WealthTech in the Weeds with Michael Liersch and Harry Bartle

Jack Sharry: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us on this week’s special edition of WealthTech on Deck. We’ve been publishing a series of podcasts over the past few months that are a subset of WealthTech on Deck. We’re calling the series WealthTech in the Weeds. We’ve been examining the many elements of a well connected and coordinated ecosystem, and how to create a more seamless, intuitive experience for the advisor and the client. We are seeing well coordinated ecosystems being built across the industry. And it all comes down to helping investors and advisors and firms achieve better financial outcomes. It’s a win-win-win when this is pulled together. So we’ve been looking at this rapidly growing trend from a variety of angles in our podcast conversations. And for this episode, we’re going to look at this trend from a slightly different angle. Namely, what is it that the consumer wants from their advice giver? So, a question, frankly, as I started in this business many moons ago, it’s not something we ever thought about it. Like, what do you mean, what do the consumers want? They’re gonna want what we give them. That is no longer the case and thankfully so. So for today’s show, we’re gonna be speaking with Michael Liersch. Michael has been on our podcast many times. He’s a very articulate, gentlemen, to say the least. He brings a great perspective and experience based on what he’s learned from listening to customers in the research, as well as in person. Michael is the head of advice and planning at Wells Fargo. He has had similar positions at Barclays, Merrill, and JP Morgan. He also has a PhD in cognitive psychology and taught behavioral economics at NYU Stern School of Business. In my view, he understands the wants and needs of consumers and advisors for that matter around financial matters as well or better than anyone in our industry. Also joining the conversation is my colleague, Harry Bartle. Harry heads our enterprise business at LifeYield. He works closely with our clients on implementing comprehensive advice systems. There are many that he’s working on as we speak. He’ll weigh in with his thoughts and perspective as we go forward. So for today’s discussion, we’re going to focus on the critical role Wells Fargo’s LifeSync is playing as they look to connect and coordinate the many systems at Wells Fargo so they are better able to turn the guidance they provide into actions that potentially improve results. LifeSync, by the way, and Michael will explain in a moment, is a very powerful and simple tool, at least to the consumer, which is what this is all about. So, Michael and Harry, good to have you on board for our WealthTech in the Weeds series.

Michael Liersch: Happy to be here, Jack. Can’t wait to talk about LifeSync and everything else that you just talked about.

Jack Sharry: So Michael, let’s start with you, describe your role at Wells Fargo. You actually have a very senior role there as head of advice planning, I don’t know of another firm that has as elevated a position looking at what is fundamental to our business. But there you are, you’re doing that and charged with bringing all this stuff together. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you do and and how you do it.

Michael Liersch: Absolutely. So, Jack, my team and I wouldn’t say it’s just me or just advice and planning, but the team of human beings that work on everything related to advice and planning at Wells Fargo. It covers every line of business that we have. So think of it as the corporate investment bank, the commercial bank, the wealth and investment management division, the consumer and small business bank and consumer lending, and includes also our employee channel, what we do in the community, and our SDI organization. So our strategy, digital, and innovation organization. There’s a lot that advice and planning is involved in at Wells Fargo. And I’m proud to say to your point, it is an enterprise function. And what that effectively means is that when you think of what you talked about what customers or consumers or clients however we codify the human beings and institutions that we work with at Wells Fargo, we want to come to them as one organization that’s there to meet their needs, either personally or professionally speaking. And we know that everyone’s identities as a human being is wrapped up in both the personal and the professional. So why not put those things together and say Wells Fargo can help you in any facet of your financial life. We know money has tentacles and moves into about anything that we do in our day to day lives. Whether it be just moving money, payments, things like that, all the way to strategic planning, like you’re alluding to in financial advisor land like retirement and things like that. So why not create a one stop mechanism to articulate those needs, concerns, and goals you have in all facets of your life and enable Wells Fargo to give great advice either just through content and information all the way to helping you get that thing or a set of things done with your money.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. Just for our listening audience, we have many people trying to understand this platform thing. What Michael just described is much larger than just the advisory business or just the brokerage business or just the wealth management business. It’s all the ways that Wells Fargo as a bank, as a lender, as corporate finance, as all the different ways that they touch the marketplace that the idea is to have a consistent way to render advice. And we’ll talk in a moment about a tool they’ve started with that does brings a lot of it together. And there’s so much more, we’ll get into the ecosystem aspect of it down the road of this podcast. But it’s important to note that as an institution, Wells Fargo is looking at this very holistically, and not just the buzzword, holistic, but how do we look at the whole picture to help our clients enjoy better outcomes? So, Harry, you work with all different kinds of firms, why don’t you fill our audience in on the kinds of clients that we work with? What are some of the challenges they’re facing? And I know you’ve worked closely with Wells Fargo for a long time. So why don’t you fill us in?

