How Orion Is Powering Personalized Advice at Scale with Natalie Wolfsen

[00:00:29] Natalie Wolfsen: Thanks for having me, Doug. Excited to be here today.

[00:00:32] Doug Heikkinen: You've been there over a year now. What have you discovered you love about the company?

[00:00:37] Natalie Wolfsen: There are an endless number of things I love about Orion. It's such an important company delivering such amazing solutions across a wide spectrum. We're truly an ecosystem providing solutions to independent financial advisors. You and I were just reminiscing about our time in the industry and working with financial advisors, independent RIAs, as well as broker dealer affiliated advisors.

And what I love most about Orion is we have a team of committed professionals who want to ensure that financial advisors can provide the best services possible to investors. Many firms have missions but at Orion we're really committed to ours, which is creating a wealth tech community where every advisor and investor can thrive.

And that's what keeps my work exciting every single day, is making sure advisors and investors thrive.

[00:01:34] Doug Heikkinen: You have a new survey. It's Orion's 2025 Advisor Wealth Tech, and Investors Survey. What have you found the most surprising findings regarding advisor tech adoption and client expectations?

[00:01:47] Natalie Wolfsen: You know, it's interesting, this year's survey. We actually completed two surveys. One with advisors, with 585 advisors from all over the industry. Some who use Orion and some who don't. And the second with a thousand investors who use advisors. And some of those advisors are Orion advisors, but others of those advisors are not.

We wanted to get a view into our industry from the investor perspective, the client perspective of advisors, and then the advisors perspective, our clients. And we found some really interesting things. Starting with advisors, the first thing is that advisors on average only use about 60% of their tech stack.

And that's known because our industry is so fragmented, that it's hard sometimes to move from one part of the tech stack to the other. But still 60% is a fairly low percentage. The good news is that 38% plan to improve their utilization this year because they know that advisors who use tech grow faster.

It also means that we at Orion have an amazing opportunity with financial advisors to integrate disconnected tech. I talk about this a lot and how important it is that our technology doesn't leave advisors with incomplete work and investors with incomplete solutions. And so we at Orion are absolutely committed to helping advisors increase the utilization of the tech stack, and absolutely committed to creating a great client experience, whether it's our technology or a third party.

That's why we're so focused on integrations and so, whether they be ours or third parties, and why we're so focused on creating a great client experience.

[00:03:37] Doug Heikkinen: One stat we found really interesting was that 84% of advisors are planning to prioritize personalized advice by 2025. How's Orion equipping advisors to deliver that personalization at scale?

[00:03:51] Natalie Wolfsen: There's, several ways that we're focused on this and the different ways reflect the different types of advisors and what they're interested in outsourcing. My point of view has always been that what makes advisors so fantastic is the independence they bring to their communities, and to their clients.

And so we at Orion need to power that. And one of the things that financial advisors are committed to is maximizing their result, their performance results, maximizing their relationships with their clients through giving the clients an experience that's unique to them and unique to their goals and their needs.

And at Orion, we have invested heavily in behavioral finance and behavioral finance tools so that our advisors can leverage those conversations with their clients and understand what makes the clients happy, what makes their goals, how they can be more fulfilled in life. And then also how that ties to the risk profile that really reflects how they would behave in different market scenarios and brings those scenarios to life so the advisors construct, can construct portfolios that are aligned with those behaviors and risks. And then over time, the tools they use check back in on those behaviors and the input that the client gave. And so the portfolio, while it may be a model, and the tools, why they may be technology tools that help the advisor scale, all of those tools come together to create an incredible in personal experience that's enhanced by the advisor's one-to-one interactions with that client.

Additionally, some advisors like to use our technology tools in that way. Other advisors want to outsource even more. They want to outsource the portfolios that they deliver for clients. And so at Orion, we have an OCIO offering for financial advisors who want to still keep their hands on the wheel of model construction, but want somebody else to execute the models for them. Or maybe they want to use part of their portfolio as a model that a third party develops and then wrap it with their investment solutions and have somebody else execute all the way through to fully outsource portfolios using our Brinker solutions, which are geared towards the complex needs of ultra high net worth individuals.

And so there's many ways to outsource, there's many ways to personalize, and Orion, we feel we can meet the needs of advisors wherever they're at.

[00:06:21] Doug Heikkinen: This wouldn't be a podcast unless we talked about AI. And your recent surveys show that 68% of advisors already use it and 43% are planning to increase AI investments in 2025.

What do you think are the key drivers behind this rapid adoption?

