2025’s Biggest WealthTech Shifts with Jack Sharry

Jack Sharry: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for this special edition of WealthTech on Deck. For the past five years, we’ve explored the future of financial advice on our podcast. With nearly 80,000 downloads to date, listeners appreciate hearing insights from our guests, the top minds in the industry who share their perspectives on the industry’s future. Over the course of 2025, we had 44 guests talk on a range of topics and the rate of innovation and change we discussed each week only seemed to accelerate as the year went on. So our WealthTech on Deck team talked about how we might capture the changes and themes and all that goes around over the course of a year and in turn share our interpretation of what those advances mean. True to the trends of the day, our colleague Alyson Dorosky set up an agentic WealthTech on Deck workflow to do a deep dive into our many episodes to determine the most important themes and topics on the minds of our guests. It was fascinating to see what came through. On this week’s episode, we will talk about the top five themes we heard over the past year. We will also share our perspective on what we see that may lie ahead. My colleague, Matt Nollman, heads our marketing group and has produced every one of the 250 plus shows we’ve done over the past five years. Matt will shift from the producer chair to the host chair and I become the guest. Matt, let’s flip the switch. You’re now the host and I am thrilled to be your guest.

Matt Nollman: Thanks, Jack. It’s been a while and it’s always fun when we get to do this and flip it around. But you’re right. It’s been a huge year for advancing what we’re calling the confluence of digital human advice and the trends surrounding the technology around it. So let’s start by summarizing what we learned from this year, from all of our guests, the most important themes. And after you give a summary, we’ll dive into what those themes mean to the future of advice in our interpretation.

Jack Sharry: Cool. So we found there were five WealthTech on Deck themes for 2025. Number one, household level tax-optimized advice, which includes multi-account, unified managed accounts or UMAs, asset location, tax smart withdrawals, and the unified managed household or UMH, are all part of the industry’s next big hill, or should I say mountain, to climb. Number two is AI and automation are amplifiers of advisor capacity. They are not replacements. We’ll talk a lot about that. Three, organic growth remains a very large challenge for just about everyone. And those who have figured out organic growth are benefiting disproportionately from asset consolidation, asset retention, and more rapid organic asset revenue growth. All this is sometimes referred to as net new assets. And importantly, the industry leaders are building wealth as a service operating models. We’ll talk a good bit about that too, and more on what that means in a moment around WaaS., wealth as a service. Number four, alternatives and private markets are rapidly moving into the mainstream of wealth management, but not without challenges. We’ll discuss that. Number five, human centered advice around longevity, caregiving, women, next gen, and purpose are important to clients and therefore must be important to advisors and their firms. I should note my interpretation around what all this means and where we’re all headed are informed by the daily conversations I’m privileged to have with industry leaders. Never with a microphone between us. I’ll share what they are saying and thinking off camera.

Matt Nollman: It’s always cool to hear what you’re hearing when the record button isn’t being pressed, but let’s dive into our first theme, get right into it. So overall, the theme is Unified Managed Household, which involves a lot of different components. Household level tax optimized advice, how UMAs fit into that, asset location being a major component, how to take withdrawals across multiple accounts, how to execute transitions across multiple accounts. So there’s a lot of big pieces of it. And a lot of firms are working on all different components, albeit not all of them together from what we see. So why don’t you talk about, you know, what this means for our future and how you think firms can actually achieve this. Because as you know, from talking with all of these different people, it’s really difficult to put all of the pieces together and make sure that it works with a seamless, integrated workflow. So I’d love to hear your take on this.