Harry Bartle: Yeah, thanks. What we do at LifeYield and the customers that we work with, most of them look very similar to Wells Fargo, it’s the largest financial institutions in our industry. And what we do is the tax management piece, right? How do we manage taxes across the platform? Whether that be how do we communicate that to clients? Or how, sorry, not we… how does Wells Fargo or one of our large institutions deliver that message to clients? How do we deliver to financial advisors? How do we display it to financial advisors? So we work with all the large financial institutions and get to see what they’re building. And most of you know, what the gold standard is, is the financial planning a new customer comes in and sits down and does a financial plan, that financial plan can then go directly into implementation, which is something that’s been missing in our industry, right, you can’t really implement financial plans. And that’s something that the large institutions are really trying to do and trying to figure out, right? And then, you know, once that plan is implemented, how do we monitor it? How do we go back and check against the plan, right? And then how do we report on it? And then how do we deliver that message to the customer? And how does that advisor weed through all the details of taxes and risk and all of it to see the most important points and see opportunities that they can give to their clients when they sit down and have quarterly or annual, semi annual reviews. And that’s a very complicated process from planning to implementation to ongoing management. And then you get the complexities of, you know, the new thing that everybody’s working on, which is householding, right? So now you’re trying to figure all that out across your platform. And you’re, most of these firms are delivering it across a household, which can be even more complicated. So you know, we are working with all the large institutions on ways to deliver that in the most effective way.

Jack Sharry: Cool, thanks. I’ve been around LifeYield for 16 years. That’s one of the most succinct explanations I’ve heard yet.

Harry Bartle: Well, I don’t plan, I just…

Jack Sharry: So Michael, we’ve talked about LifeSync in previous podcasts. I’ve written about it, I’ve acknowledged it a bunch of times, we even did a series on innovation, which you were one of the one of the guests for the Next Chapter. I think LifeSync is a breakthrough for our industry, and certainly for Wells Fargo. Could you describe what it is and what it does, and why you think it’s so important? And we’ll get to how it then ties in and you… start it for now, but we’re gonna get to how it connects down the road, so to speak.

Michael Liersch: Absolutely. So, Harry, I’m gonna lean into some of the things that you mentioned as well here when I describe LifeSync.

Harry Bartle: Yeah.

