like Daffy could open up pathways for meaningful family engagement. Rather than talking abstractly about estate plans, you can help clients actively involve their children in charitable decision-making.
3. Transparency and Tax Efficiency
   • Donor-advised funds in the U.S. bring tax advantages, such as immediate deductions or potential capital gains minimization when assets are gifted. While every jurisdiction varies, the broader takeaway is this: robust philanthropic planning can incorporate charitable objectives, tax efficiency, and a legacy mindset.
   • For the ethical advisor, the transparency around how those funds will be used is essential. When recommending or even just informing clients about donor-advised funds, it is incumbent on advisors to ensure they do not misrepresent potential tax benefits or charitable outcomes. Thorough disclosures, in line with local regulations, uphold the highest professional standards.

AI in Wealth Management: A Supporting Role, Not a Replacement

One of the major themes underscoring day one was Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its rising impact on financial advice. A keynote from a senior executive at Google underscored several critical points:

1. Transformative Potential of AI
   • The panelists universally agreed that AI is poised to disrupt legacy platforms, including traditional CRMs (Customer Relationship Management systems). While CRM software has long been a cornerstone of advisor-client interactions, AI may soon enable systems that read unstructured data (like PDFs, videos, audio recordings) and unify it for immediate insights.
2. Ethics and Professional Oversight
   • Despite the promise of efficiency gains, there is a professional and ethical imperative to use AI thoughtfully. Advisors must ensure that any automated recommendation or data insight is validated and contextualized by human expertise.
   • Misuse of AI—such as blindly following AI-generated recommendations without proper due diligence—could harm clients and violate professional codes of conduct. Proper oversight and a human “editing” role remain essential.
3. Client Experience vs. Advisor Efficiency
   • Interestingly, some speakers conflated “client experience” with “portfolio optimization” or “proposal generation.” While these are valuable capabilities, the true client experience involves deeper emotional and personal connections. Advisors can use AI to streamline operations, but should not lose sight of the human-centric interactions that build trust.
4. Next Best Action
   • AI systems may soon offer “next best action” prompts, indicating which client to contact at which time and about what topic. For example, software could note market shifts relevant to a specific client’s holdings and alert the advisor to reach out promptly.
   • From an ethical standpoint, these prompts can enhance an advisor’s fiduciary duty by facilitating timely engagement. However, advisors must also guard against AI “alerts” that might promote unnecessary trading or upselling. Ultimately, the advisor’s professional judgement acts as the filter.
5. Data Organization
   • Google’s executive emphasized that the most accessible step for smaller practices is organizing data thoroughly in cloud-based systems. Centralized, well-labeled client records become an asset that future AI tools can index. Starting with structured data ensures that whenever you introduce an AI assistant, it can “learn” more quickly and effectively.

The Future of the Wealth Management Industry

Another session featured four female leaders discussing their views on the future of wealth management. This in itself was a refreshing sight: an all-female panel not exclusively focused on “women in finance” but rather leading a mainstream conversation. Their discussion touched upon:

1. Organic Growth Challenges
   • The panel noted that average growth rates in the industry often hover around 3%. Many firms struggle to differentiate or expand beyond their existing client base. To boost organic growth, the panelists recommended embracing new service models, investing in marketing, and offering more holistic advice.
2. Scaling Through Technology
   • One recurring point was the inability of many advisors to effectively use the full suite of technology at their disposal. According to one panelist, advisors often use just 5–10% of the functionality in their existing software. Ethically and professionally, ensuring you are leveraging tools properly can improve client outcomes. By doing so, advisors can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time providing high-level strategic advice.
3. Intergenerational Wealth Transfer
   • A sobering statistic emerged: nearly three-quarters of newly widowed women in the U.S. change financial advisors within 12 months of their spouse’s passing. This is often driven by adult children who encourage their mother to find a new professional, especially if they perceive the existing advisor as outdated in technology, poor in communication, or unaligned with the widow’s evolving needs.
   • Advisors must be proactive in building relationships with both spouses (and, increasingly, with their next of kin) to maintain continuity. This includes adopting communication platforms that are user-friendly, setting up virtual or app-based tools that can facilitate family meetings, and being ready to address a younger generation’s expectations for digital engagement.
4. Pricing vs. Value
   • The consensus was that while fee compression remains a discussion point, the real challenge is demonstrating ongoing value. Advisors can ethically and professionally justify their fees by emphasizing more robust, personalized services—an approach that technology can make more efficient.

