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The new CEO of Vanguard continued his predecessor’s warning for advisors: Adapt to the technological changes and fee compression roiling the investment management industry, or get left behind.
Like everyone, financial advisors embrace technology, except when it comes to their own businesses, said Mortimer “Tim” Buckley, the 46-year-old CEO of the low-cost money-management titan as he kicked off the Inside ETFs conference in Hollywood, Florida on Monday morning. The conference brought some 2,400 asset managers and advisors together to chart the landscape for exchange traded funds. When it comes to the their own industry, he said, advisors still too often see technology as a threat.
And it is, at least for advisors who charge clients primarily for an asset allocation plan. Buckley’s keynote came just weeks after Vanguard’s own Private Advisor Services announced it topped $100 billion in assets, making it among the fastest growing of all the automatic investment platforms that have come into the market in recent years.
More to the point for conference attendees, Vanguard’s PAS matches clients who meet a $50,000 asset threshold with a live financial advisor to field questions and give advice, a service that puts it in competition with many at the conference.
During a press briefing after the keynote, Buckley pointed out that more than 90 percent of...