Michael Liersch: First and foremost, you mentioned householding. And what we wanted LifeSync to be, Jack, is a real conduit for an actual human being to represent themselves as they are. Not in any kind of construct that Wells Fargo would put them in. And I’m being really deliberate about that. Because you can have an account framework, right, you can have a bundle of accounts or a portfolio grouping as oftentimes people refer to that in a wealth organization, or an account grouping, you know, across an enterprise. You can talk about aligning those things to what we might refer to as goals or investment objectives or just objectives in general, right? There’s all these different ways, right, Harry and Jack, that you could represent that. What we in our research realize is that our customers and clients wanted to reflect themselves as an individual human being on their own terms. So that was the premise of designing LifeSync. And so what we’ve done is we’ve enabled each individual who works with Wells Fargo to go into the Wells Fargo Mobile app, open up this feature in our mobile app called LifeSync, and it has three key components. The first one is a goals component. And there, think of it as linked to that human being in the Wells Fargo system. So forget about all the different account and householding structures. We know that human being, we know all the things they’re doing with us across our organization. And we reflect that in LifeSync, this is what you’re doing with Wells Fargo. And we enable in this goal structure for them to articulate their goals on their terms as a human being. We have 18 different goal categories, I will tell you, people say that’s fine, but it’s turned into hundreds of categories, because they can redefine it themselves. And we enabled them to do that. They can take that goal information, put dollar amounts, time horizons in, link it to those accounts, you know, Harry, kind of leaning into your householding structure, they can forget about that. They can link their own accounts to their goals as they see it and track progress. Ultimately, that rolls up into into an overall view automatically for them, where they can see those goals. And that bundle of accounts they’ve put together again, on their terms, and they don’t need to link other accounts, Jack and Harry, right. Some of them could just be accounts they have, and they have no definition for. Great, that’s fine. And so that feature is extraordinarily popular in LifeSync. So we have well over 4 million users now in a very short period of time. So we launched it to all of Wells Fargo at the end of last year. And imagine we’re in around May, at this time period. So over 4 million users, no real advertising. So human beings just really did want this feature. And what they can also do is tag who’s most important to them in achieving those goals, or who’s going to benefit from those goals in a very human way, upload a picture, and not only of those goals to inspire them, but of those people and and then link the human beings, the institutions, you know, whatever it is, the community aspects of their lives that are most important to achieving those goals, they can link them and they’re both pictured together, right in app, so that people really have all the things in their mind put into a system to help them keep track of everything, because that was the core functionality that our customers and consumers wanted. In their mind, all these elements of their financial life, actually make them feel judged on their own terms, and also judged by others. They feel very worried and concerned, we did something called the Wells Fargo money study. Most Americans, even teenagers feel over focused and very worried about money today. And so it actually helps alleviate those worries, because they have it now all in an application. The second key feature of LifeSync is something that we call snapshot. So it’s a snapshot, again, on the customer and clients’ own terms of the accounts that they want to see at Wells Fargo. So they could have a variety of accounts they hold with us. But they can exclude some of them. So maybe they don’t want to look at their mortgage. And think of it this way. Sometimes a mortgage, if you see it in a net worth will override or overwhelm your net worth. Think of it that way.

Harry Bartle: Oh, yeah.

Michael Liersch: And so then, you know, that’s not super inspiring. So people sometimes just want to see the assets. So we give them the ability to choose their own view and I’m so proud of that, because that’s a feature we just released based on real time consumer feedback, literally about a week ago. And so think about that, we’re able to respond to that feedback, virtually in real time and adapt and develop it. Within that feature, there’s also things like portfolio performance, if they’re investing with Wells Fargo, if they’re not, it doesn’t show up. We have something called credit close up, which shows up in there, which is a FICO score. So they can come and monitor their FICO score, that’s very popular, and across all segments that you might think about it or consider. We have market indices, very popular as well. And if they have a credit card with us, their credit card rewards will show up. So think of it as like as just a snapshot of all they’re doing with Wells Fargo, their financial life, and really gives them a point of view on where they’re at very descriptively on their own terms. And the third feature, which is becoming increasingly popular, is a news feed which is curated, think of it as content and information, much of it in short form video format. So there’s something called Money Minute with Michael, that in under 60 seconds, think of it like for 529 day coming up here, you know, five two nine is just around or will have been around the corner, it really is something that we’re featuring and is already very popular. In under 60 seconds, I describe what it is, why someone should care. And some of the kind of “did you knows,” like, “Did you know if you don’t use the 529, you can roll it into a Roth IRA now?” and that’s very new rules and regs that have come out, for the beneficiary. So you don’t have to worry so much about not having used it, you can benefit that beneficiary in other ways. And we see repeat visits to that functionality and it also inspires the, think of it as the circle of life to go… the other side. So just a lot of great things going on with LifeSync. And all that goal information feeds into our CRM systems for our financial advisors and our bankers in the bank branches. So that if someone wants to come in and talk about those goals, it’s in our CRM system so they can pull up that human being and say, I see you put this in LifeSync. And then the things they can enter in their CRM systems are exposed in LifeSync, and the customer can enrich them right in app, right in front of the employee, you know, upload pictures of those goals, connect them to accounts. So it’s really creating this really interesting dynamic where the digital format isn’t creating, think of it as a self, like self-directed experience, it’s actually creating an enhanced human experience in our branches with our financial advisors. It’s extraordinarily powerful. And we also have a circumstance which and in some of our business, we have a business that connects affluent clients. Think of a banker in the bank branch, we call it a premier banker to a financial advisor, they get to see the same goals. So when they’re talking to a client separately or together, they’re all working from the same song sheet. So it’s extraordinarily powerful, that ecosystem, Jack and Harry.