FinTech Demos: Embracing Innovation, Preserving Professional Standards

The final session of day one showcased a “FinTech Demo Drop” featuring seven-minute pitches from different tech startups. These tools targeted everything from customer acquisition to next-generation meeting notes, with each highlighting how automation and AI can reshape the client-advisor relationship. Four stood out particularly:

1. Finny AI: Hyper-Personalized Outreach

Finny AI demonstrated an outreach system that collates a massive database of personal information (from social media, public records, and other sources) to craft highly tailored messages. From an ethics standpoint, the potential for personalization is enormous—but so is the possibility of breaching privacy or alienating clients by appearing intrusive.

• Ethical Implications:
  • Advisors must stay informed about data privacy laws and ensure they obtain proper consent.
  • Hyper-personalization can be beneficial if done transparently and with respect for client boundaries. Overstepping could result in reputational harm or even regulatory scrutiny.

2. Dispatch: Seamless Data Integration

Dispatch showcased a solution that integrates client data across multiple systems—CRMs, planning tools, investment platforms—while automating updates and changes in real-time.

• Professional Benefits:
  • Reduces manual data entry and potential errors, freeing advisors to focus on higher-value tasks.
  • Ensures consistency of information, crucial for compliance and accurate recordkeeping.
• Ethical & Compliance Perspective:
  • Strong data synchronization can help ensure that client information is up-to-date, which is critical for sound advice.
  • Advisors must still verify data accuracy. Automation is an aid, not an excuse to bypass professional oversight.

3. Jump AI: The AI Assistant for Advisors

Jump AI was perhaps the highlight for many attendees. Positioning itself as a “virtual assistant,” the platform addresses three phases of an advisor meeting—preparation, in-meeting documentation, and post-meeting follow-up.

1. Pre-Meeting Briefing
   • Jump AI creates a briefing document that summarizes key details of previous conversations, notes tasks to be completed, and even suggests personal conversation starters (for example, recalling the client mentioned a new puppy or a recent career milestone).
2. Real-Time Meeting Transcription and Notes
   • During the meeting, Jump AI records and transcribes the conversation, generating structured notes that capture key points, tasks, and contextual information like time horizon references.
3. Post-Meeting Analytics and Follow-up
   • After the meeting, Jump AI can automatically generate an email summary for the client, push task reminders into the advisor’s CRM, and provide analytics such as talk-time metrics or keyword tracking. This allows an advisor to self-review performance, improve client interactions, and maintain a thorough compliance audit trail.

• Ethical and Professional Opportunities:
  • Enhanced compliance through accurate meeting notes. If regulators ever query advice, a robust log of client-advisor discussions helps demonstrate appropriateness.
  • Potential to improve client outcomes by ensuring follow-up items are never missed and that the client’s own words and sentiments are captured faithfully.
  • Careful oversight needed: AI can produce summaries in error if the original transcription contains inaccuracies. Advisors must still review final outputs to ensure they meet the standard of care clients deserve.

4. Financial Client App: White-Labeled Client Portals

Several presenters discussed a mobile-first, app-driven approach to client portals. One pitched a white-labeled app that advisors can brand with their own name and logo, delivering updates in a social media–style feed. Clients can receive “push” notifications rather than email alerts, facilitating far more real-time engagement.

• Professional Gains:
  • Advisors remain “top of mind” for clients, avoiding the problem of unread emails.
  • In-app referral mechanisms can streamline the process of introducing new clients, helping to drive practice growth.
• Ethical Considerations:
  • Advisors must communicate clearly if data is being tracked within the app, and how.
  • Notifications should reflect actionable and relevant information, rather than noise or promotions that could undermine trust.

Professionalism and Ethics in a Rapidly Evolving Industry

New tools can be both exciting and intimidating. The festival’s high-level message was clear: technology is advancing at breathtaking speed, but it does not change the fundamental responsibilities of an advisor. Instead, it reshapes the way those responsibilities can be carried out.

