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At the 2025 Charles Schwab IMPACT® Conference in Denver, Advisorpedia sat down with David Kaufman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Voyant, for an interview about how interactive technology is reshaping modern financial advice. Kaufman’s perspective cut through the noise of product showcases and fintech buzzwords, focusing instead on what truly drives advisor success — deeper client understanding through collaborative, visual storytelling.
Kaufman’s company is reshaping how financial advisors engage clients, replacing static reports and jargon with interactive planning experiences that feel intuitive, collaborative, and deeply human.
The Shift from Portfolio Management to Personal Storytelling
In recent years, client expectations have evolved rapidly. As market growth slowed and investment differentiation compressed, clients began measuring value by how personally their advisor understood them, not just by returns. Kaufman explained, “We’ve seen a huge demand from clients asking, okay, what am I really paying for? What’s the value proposition beyond investment advice?" He noted that even in slower markets, advisors can still deliver meaningful value through tax efficiencies, wealth-transfer strategies, and broader planning work that goes far beyond portfolio management.
This shift has pushed advisors to expand into more collaborative and strategic spaces. Voyant was designed precisely for that purpose — to help advisors “work collaboratively with their clients, in real time, using visual tools that bring concepts to life.” Instead of lengthy paper reports and post-meeting follow-ups, Voyant empowers advisors to illustrate wealth strategies instantly and conversationally.
Turning Complexity into Clarity through Real-Time Modeling
Financial planning has long been a balance between art and arithmetic. Voyant manages to fuse both. Its scenario-based modeling engine allows advisors to show clients instantly how their financial lives might evolve under different conditions — changing tax laws, trust structures, or gifting strategies.
“The system has been designed to be super visual and easy to use,” Kaufman shared. “In that first meeting, you can draw a visual picture together — enter the big items, talk about goals and timing, and start discussing strategies. The details can come later, but the early stages are about helping clients see and understand their broader financial condition.”
For ultra-high-net-worth cases, this level of visual clarity becomes even more vital. Voyant’s platform doesn’t separate corporate, trust, and personal planning into silos; it integrates them seamlessly. “A trust isn’t an account. A corporation isn’t just an entity that sits on its own,” Kaufman explained. “You don’t separate trust and corporate planning from personal planning — it’s all blended together in the same experience. You can drag your finger across the screen and visually see how the wealth moves between those structures over time.”
This seamless integration creates a meaningful edge for advisors — an added layer of depth and usability that makes complex planning feel intuitive.
Advisors as Architects and Storytellers
Voyant’s design philosophy supports a deeper truth about financial advice: people relate to stories, not spreadsheets. By animating data into meaningful conversations, the platform turns advisors into visual storytellers and architects of a client’s financial narrative.
When advisors use Voyant in the room with clients, it’s not a presentation — it’s a collaboration. “You’re sitting with a client in real time, telling a story and building things together,” Kaufman said. “You’re not waiting six weeks to have a conversation—we can model solutions on the spot and talk through the complexities.”
This real-time interaction helps clients feel ownership of their plans. They can literally see trade-offs between life goals — paying for education, buying property, or establishing a trust unfold visually before them. It demystifies complex strategies and replaces uncertainty with confidence.
Lessons from a Global Perspective
Voyant’s reach across major English-speaking markets, the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, and now the U.S. affords Kaufman and his team a unique view of global advice trends. “The rest of the world is actually ahead when it comes to value-added, planning-led propositions,” he observed. “In those regions, it’s less about alpha and more about total advice, tax readiness, compliance, and multigenerational planning.”
By drawing on those markets, Voyant brings U.S. advisors insight into where advice models are heading: toward ongoing, planning-centric relationships rather than purely investment-led engagements. Kaufman emphasized that this shift—common overseas—is gaining momentum in the U.S. as well.
Amplifying the Human Element in a Digital Era
While artificial intelligence continues to make waves across financial services, Kaufman sees clear limits to its reach. AI can help with “investment recommendations” and other tasks that are “somewhat commoditized,” he noted, but it falls short when situations become complex and deeply personal. “What it can’t do is deal with really big, complex situations where you need an advisor to deal with those personal elements.”
Voyant’s technology leaves the human relationship firmly in the advisor’s hands. It handles the complexity of modeling advanced tax and estate scenarios so advisors can focus on what matters most: understanding their clients’ priorities, goals, and emotions.
As Kaufman put it, when advisors begin working on “tax management services, tax-loss harvesting…gifting, lifetime gifting, allowances, [and] building a dynasty,” that’s where they truly excel. And those capabilities remain far beyond automation. “It’s going to take decades, if ever, for any type of technology like AI to catch up to that level of personalization.”
Empowering Every Client Conversation
In practice, Voyant turns every meeting into a co-creation session. Instead of presenting a finished plan, advisors and clients explore it together — adjusting assumptions, testing scenarios, and seeing trade-offs unfold in real time. The immediacy shifts the dynamic from reporting to true collaboration.
For tech-comfortable clients, Voyant’s client-facing tools extend that engagement between meetings. They can explore scenarios independently while keeping their advisor at the center of the decision-making process, reinforcing both accountability and connection.
Building the Future of Client Engagement
Voyant’s success points to a broader evolution in wealth management: a shift from static advice to dynamic, collaborative experiences. Advisors are no longer just analysts — they’re navigators, helping clients move through the complexities of their financial lives with clarity and confidence.
By making planning visual and interactive, Voyant helps turn uncertainty into understanding. Clients can see their strategies unfold, explore trade-offs in real time, and take part in shaping the decisions that matter most to them.
At its heart, that’s what Voyant delivers: clarity, collaboration, and confidence through storytelling and visualization. For advisors aiming to elevate every client conversation, it’s a tool that doesn’t just display data, it inspires dialogue.
Discover how Voyant can help you turn financial planning into a visual, collaborative story. Explore Voyant at planwithvoyant.com.