Jack Sharry: Interesting, interesting. We’ll get into some more about where that leads. I know, Harry, I want to talk to you a little bit about it because you see what’s going on in the industry, there’s a lot of innovation happening. Again, I’m particularly enamored of this LifeSync concept, because what it does is capture that human being’s life and their financial life and what matters to them right on down to the photo. So talk a little bit about, if you would, Harry, about what you see out there and where does this fit?

Harry Bartle: I think the interesting part about LifeSync, and I’ve been obviously very impressed by it, is we’re doing all of this for the end client, right? All the advice, all the portfolio stress testing and implementation, everything. In the end, we’re trying to do right by the client. One thing I think that is unique is Wells Fargo with LifeSync is putting that at the forefront and kind of building that to drive the rest of it. Whereas I see a lot of the other firms relying still on their advisor to be the one that really delivers all the messaging to the end consumer. And I think LifeSync is kind of revolutionary, because it’s really going to be the where the consumer, where the end client can go and feel comfortable. Because I think a lot of times, and I know I’m this way, clients don’t necessarily… it’s like when you go to the doctor, and they say how many drinks do you have a week and you go three, right? And you know that you have more than three a week, they know that everybody’s… with LifeSync, you’re able to really talk to your advisor, and be more transparent and have, I just think it’s a very unique approach, where the customer is upfront, and the customer is being communicated with. And you guys are building a technology around that I think which is is pretty revolutionary.

Michael Liersch: You know, it’s interesting, Harry, you mentioned that because we have a lot of data that when our customers interact with just say, we’ll call it an employee, since LifeSync is launched across all our advisor and banker, kind of base, they articulate on average, around one to two goals, you know depending on their level of affluence and things like that when they’re with another human being at, within Wells Fargo. When they do it on their own, and we’re starting to refer to it as digital comfort, which you’re alluding to a bit here.

Harry Bartle: Yes.

Michael Liersch: For example, in the wealth space, it’s over five goals.

Jack Sharry: Interesting.

Michael Liersch: And it leans into exactly what you’re talking about. And then they write in really interesting descriptors. And then when we look across the board, it also gets people to think about, to your point, goal achievement in a much different way, kind of like your drink example. Like it’s almost like nothing then feels off limits, because you’re not setting the boundary conditions in that interaction. Instead, they’re actually setting the frame. And that’s why people are putting in, and it’s really awesome. It’s not just one person. It’s like, many people are putting in I want to remove a tattoo or I want to get a tattoo and they link an account. It’s so inspiring, actually.

Harry Bartle: Yeah. Because there’s no judgement.

Michael Liersch: Yeah.

Harry Bartle: I’m not the richest person, I’m not the poorest person in the world. But when I go to my advisor’s office, I’m always like, this guy deals with people way wealthier than me, right? Like you… there’s like, and he’s like one of my, one of my very good friends. So I just think the nature of having more of that and the communication in an app or someone can feel comfortable is something nobody else is really doing. It’s going to be interesting to see the psychology behind that and what comes out of it in the long run. That’s for sure.