[00:06:40] Natalie Wolfsen: First of all, it's really wonderful to see because in my view, what AI is, is it's a force multiplier. What it does is it helps advisors take all the good they do for investors. All the services they apply to investors. That investors desperately need right now, because there is uncertainty in the marketplace because many of these investors are nearing retirement.

And so the consequences of bad decisions are so profound for their wealth for the rest of their lives and for their family's needs and dreams. What AI does is it takes all of that and applies a force multiplier to it. I'm going to use an analogy here. I think it's a good one.

Force multiplier is originally a military term. And what it means is you apply a factor to a group, maybe a troop or some other group in the military, and it enhances the potential, the operational effectiveness, the output of that group and the success of that group. And to me, AI is that factor. Just like drones have become a significant force multiplier in militaries.

They enhance surveillance, reconnaissance, targeted strike functions, without risking human lives, so can AI do the same thing for advisors. They enhance their communications, their productivity, their accuracy, the degree to which they can personalize the number of clients they can serve. And so advisors who use AI, leverage AI, and tech firms like Orion who leverage AI, we have the potential to force multiply the impact of advice on Americans.

And, you and I have been in the industry a long time, Doug. We know that it used to be that financial advisors could only provide services to very high net worth individuals because of the amount of time it took to construct portfolios, to create proposals, to understand and do the analysis of the investment vehicles.

Now we're in an era of financial advice where financial advice has been democratized. But what AI can do is it can deepen those relationships with the financial advisor and the client. It can expand the services that are provided by the financial advisors to their client, and then also apply financial advice to a much broader and deeper section of US investors. And so I'm extremely excited about it because I believe it's a tool that we can put in the hands of financial advisors to definitely increase their ability to deliver great services to clients.

[00:09:18] Doug Heikkinen: What do you say to the advisors who have the big fear factor that AI could replace the human element in wealth management?

[00:09:25] Natalie Wolfsen: You know, I'm a true believer that at the heart of great financial advice is a relationship between an advisor and a client that's about more than just words on a page and numbers in a spreadsheet, and returns, or Monte Carlo simulations. It's actually the deep understanding and trust between that advisor and the investor.

And no technology tool, no matter how sophisticated, can replace that relationship, replace that care. And so to me, AI is a tool to help financial advisors deliver that care to more clients in more ways versus a replacement. You know, in our industry, just again, in the time that you and I have had our careers, we've seen the robo wave and the internet wave and the mobile wave, and all these things we're supposed to desensitize advice.

And instead what we found is each and every one of them have brought something to our industry and something to financial advisors that enhanced the uniqueness of that advisor's relationship with the client. And so I'm always open-minded to technology, and understand that it's an enhancement and almost never a replacement.

[00:10:44] Doug Heikkinen: Investors are craving more human connection. Even as digital tools proliferate. I mean, people are wondering what's real, what's not real? How does Orion's technology help advisors maintain and deepen personal relationships? And is the simple answer give them more time?

[00:11:01] Natalie Wolfsen: You know, it's interesting. There was a time in the pandemic, I think, where there was a series of surveys that came out and said that investors actually prefer communication between the advisor and themselves leveraging digital tools.

And in fact, our most recent investor survey found that investors actually like the combination. Like, the combination of the in personal relationship and then the digital tools. And so, what I would say to financial advisors is leverage your technology tools, including AI, to answer the basic, fundamental questions, to reinforce the decisions that you and your client have made about their financial plan, their goals, their priorities.

Because constant reinforcement leads to comfort. When people know they're on the right track and you're reinforcing that they're on the right track, they then feel more comfortable spending money as they go. They feel more comfortable in investing more. They feel more comfortable with the relationship.

But when you're charting your course, when something big has happened in an investor's life or in their family, those personal connections are what's valued most. And doing it through an email or as part of a CRM study for a CRM workflow for the basic is fantastic. But as you're charting the course or reorienting the family because of something good or bad that has happened, that personal interaction is absolutely essential.

[00:12:36] Doug Heikkinen: What role does outsourcing through solutions like OCIO, which you mentioned earlier, and TAMPs play in helping advisors scale their businesses?

[00:12:46] Natalie Wolfsen: So I believe outsourcing is a spectrum. And different financial advisors, different enterprises are at different stages of that spectrum. Some financial advisors, they come into the industry and they really want to focus on growth and client relationships, and so they outsource everything.

Others come into the industry and they very much enjoy working on investment management. And so they outsource their tech, but not necessarily their investment management. So, and then, everything in between. And so at Orion we offer outsourcing solutions at every stage of that spectrum, all the way from fully outsourced through our TAMP and Brinker solution to just buying a single piece of our technology, a CRM or our financial planning system or portfolio accounting.