Jack Sharry: Sure. So a huge repeating through line of our podcast conversations were around the importance and challenges of moving from account level to household level management. And as you just said, and our guests all said, most all, tax optimization and household level management, UMH, is where the industry is headed. Scott Smith, who heads financial advice and advisory for Cerulli, told us that tax optimization became the most important priority for product and platform builders over the course of last year. Scott told us, and I quote, we added improving tax management capabilities to the list of priorities platform sponsors might select from. And 82% identified tax management as the top priority. The next highest was 43%, about half that number, and that was portfolio construction. So people were twice as likely to respond with improving tax as their top priority. The challenge of course, is this stuff is complex. And Scott went on to say, there are seven separate things that go into a basic UMH framework. Tax efficient transitions, asset location optimization, tax loss harvesting, multi-account rebalancing, Social Security lifetime maximization, tax smart withdrawals, and creating that retirement income paycheck. Like I just said, this stuff is complex. So Justin Singer is the EY America’s Wealth and Asset Management Business Consulting Leader and Principal. He said on our podcast, investors are really looking for help, not just across investing, but banking and lending and retirement and life and tax. And so it’s becoming complicated for any institution to offer wealth across all those aspects. And using Copilot to scan all of our episodes, we found the signature pillar of the podcast is that better financial outcomes can be achieved for clients, advisors, and firms through household level tax smart advice at scale. And in the many conversations I have with industry leaders off camera, I hear a lot of people trying to figure out how to develop a household level approach. They know the biggest impact comes from minimizing taxes. They know it’s hard. And while minimizing taxes is at the top of the list for product and platform providers, the question everyone grapples with, if you can’t measure it, that kind of progress in dollars and cents, did it happen? Leaders tell me tax smart multi-account management has become table stakes and they’re working on it.

Matt Nollman: You know it’s true that if you can’t measure something, you can’t demonstrate the value, then how valuable can it really be? I mean, the most important thing I feel like in doing these things and executing these activities, and the people we talk to tend to agree with that, is that you can measure the progress and you can see how far you’ve come and you can see how actually effective the tools that you’re implementing for advisors really are. So let’s transition to phase number two in this discussion. It’s not a podcast unless we talk about AI. This came up in pretty much every podcast that we did, especially as the year progressed and it became a central theme of many podcasts. And if it wasn’t a central theme, it was mentioned by the guests. So, you know, you always joke that it isn’t a real podcast until AI is discussed. Kidding aside, you pursued the AI conversation with pretty much all of our guests and they went beyond the hype. So it’s obviously a really hyped up topic, but a lot of them talked about the practical application, what it means, what you can actually do with it now, where things are going from a feasibility standpoint when it comes to AI. So why don’t we talk about that piece? Fill us in on your download of the AI discussion, where you think it is and what you think it’s gonna be doing for advisors generally.

Jack Sharry: So Matt, as you noted, in just about every recent podcast, AI and automation were just top of mind. Interestingly, the focus has been around human plus machine narrative and not an AI replaces an advisor storyline. So things are shifting and really the practical application is where it’s at. So guests like Parker Ence at Jump Advisor AI, Arnold Hsu at GReminders, and Ritik Malhotra at Savvy describe AI powered meeting assistance, workflow automation and digital advisor platforms that remove administrative friction were all discussed. Alicia Rich from Broadridge, Colleen Bell from Cambridge and Connor Coughlin from Apex, very large organizations at the enterprise level. Colleen Bell, who’s president of innovation and experience at Cambridge, said artificial intelligence will completely transform the way our advisors interact with the home office and with their clients. Cambridge’s goal is to go all digital and eliminate paper. And last we checked, they are making great progress to that end. And I have no doubt they’ll get it done. I think many others will be chasing that dream. Each of these enterprise leaders emphasize data quality, interoperability, and advisor-centric design as prerequisites for AI augmented advice and personalized digital experiences. Others talked about agentic workflows and the need to invest in infrastructure so AI can actually do useful work behind the scenes while advisors focus on higher value client interactions. The dominant theme we heard is AI is an enabler of scaled personalized human advice. Not only does AI free up capacity, but it allows for a more personalized approach with clients. So it’s a win-win for clients and their advisors’ practices. Dave Goldman, who’s the chief business officer at Pontera said, AI can play a huge role in personalizing storytelling as we take client narratives into our AI models. So stay tuned. I think AI is all about serving the client better and knowing who they are and helping them tell a better story for where they want to go with their finances.