Jack Sharry: So let’s talk a little about that, where you go next, because obviously, you’re setting all this up here. I just want to remind our audience that Michael, his background is as a PhD in cognitive psychology, is it, did I get that right?

Michael Liersch: Correct. That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Jack Sharry: And so has taught behavioral economics at the MBA level. So he understands all this stuff, but it’s one thing to understand it, it’s another thing to implement it so it becomes part of the experience. Another buzzword that Harry and I often joke about this with hyper personalization. You probably have heard that buzzword, which frankly is BS, largely, but I don’t think that’s the case with what I’m hearing now. In other words, it is hyper personalized because you’re, you’re putting down what you want to put down. Now my question is now that it is, call it what you will, but it is certainly more personalized anything I’ve seen before. Where does this lead? What’s next? What comes from that? So LifeSync is sort of a cornerstone sounds like, get started, get to kind of capture the goals, capture the data, personal data. And what, you know, the prioritization or at least what’s more important than other things? And what does the future hold? Where do you want to take this? How do you start to connect the proverbial dots?

Michael Liersch: Can I respond to the hyper personalization comment?

Jack Sharry: Sure.

Michael Liersch: And Harry, I’d love your… I saw you wanting to jump in there too, Harry.

Harry Bartle: On these… on the podcasts, I have to hold back, because otherwise, I’ll yap away.

Michael Liersch: That’s what a podcast is all about. Right? And then we’ll move on to your next question. Because it’s, it’s really related, Jack. So we’ve tried to really, to your point, take that buzzword, hyper personalization, and define what it means. And I think everyone who’s listening, you really have to define what that means for your organization. And ultimately, what’s the intended outcome? Is it hyper personalization for targeted marketing campaigns and efforts, right? And that’s it, one kind of aspect of hyper personalization and a motive for it. Another one is to give someone an experience where they feel like it’s theirs. And so that’s the angle we’ve taken is that hyper personalization for us is to enable the user to design their own experience in collaboration with Wells Fargo that’s truly helping them navigate their financial life. And what’s interesting is when you kind of break through that, it makes the next best steps in development so much more obvious from a prioritization standpoint.

Jack Sharry: Yes.

Michael Liersch: And I’ll give you an example. There’s so many things we could have done in LifeSync next besides enabling someone to, you know, design their own, think of it as view with us, or do a better overall roll up of their plan. I mean, you could imagine all the different things we could have done.

Jack Sharry: Sure.

Michael Liersch: But instead, they said that’s what would be most useful for them. And so that’s what we did next. So within that framework, what we really have planned here are two things. And I think the first one is probably pretty clear, which is we want people, what they’ve asked us to do is say, well tell me, beyond educational content that we have in our newsfeed, you know, what are the kinds of actions I could take, based on my personal circumstances, what I’ve put in in LifeSync, and what you know about my financial life, what are the kinds of things I should be thinking about? And what’s really tricky about that hyper personalization aspect of that, Jack, is that you can’t actually get that specific, because there’s no way we have the context of each individual’s life. And I think that’s the hyper personalization. Because you have to ask so many more questions.

Jack Sharry: Yeah.

Michael Liersch: So before I say then how we’re going to address that, Harry, I’m curious, what’s your comment on hyper personalization?

Harry Bartle: Yeah, we were working with a firm, and it was their number one buzzword, hyper personalization. I just said, what does that mean? And, you know, they were like, we want perfect tax rates. We want custom portfolios. And my comment back was, is that important to that customer? What, how do you know… if you’re hyper personalizing, how do you know what’s important to that customer? Accurate tax rates and personal portfolios is just one aspect of the hyper personalization. And, you know, again, I’ll give LifeSync some credit, I think starting with the client, and what’s important to them is probably the first step in hyper personalization. Now, if they say taxes are the most important to them, fantastic. Let’s get your actual tax rates because most firms right now don’t know clients’ actual tax rates, right? And what’s their federal and state tax rates? Right? Like, if that’s important to them, great. Now, let’s get that right. But how do you hyper personalize it until you know the customer and know what they’re looking for? And you know, your average financial advisor will probably tell more than ask, right? So, you know, how do you get to a place where you’re knowing the customers to be able to hyper personalize? And I think that’s the thing that firms are falling short on.