My view is OCIO and OCI, which is Orion custom indexing. It's our tax management and custom portfolios, they sit right in the middle of that spectrum. Sometimes advisors who fully outsourced to begin decide they want to have a little bit more personal influence on the portfolios, and they move from fully outsourcing all investment management and all technology to outsourcing some of that.

And then for some of their portfolios, using OCIO or custom indexing. Because they want to keep costs low or they're interested in having a little bit more differentiation in their investments. Other times, advisors grow and they get to a point where they realize they're not going to be able to continue to grow and have the team the size they want and the impact of the size they want unless they start to outsource parts of investment management.

And the first step of that is usually OCIO or custom indexing. And some advisors, large enterprises, they just start right with OCIO or custom indexing. We have some very, very large firms that use Orion for OCIO exclusively. And so it's extremely important because it helps advisors see the impact of outsourcing without giving up control.

And typically when advisors start to use us for OCI or OCIO, it puts a day back in their week. And they use that day for more value added activities, and they see improvements in their portfolios. They see support in onboarding new clients, and then they move to a different part of the outsourcing spectrum when, their needs change again.

[00:15:27] Doug Heikkinen: As you continue to build your unified ecosystem, integrated planning, investment management, behavioral insights, what are the end client benefits you're seeing emerge?

[00:15:38] Natalie Wolfsen: So as it relates to the end client benefits, what we're seeing is they're growing with their financial advisors. So we can see the proof of the benefits that the financial advisors give to their clients in their growth with their financial advisors.

Now clearly, our technology helps financial advisors, it's financial advisors who are driving that growth. Even so, when we look at our wealth tech survey, and we separate out the advisors who respond into two categories, those who use Orion and those who don't use Orion, what we see is the advisors that use Orion, they grow 12 points faster than the advisors that don't.

And that means one of two things. I mean, you and I are both familiar with causation and correlation. Either fast growing advisors pick Orion or Orion helps advisors grow faster. Either is great. Either is great. And so what we do know is that our technology tools help advisors save time and effort because we measure that and we ask them questions about that.

We do know that our investment tools are, wealth outsourcing, help them save time and effort, and we do know that our AI driven behavioral tools, Redtail speak, or what we do with, pulse check, with our behavioral finance offering, and then what we offer in terms of thought leadership and our wealth business, that all of those things lead to very strong relationships between the financial advisor and the investor and more comfort on behalf of the investor because they understand what's going on with their portfolio because advisors can deliver that type of service at scale using us.

[00:17:23] Doug Heikkinen: Alright, last one for you. And looking ahead, what are some of the biggest opportunities and challenges for advisors?

And, we talked about leveraging AI. You do a great job of behavioral finance and unified platforms to future proof their business.

[00:17:40] Natalie Wolfsen: So one of the big challenges in my view is reducing complexity. And so, as regulation changes, as the market environment gets more complex, as investors want more services for financial advisors, as technology tools proliferate, there's just a lot of complexity facing financial advisors right now, both as business owners and as advisors. And so we try to help our financial advisors understand what makes their practice most special and what they enjoy doing most, and then eliminating the complexity of all the other things.

The second thing I'll just say is, understand that right now we have a once in a generation opportunity to really transform our whole industry. Because of the intergenerational wealth transfer that's happening now and the change as it relates to the generational shift for financial advisors, there is a lot of opportunity. And the financial advisors who embrace AI early, who embrace behavioral finance, who leverage technology tools, who outsource more, they'll be in the best possible position to win in that environment. And this kind of money in motion where the industry could double or triple in size in the next 10 years just isn't, doesn't come around very often, if at all.

And so, really focusing your firm on what you're great at, eliminating complexity so that you can harness that opportunity, I think is extremely important. And then the last thing I'll just say, I know we talked a lot about AI and my view that it's a force multiplier. It definitely is. And so if you have a three person firm, imagine that three person firm being 20 times more productive, 20 times more clients, 20 times more revenue.

Because of AI and where technology is and mass personalization, you can take what's special about what you do, spend your time doing that, and letting the tools do the rest. So don't be afraid of AI. Just use it. Use it to your benefit.

[00:19:54] Doug Heikkinen: Well, really nice to see you. They're very lucky to have you, and thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:20:02] Natalie Wolfsen: Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun.

[00:20:04] Doug Heikkinen: To learn more about Orion, please visit orion.com. We are on all social media platforms, all @Advisorpedia. Please give us a follow. For our producer Tory Miller and everyone at Advisorpedia, thank you for listening.