Matt Nollman: So I know you and I have talked a little bit about AI, we’ll call it offline. And I know one thing we talked about was that AI frees up time for the advisor to spend with the client. It’s not necessarily about replacing client-friendly activities, it’s about replacing activities that take you away from the human piece of advice to enhance that piece. So just emphasizing that, that part of the conversation I feel like is important and something that comes to pretty much all of our conversations, especially ones around SEI that we’re talking about AI with. So on that note, since it’s now an official podcast, let’s move on to number three. The most important challenge, or one of the key most important challenges in our industry that every single firm is looking at, regardless of what your vertical within financial services is, is the issue of organic growth. And I think we’ve discussed this on literally every single WealthTech on Deck episode that we’ve had this year. And of course there are other related themes that are a natural part of organic growth, like asset consolidation, greater tax efficiency across the household portfolio. And both of these have extremely large impact on rapidly growing assets and revenues for all firms. So if you’re going to be effective at organic growth, all the operational experts we have on this podcast were strong advocates for the pursuit of wealth as a service business models. And I know our number three theme, organic growth, is a tough one really for everyone. So I’d love your thoughts on organic growth, what our guests think are going to help the industry get back on the right track when it comes to it.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, we’re going spend a lot of time on that in the year to come, but let’s talk about what we heard last year because that really sets it up. So our industry frankly hasn’t figured out how to generate and sustain organic growth. I’m starting to see more and more where the pieces are falling into place. As you described, it’s really putting a lot together as an ecosystem, as an approach that’s so critical. So the question is, how can I grow my business each year with my current products and services, excluding mergers and acquisitions or investment market growth? Sort of what’s hidden the fact that as an industry we’re growing between 2 and 4% per year from according to Tiburon. Really what that means is it’s not much growth. And so, if you look at how their earnings and revenues and so on, they’re growing because the markets have gone up. That’s really what’s sort of hiding all that. So the challenge, the real issue is how do I get net new assets? How do I get more money coming to me than other folks? Arthur Worthington is a colleague of ours, has a unique perspective on this given the many hats he wears at SEI. Arthur is the managing director responsible for the business side of integrations at SEI. He has two major integrations underway at the moment. He’s responsible for integrating Stratos and my old company, our old company, Matt, LifeYield. SEI recently acquired Stratos, a very large, successful hybrid RIA and IBD, independent broker dealer. Arthur is charged with integrating Stratos’ systems and SEI’s systems to create a best in breed, best in class ecosystem for Stratos. And their intent is to acquire other firms that are inclined as Stratos’ for organic growth. They want to keep growing. So Arthur’s charge is to have that work together so Stratos can not only be more effective with who they’re currently working with, but invite others to join them. Separately, Arthur is responsible for the successful integration of LifeYield across SEI’s platforms and ecosystem. He is charged with taking LifeYield’s multi-account tax optimization capabilities and infusing those for the benefit of the multiple client segments SEI serves. That includes banks, RIAs, independent broker dealers, national wealth managers, asset managers, and OCIO firms. This also includes incorporating alternative investments from a product, technology, operational, and distribution standpoint. In our podcast, Arthur highlighted that organic growth challenges are front and center for all firms trying to get a competitive edge. He observed most industry growth has been market-driven and a tiny slice of firms capture the bulk of the true organic growth. For those who may not be aware, the dominant players around organic growth are Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Fidelity. They have the lion’s share of organic growth for the industry that leaves organic growth left over for others. They make up a huge proportion of what’s going on in our industry around this elusive organic growth prospect. In our podcast, Arthur connects organic growth to asset consolidation, private equity backed roll ups, and the need for differentiated value all around achieving tax alpha, which can only be fully realized through household level advice and fully integrated platforms and operations. We also spoke with John Amore, who is president of Kestra Financial, Mike Capelle, CEO of Modern Wealth, and Randy Moore, CEO of Summit Wealth Group. They are all pursuing organic growth and they share strategies around succession planning, enhancing organic growth of their acquisitions, and culture as levers for building durable national RIAs. We heard from consultants and strategists from the operations side of things. We talked to people like Doug Fritz at F2 Strategy, Randy Lambert at Intention.ly, Justin Singer of EY, and Jeff Levi and Rafael Couto from Deloitte. A term that EY coined, wrote a white paper on it. Wealth as a Service is being pursued by most of the people I just mentioned, if not all. Justin led a team from EY in writing the definitive paper on Wealth as a Service. He told us on our pod as retirement converges with wealth, as asset management converges with wealth, this is the tip of the spear for a much broader set of changes. Having an end to end core wealth platform is really critical. WaaS or W-A-A-S, Wealth as a Service, is the technology and operational wherewithal around portfolio construction, MarTech, marketing technology, and transformation DNA as ways to build repeatable, scalable growth engines instead of one-off wins. Interesting, our most popular episode since we started WealthTech on Deck five years ago was this podcast with Justin Singer of EY. Who’d thunk that an operationally oriented conversation would be the most popular podcast. I’d say that’s a pretty good indicator of the importance of an integrated ecosystem as our audience is comprised of wealth and asset management executives, all trying to figure a way to gain a competitive advantage. From our operational experts, we found each episode framed growth as being necessarily tied to platform design, data and tech integration, and operating model choices, not just sales tactics. This last point is important and I want to weigh in on this one. Organic growth is not achieved as a function of better salespeople or better sales tactics. That’s yesterday’s news. Successful organic growth is achieved through the following. It’s a combination and coordination, very important to say coordination there, of one, highly competitive investment products, and that includes low cost investment products. Two, state-of-the-art, fully integrated technology and platforms. Three, seamless, coordinated digital operations. Four, a user experience that is truly delightful for the consumer and the advisor, and five, savvy digital marketing. Fundamentally, the path to success on organic growth is about mastering the challenge of bringing it all together. As Jeff Levi of Deloitte said, we’ve seen firms invest in shiny dashboards, but not a lot of investment in the middle and back office. You really fall short if you’re not thinking about the taxes, the different investments, and where you put these things, Jeff told us.