Jack Sharry: Just a brief commercial before, Michael, you tell us where this all leads, because I love this conversation. This is wonderful. We were all trained in this business and have licenses and accreditation and a whole bunch of stuff that’s all around know your customer. And I dare say, having been around this industry for multiple decades, that’s not always been the case, in my experience that we know our customers in the way that the spirit of that statement is intended. I do see a change. And we’re actually we’re cooking up an episode of a podcast on this. So there’s a lot of interesting work being done around financial planning to get at the hyper personalization. They generally don’t use that term because they know that’s tough stuff. And as, you know, I’m sure we’re about to hear, Michael, it’s hard to pull that together and then operationalize it. You know, how to make it real. It’s just, it’s hard. There’s just so many different like you said, you have many more categories or goal categories than when you started because you’re attempting to hyper personalize and then you got it. So then to operationalize, it makes it all that much more difficult. But, the point of all that is that I see it as an industry trend and we’re trying to get our arms around it because everyone’s approaching it a little bit differently, especially some small firms that we’ve talked to on our podcast is how do we find out what matters to that person? And when you do that, by the way, just from pure commercial business standpoint, customers want to do business with a person that cares, a person that understands that. But Michael, take us forward. Where does LifeSync go? Where does it go from here to start to implement whatever that personalized approach might be?

Michael Liersch: You hit the nail on the head Jack. And what you effectively just said, is the consumer is very savvy. And Harry, kind of an aspect of what you said is, I think we’ve, in the industry, financial services in general, forget about any particular service model or element of it. I think we’ve underestimated the savviness of the consumer. They can see as clear as day when something is not personalized. And they don’t differentiate between hyper and personal. Is it for me, or is it not for me?

Jack Sharry: Yep.

Michael Liersch: And so in all of our research, we just said to ourselves, like, why go there? Because ultimately, to your point, Jack, it’s not achievable in the way that we all love it to be. So all we can do is make an incremental, let’s say, like, chip away at that idea, increments. So in all our research, what people want us to do is just be honest and authentic, about what we’re trying to do on their behalf. And ultimately, that authenticity is what they value.

Jack Sharry: Yep.

Michael Liersch: And so that gives us the right to ask for one more piece of information, or to show them that what we think it might look like, does this look like you? Is this you? You know, help us out a little bit more. And so within that framework, we’re starting very small, and that’s, Jack, we’ve talked about that theme. We’re starting very small. And what we saw that consumers want is they just want to see the options. And they understand not all options are going to be relevant to them. So Harry, to lean into your customized portfolio example, right? Just show me some of the things that I could do here to accomplish what I want to.

Jack Sharry: Yes.

Michael Liersch: And so you can say, well, you could have a customized portfolio, right? You could have a model, right, that’s based on let’s say, some sort of seven risk profile questions, right? Or you could just take a dart or open your pantry and pick your favorites stocks. And like, see what happens next. And people love that framework, because it starts helping them understand what resonates with them, or why not, or wants to explore more. And then, you know, they want to ask, well, why did you put these in front of me? Like, why these things? And you can say, well, because well, from what we can see about you, that’s what these types of people do. And then you could say, do you want to see something else that someone not like your does? And then the person can say yes or no. And think of that as what the human mind does is it hypothesis tests every once in a while. Like, is the environment still the same? Should I be doing something different? I know we’ve all felt that in certain environments, like, oh, things aren’t going well. Go contrarian on this one. So that’s what we’re seeing is people just want to see the options. They want to understand why. And for them, you know, based on their experience with financial services, it actually feels extremely personalized. And they feel so grateful and appreciative that you showed them what was available to them. And you told them why. And you gave them the opportunity to explore the ideas that resonated with them most. Does that make sense, Jack and Harry?