1. Fiduciary Duty and Best Interests
   • Whether adopting AI-driven analytics or philanthropic planning tools, an ethical advisor must consistently prioritize the client’s best interests. Technology can make processes more efficient, but the essence of trust in the advisor-client relationship remains a human connection.
2. Data Privacy and Consent
   • Harnessing massive databases for personalized outreach or letting AI transcribe client conversations requires robust privacy protocols. Advisors should ensure they comply with local regulations (e.g., GDPR in the EU, CCPA in California, or equivalent data privacy standards in other jurisdictions).
   • Clients must understand how their data is being used, stored, and shared. Transparency fosters trust.
3. Continuous Professional Development
   • Tools like Jump AI or advanced CRMs help track and analyze meeting performance. Used ethically, they can spur genuine professional growth. Advisors can identify areas for improvement—less talking time, better follow-up on client-led concerns, or deeper conversations on charitable goals.
   • Integrating these insights is similar to how professional athletes review game footage to refine their performance. Advisors, as professionals, can harness data to ensure every client meeting meets the highest standard.
4. Balancing Innovation with Regulatory Compliance
   • While technology can offer remarkable capabilities, it must operate within a compliant framework. For instance, an app that allows push notifications or integrated referrals must ensure disclosures are clear and conflicts of interest are managed.
   • Ensuring that emerging strategies—like donor-advised funds or AI-driven marketing—align with local regulations and codes of ethics is critical. Being an early adopter does not grant immunity from oversight.
5. The Human Element: Empathy and Relationship-Building
   • In conversations about algorithms and automation, the panelists repeatedly emphasized that advisors who lean into human connections will stand apart. Despite digital disruption, a sizable portion of clients still crave face-to-face interactions and an authentic relationship with a financial advisor who genuinely understands their goals and anxieties.
   • Personalization, whether through philanthropic engagement or real-time financial health updates, can deepen relationships and demonstrate genuine care.

Looking Ahead: Strategies for Professional and Ethical Growth

1. Embrace a “Tech Curator” Mindset
An advisor is not merely a user of technology but a curator for their clients’ financial lives. As new tools like AI assistants enter the marketplace, evaluate them not just on features but also on data protection, compliance alignment, and ease of use.

2. Integrate Philanthropy Thoughtfully
While U.S.-style donor-advised funds may not exist globally, there are equivalent strategies for meaningful charitable giving. By proactively discussing philanthropy, you affirm a broader definition of “success” and strengthen intergenerational relationships.

3. Rethink Client Communication
The idea that you can “buzz” in a client’s pocket speaks to the necessity of adopting communication methods aligned with modern habits. Many clients—especially younger ones—prefer direct messaging or mobile apps to lengthy emails.

From an ethical standpoint, consistency in communication is paramount: timely updates, transparent disclosures, and respectful frequency of contact can differentiate a thoughtful advisor from one perceived as pushy or inattentive.

4. Document with Precision and Care
Automation in note-taking and meeting documentation is a powerful tool, but ethical best practice dictates thorough review. If an AI transcript misinterprets critical client details, the onus is on the advisor to correct it.

5. Focus on Holistic Value
Whether or not fees are under downward pressure, the more important question is the value proposition. Demonstrate that every aspect of your service—from strategic investment planning to real-time communication and philanthropic engagement—contributes to the client’s well-being, security, and personal goals.

6. Safeguard Personal Relationships
With 74% of widowed women in the U.S. changing advisors within a year, building strong relationships with both spouses (and often their adult children) is a genuine risk management strategy. This is both an ethical consideration—treating all family members with equal care and respect—and a prudent business move.

Conclusion

Day one at Future Proof highlights a critical truth about the financial advice industry: technology is only part of the story. Yes, AI promises new efficiencies, data integration tools can eliminate drudgery, and mobile apps can transform client engagement. But the true power of these tools lies in how they enable advisors to practice more ethically and professionally—devoting time and attention to understanding client goals, facilitating philanthropic aspirations, and cultivating deep, trusting relationships.

By focusing on solutions that enhance communication and transparency, advisors can demonstrate their care and uphold the highest professional standards. Whether it is using AI-driven analytics to personalize outreach or adopting a philanthropic tool that helps clients express their values, the future of wealth management rests on a delicate balancing act between high-tech progress and high-touch compassion.

For advisors committed to ethics and professional growth, the question is not “Will technology replace me?” but rather “How can I best harness these tools to serve my clients?” Through consistent diligence, thoughtful integration of innovation, and an unwavering commitment to clients’ best interests, the financial advisor of tomorrow can thrive in this evolving landscape—and deliver a profoundly human experience augmented by the precision and power of new technology.

Accreditation Points Allocation:

0.20 Technical Competence

0.20 Professionalism and Ethics

0.40 Total CPD Points