Matt Nollman: So I can tell you’re very passionate about this subject. I’m a little passionate about the last one that you mentioned and savvy digital marketing. And from what I’ve seen, it’s about being discovered. People are looking for these problems that advisors solve. And from a digital marketing perspective, and frankly, from the perspective of all of the things that you listed, it’s about making sure that the people who are looking for the solutions that you provide will find you when they’re actually looking for it. So staying front and center, making sure that you’re discoverable on the channels that you need to be discovered on are really key to this. So I don’t want to minimize the fifth one because everyone focuses on the first four and they just expect the digital marketing to just magically be a pill that you can swallow. It takes time, it takes an investment, but it is worth it when people find you for the things that you’re supposed to be known for and that you want to be known. So let’s switch gears a little. If you read the industry press, which I know you do Jack, because you send me a million emails about the industry press all the time, you can’t avoid the dominant product story of the year around alternatives. And for us and everybody else really, combining public and private markets to create models and expand the investment toolkit is the way people are figuring this out. No one’s saying that you need to have your entire portfolio in alternatives, but they are saying that, you know, it might be worth including them at a certain percentage, whatever that percentage is. This is our fourth theme, alternatives and private markets. They’re rapidly moving into the mainstream of wealth management. A lot of firms like SEI are figuring out how to incorporate alternatives into models that can then be implemented at the household level with the help of a company like SEI LifeYield. But there are a lot of issues and challenges with doing this. You don’t know exactly where to hold them. You don’t know what percentage of the portfolio to include in them. There’s a lot of pieces that firms, including ours, are trying to figure out. And I know we saw this in all of our podcast discussions this year that talked about alternatives. There’s various solutions, various ways that different firms are coming to attack this challenge. And I know you have thoughts on this. You and I have discussed this a little bit offline. What are your observations on alternatives? How our industry is adopting it? What their position is in the portfolio? And let’s go from there.

