By Steve Garmhausen

Thanksgiving time is here and at Barron's Advisor, we're grateful to be able to pick the brains of so many leaders in the industry. For this week's column, we are sharing some of the more interesting things folks in the business had to say about popular topics.

Below, top advisors share their thoughts on artificial intelligence, the pushback against ESG investing, the keys to career success, and what wealthy clients are concerned about right now. Happy reading and have a great holiday.

On AI's Impact on Wealth Management

Wayne Bloom , CEO of Commonwealth Financial Network: I think in the short run to medium run, AI is going to be very helpful. But it's going to be hard for AI across the board in the industry to live up to the hype. At Commonwealth we're starting to use AI to improve the service in our primary call center queues, more intelligently routing the calls.

AI is listening to the conversations, screen-popping answers to the questions, bringing up documents that might be needed as the conversation is going on. This will help, not only with the velocity of the calls, but also the quality and accuracy of the answers being given. It will allow us to more efficiently staff calls. It will also allow us to shorten the training for people to be qualified to be in those queues. So that's a very practical application that we're actually putting into use now.

Catherine "Cat" Davies , CEO, Innovayte: AI is something that we as an industry need to embrace today. If we don't, we will fall behind, and it will not be pretty.

When you have gold-standard data, as we do, you have the ability to structure how AI functions in your platform. For example, let's say a service person gets a call and the person asks, "What is your transfer of assets cutoff time?" It seems like a simple question, but many people don't always know the details. The system has the ability to read that conversation and pop up two things on the screen so this service person doesn't have to dig for the information. The AI prompt would respond: "Our policy is 2:00. However, if you look on the Finra website, it will say 4:00. We need time to process it to ensure we can make the Finra deadline, which is why we require the paperwork by 2:00."

Julie Biel , chief market strategist and portfolio manager, Kayne Anderson Rudnick Investment Management: When I think about opportunities to invest in artificial intelligence, I think about software companies on the small- and mid-cap side. Artificial intelligence has actually been in existence for a long time. Think of your Google Maps and smaller software companies that have been incorporating AI in terms of simulation and analysis. Those guys are still doing quite well, and they're well positioned to keep leveraging that over time.

So I think of businesses like Aspen Technology, which helps industrial chemical refinery companies optimize their businesses. They themselves are the beneficiaries of generative AI because their software developers are using it to write the code. To me, that's a great application of generative AI. So I think there are a lot of software names that are still in play, if you're a small and mid-cap investor, that are benefiting from generative AI, but not necessarily in the way that people are thinking of.

On Keys to Career Success

Geri Eisenman Pell, private wealth advisor, co-founder Rise Private Wealth Management: The No. 1 thing is to be resilient. You can't let anybody make you feel bad or make you feel rejected. You can't let anybody have that power over you. No. 2 is to be fearless. Fear will kill you in this career.

I've had the great privilege of mentoring 30 or 40 people, mostly women. I've also trained hundreds of advisors, and the people who have succeeded have been resilient, and they have been fearless, and they have taken my advice and just stepped into a situation, taken a deep breath and asked for the check, asked for the opportunity to help someone. They have been confident and not been afraid to brag about themselves a little, or to find a wing person to brag about them.

Jennie Sowers, wealth advisor, Corient: One of the biggest pieces of advice I give younger people in the industry is that if you're interested in heading in a certain direction, try to get as smart about that direction as possible. And start having conversations, because you never know where they're going to lead.

For me it was a conversation I had with a gentleman who coached financial advisors. I asked him if I could buy him a cup of coffee. I told him I wanted to understand more about that path and what I would need to do to go down it. He remembered that conversation when he was having a conversation with Eric Bodner, who has now been my partner for 20-plus years. I'm here because that happened.

Another piece of advice is to take white space when it's given to you. Jobs have descriptions and requirements, but very often at smaller and growing companies, there are opportunities that present themselves just by you being there, paying attention, and raising your hand. And sometimes it's those things that create a career. So don't be so focused on the job description. Raise your hand and find and find the opportunity. They're sometimes sitting right in front of you.

On Clients' Biggest Money Worries

Chris Zander , CEO of Evercore Wealth Management and Evercore Trust: They worry about taxes. They worry about transferring wealth tax efficiently. But I would say the top concern is how to educate the next generation to succeed in managing wealth for the family.

In some cases clients' wealth, through good market performance and smart tax planning, has grown significantly beyond what they ever thought possible. And now they're worried about what's going to happen to their children, their grandchildren, and future generations. Some of our clients are very hands-on and active with us. Some of their next generation have different interests and educational backgrounds. They need education on how to work as good stewards of the wealth.

On 'Green Hushing' in ESG

Justina Lai, chief impact officer, Laird Norton Wetherby Wealth Management: I don't believe this should be or is a political issue, but unfortunately it has become politicized. And anytime an issue becomes politicized, I think it results in greater caution. We have not seen any reduction in interest among our client base, and in fact, I would say that we've seen growth in our client base -- growth in interest as well as growth in capital invested.

In the broader market we're seeing what we're calling for lack of a better term "green hushing," where folks are continuing to pursue these investment strategies, and they do believe it adds value, both from an impact and financial standpoint, but they're just being quiet about it. Some firms have distanced themselves from using the term ESG. Some have shifted from "ESG" to "sustainability."

Public mentions of ESG have dropped and there have been some outflows, but in my mind, a lot of that is just a natural result of maturation of the industry. We've gone through growing pains after years of momentum and growth, and there's a natural and anticipated course correction as ESG or impact grows up.

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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November 27, 2024 14:05 ET (19:05 GMT)

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