Jack Sharry: Sure. So certainly a strong theme across many episodes is around alts and the combination of public and private markets in the form of models. There are a lot of opportunities and there’s also a lot of challenges. Let’s talk about that. Many of them get back to all the critical elements we’ve been talking about so far is how you connect, coordinate, combine all the above, so to speak, for this podcast. We did do episodes with seasoned pros and some upstarts in the alternative space, lots of upstarts, which makes our industry, I think, even more exciting that people with fresh ideas. We spoke with our old friend and product guru and soothsayer, Neil Bathon, who’s the managing partner at Fuse Research Network. We also spoke to another longtime friend and colleague, Tony Davidow, who is the senior alternative investment strategist at Franklin Templeton. We connected with savvy disruptors like Ryan Eisenman, CEO of Arch and Ryan VanGorder, CEO of Opto Investments, talked to many more. With all these folks, we explore the issues around the rapid growth of alternatives, the importance of education, specialist support, and operational tools to manage private market positions, and how to bring institutional grade processes to wealth channels. Working closely with SEI’s leaders around alternative products and models that hold public and private investments, along with my colleague Arthur Worthington, we know there is a lot going on regarding product and platform and back office operations as well as distribution issues and opportunities. Private credit is the largest product category in the alt space and SEI is the largest processor of private credit. So we know a thing or two about that space. I laud the industry’s efforts to bring public and private markets together. Experts say that private investments can be as much as 20, 25% of a portfolio. So they’re not the end all be all, but they’re an important part. And increasingly people are buying into that. So the biggest challenge of wealth for wealth and asset managers that they’re grappling with is around offering public and private investments in models. And the key issues they need to grapple with is taxation, risk, and liquidity. And just to explain that, obviously a lot of this is winding up in taxable accounts. So how do you manage the tax aspect of it? How do you manage the risk of it? Because it can be, in some instances, more risky. And liquidity, what’s the best way to get at liquidity given that alts are often constrained. So really what’s important is how to operationalize all of that at the household level across multiple accounts, multiple products, taxable, tax qualified to achieve better after tax returns. So a deal with all this is best handled in the household context, both from a tax and operational perspective. You will see some interesting things unfold, might be from our firm over the course of the year on this front. Stay tuned. Lots of exciting things happening here but I will tease it to say lots of smart stuff happening as well. Neil Bethon told us that clearly alts are gaining in popularity and sales momentum. For me, that’s a good sign, Neil said, but also a sign of caution, products considered hot dots should also have a reminder, buyer beware. We talked to Dave Goldman of Pontera fame. He’s doing a lot of interesting work around held away assets, stressing the need for secure integrated tools to manage 401ks alongside with traditional portfolios. Lots of interesting things happening on that front across the industry. Shout out to Pontera and how they are challenging firms like Fidelity and Schwab. It’s a little bit of David and Goliath story. They’re really challenging those large firms to provide retirement plan participants with more comprehensive advice. I’m enjoying watching that soap opera play out and I’m rooting for our friends at Pontera.

Matt Nollman: Always cool to see somebody at a smaller firm taking on a larger firm and gaining some results. I mean I think what they’re doing is pretty important. So finally, we’re on to our last one. One more big takeaway. So we’ve talked to a lot of different folks on the topic of human-centered advice, something that I know that you’re particularly passionate about. We’ve talked about human-centered advice since our LifeYield days pre-SEI. So it’s been a bit. There’s a lot of pieces on it, like longevity, caregiving, women, the next generation, and the purpose behind investing. These are all important to clients and therefore they should be, and I know that they are for all the advisors we’ve spoken to, important to advisors and the firms that they work for. So why don’t you give us your take on human centered advice and why it’s so important. And, you know, we’ve talked about AI, we talked about all the different pieces, all the different themes today, but I know it all comes back to operationalizing the things behind the scenes that you can spend as an advisor, more time with the client. I know with my advisor, I like interacting with him. I like that he likes to spend time with my wife and I, and explain to us the different topics. My wife doesn’t really care exactly how he executes those pieces. I’m interested because of the industry that we’re in, but that is the piece that keeps us coming back to him, right? That’s the piece that makes us actually want to have progress meetings with him. It’s not, how much returns do we get in our portfolio? I can go check that out in our portal whenever. It’s how he explains things to us, how he builds a relationship with us, how he understands what’s going on in our life. And that’s what makes us trust him more. So that’s my take. I’d love to hear yours.

Jack Sharry: So with all the tech investment product and platform and operations talk we’ve done so far, this stuff for my way of thinking is a big unifying thread. And that is the human needs of clients across their investment and retirement life cycle. And that changes and that shifts and evolves. What’s important to you as you’re embarking on a family, congratulations, Matt, on that. It’s not quite there, but it’s happening shortly.

Matt Nollman: Thank you, thank you.

Jack Sharry: And I’m at the other end where, as I’ll talk about in a little bit, I’m talking grandchildren. And everything in between, that’s just the nature of how people invest and what’s important to them at that time is what needs to be attended to. So while all the technical issues matter to those of us on the B2B side, inside baseball side of things, I don’t think it matters as much to clients. We took a close look at what consumers care about, and this is what we heard. Our friend, Ken Dychtwald, founder and CEO of Agewave, and Suzanne Schmitt, managing director of Next Chapter, focused on longevity, caregiving, aging, and multi-generation planning. They do great podcasts. They both have deep expertise and understanding of the wants and needs of consumers. They both shared how advisors must address health, family dynamics, purpose, and caregiving alongside of money. It’s not just about portfolios anymore. Lacy Garcia, founder and CEO of Willow, focuses on women and next-gen clients. Her work emphasizes empathy, education, and empowerment, plus advisor training to better serve these segments. Adam Holt, CEO and founder of AssetMap and Steve Chen, the founder and CEO of Boldin, talked about tools that make finances visual, collaborative, and family-oriented, reinforcing the theme that technology should enhance human relationships and multi-generational engagement. Personal and professional development themes also showed up in the episodes with Steve Miyao, who is an executive coach, Brooke Elliott, who’s the Dean of the College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Jamie Hopkins, who’s a chief wealth officer at WSFS Bank down near Philly. And they all talked around purpose, authenticity, mentoring the next generation of professionals. These human-centered advice conversations consistently reinforce that the end game is about better human outcomes with tech, product, alts, and platforms as enablers.

Matt Nollman: So we did a lot of talking today. You know, we illuminated a lot of different pieces, a lot of different themes. I think they’re all pretty good. They’re all pretty strong. They all reared their head and all the different conversations we had. We had over 40 podcasts this year and every single one, every single theme was prevalent. And when we tapped our AI to help us unearth things, it really organized things in a, in a way that maybe we hadn’t thought about, but it was able to pull it all together in a pretty thematic way so we could have a really honest, open discussion about it here. I mean, I know I learned some stuff today by reading through our conversation and having this conversation with you. The tour was pretty cool. It captured all the themes that we discussed over the course of the year. And I really enjoyed the discussion. So thanks, Jack, for your perspective. We’re going to wrap up first. So before we get to the most fun question of the day, why don’t you give us our three key takeaways from today’s discussion?

Jack Sharry: Well, I snuck in a fourth, so here we go. First of all, kudos to you and Alyson and Anne and Kayla. You guys came up with the idea of tapping into Copilot. And boy, was I pleasantly surprised. I figured we’d learn some stuff, but the way Copilot pulled things together just gave me a perspective I hadn’t really thought about, tied some things together that I hadn’t really fully fleshed out in my own mind, just because it’s a lot to gather and capture. And then what that freed me up to do is then say, okay, what does that mean? And that’s where I spent a lot of my time. So here’s what I think all that said, and here’s my recommendation and recipe for success and achieving organic growth. Cause the biggest issue facing our industry front and center is how to intentionally generate organic growth. So here are my takeaways. Number one, build a cohesive, comprehensive, coordinated operating model with wealth as a service at its core. Two key points from our friend Justin Singer. We think wealth management is on the edge of being able to offer a service in a more turnkey way. 71% said they are interested in a more integrated lead provider. These are consumers as a wealth as a service type provider. And point two again from Justin, we emphasize not just coming up with the great tech solutions, but how to operationalize the process around stitching it all together, especially around multi-account management. So my advice to those listening, and I know who you are, you’re all figuring this thing out. You will need to build an ecosystem. You will need to build a cohesive, comprehensive, coordinated operating model with wealth as a service at its core. You need to build a system that combines household level financial planning that can be implemented easily and seamlessly across the household portfolio of taxable and qualified assets into quality investments offered from both public and private markets. Number two, this means your platform should offer household level tax optimized advice in the form of multi-account UMAs or UMHs. Fundamental to this offering is multi-account asset location, transitions, rebalancing, and tax smart withdrawals, including Social Security optimizations. It is critical to quantify the financial benefits of all this so the client sees and feels and understands the benefit. As was shared on one of our podcasts, if done right, tax savings can exceed advisor fees. Very important to the advisor and the client. Number three, AI and automation are required to increase advisors’ accuracy and their capacity to better serve their clients. Doing this frees up capacity to really get to know your clients. I think it’s one of those that people that aren’t paying close attention to. But if you’re freed up, you have more capacity and you’re going to need it because books of business are growing. To serve them well, you really need to get your operational game in order and AI can do that. Doing all the above, you can deliver, this is number four, you can deliver incorporating human centered advice around longevity, caregiving, women, next gen, and purpose. We had conversations with experts about how that can be incorporated where experts can be tapped to include that as part of your process. In case our audience is wondering, we will be breaking all this down as we talk to our guests on WealthTech on Deck in the coming months of 2026. What I just shared is the recipe. We’re going to dig in deeper and deeper because that is the future of financial advice.

Matt Nollman: Jack, as always, I appreciate your take on things. I know we have a lot of discussions on this and your mentorship and your thoughts are very much appreciated from my side, so thank you for that. And I know our listeners also appreciate the same thing. It’s one thing that draws us all to this podcast and listening to you lead discussions with these guests every week. So now we’re here. Our favorite question, I know it’s both of ours. We get some interesting answers and our intern, Kayla, has written a blog post about it on WealthTechOnDeck.com, so feel free to check that out. You’ve answered this a few different ways, but I’m always interested to hear your thoughts on it. What is one thing that you do outside of work that you’re particularly passionate about that listeners might find interesting or surprising?

Jack Sharry: So for those folks who know me, who know me well, you know my priority is always give back. So I’ve been very fortunate across my life. And as the saying goes, too much is given, much is expected. As I’ve shared in past episodes, I’ve spoken about my work as president of the Hale Education Board. We are now completing the largest land conservation campaign in greater Boston, 100 years, 1,100 acres are being permanently protected. Thanks to the generosity of donors who gave us $38.5 million for our campaign. All that is winding down for me as I pass the baton, leadership baton at Hale. Never one to sit still, I joined the Westport River Watershed Alliance Board to work toward protecting the Westport River where my wife and I now reside. As I’ve done for the past 11 years, I continue to be a guest lecturer at Babson College where I teach persuasion to undergraduate and MBA students. But where I derive the greatest satisfaction is spending time with my family, especially our grandchildren. My wife, Jean, and I have three wonderful grandchildren today and three more expected in 2026. A pair of twins are part of that package. Our grandchildren are wonderful human beings and they bring great joy to my wife and I and we look forward to the year and years ahead.

Matt Nollman: Well, I know, you know, beyond the family, we all appreciate you giving back. So thank you very much for that, Jack. As always, I really appreciated your perspective and I’m sure our listeners did too. Anyone who listened to this episode, thank you very much for tuning in. You’re what makes this podcast so successful and we always appreciate any feedback. So feel free to head over to wealthtechondeck.com and give it to us. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word about what we’re doing here at WealthTech on Deck. You’ll find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. And like I said, check out our website, wealthtechondeck.com for all the episodes and articles and curated industry content. Thank you again, Jack. It has been a real pleasure.