Jack Sharry: Yep.

Harry Bartle: Yeah, completely.

Jack Sharry: Harry, do you have… I’m sure you have thoughts?

Harry Bartle: I immediately thought, you know, obviously, we don’t deal with the end customer on a regular basis, right, we deal with the firms. And in my world, how that relates is, I keep hearing the buzzword of direct indexing and the buzzword of you know, everybody wants to be everything. And I always come back to what we do with asset location and householding. You know, that’s really for someone who has a pretty good balance between qualified and taxable accounts, right? I always think of it as the, that’s for the customer that’s a million and a half to 8 million. We don’t need to be everything to everybody, right? Like, when we’re building what we’re doing at these firms, it’s an option for that demographic to household, to let’s implement all of your accounts across your household together. Some people might not necessarily want to do that, they might want to pick the five stocks and roll the dice, the gamblers are going to, right, like that’s what they’re going to do. And then, you know, direct indexing, I always think of as the ultra high net worth, right? That’s really the spot of the population that’s going to get the most out of that. And then you know, now we’re talking to direct indexing companies about doing multi account and I’m like, why are we trying to be everything to everybody, right? Like, consumers are going to want to see the different options and see what’s recommended, but they’re going to want to choose based upon what their belief is the best option for them. So, it’s just interesting to think of it from the consumer standpoint and also from what we’re building across platforms.

Jack Sharry: So I’m thoroughly enjoying this conversation but we probably should start to wind down. And maybe, Michael, if you would talk about so bigger picture or smaller? However you want to do it. But how do you see things unfolding? LifeSync is that cornerstone element, seems to me, and you’re gathering lots of data. And I’m sure you’ve got some machine learning going on where you’re keeping track of what they want and what they need and how they compare to others and all that other stuff for some hypothesis testing. So take us through where does that lead and to whatever degree move beyond the abstract to, and some of the things we might do… and you may not want to share that. So whatever works for you, but I’m just sort of curious as to where you see all this, how this all starts to come together.

Michael Liersch: So, Jack, you can kind of feel it. Like there’s a lot going on and new information, but not the all the secret sauce, I gotta I gotta…

Jack Sharry: I appreciate that and respect that.

Michael Liersch: Yes, yes, yes, yes. So to make it tangible, I think especially for the audience, I think there there are three key things that we’re really focused on that I think everyone could benefit from. I think the first is, and it’s going to be like the captain obvious, you know, statement here, and Harry and Jack you’ve alluded to it, which is the data layer. The data key, is just so critical here. And I just encourage everyone to think of the core data key as the human being. If you think of it that way and figure out where all your systems break when you do that, it’ll help you start prioritizing and solving a lot of the problems we’re alluding to here. Because how could you hyper personalize something if you don’t know who the human being is and think of it as like the relationship tree surrounding that human being professionally, personally, like, it all falls apart if your coordinated key is the human being. So just wanted to throw that out there. And there’s so many different ways now that you could create microservices from other databases, everything, you could have a data layer, and you can keep enriching it external and internal data you have in your organization to understand that human being more and more in the computational power, and the affordability of your story that data is so with us today, Jack and Harry. It’s like, why wouldn’t we all move in that direction. So that’s number one. That gives you the ability to do number two, which is to transform that information in key, real time, 24/7, always on insights on behalf of, and Harry, this isn’t just the employee or you know, like the FA, or the banker, or the consumer, for both.

Harry Bartle: Yeah.

Michael Liersch: You give them insights 24/7 in real time, and they can choose who’s on point. Because if you have that human being, you know who they are or should be working with in your organization, you can start defining then a third layer there, which is who’s on point to do what? And in that traditional concept of like, the pizza tracker? It’s like, where are you at in the process? Who’s holding it up? And effectively, that’s where we’re gonna take all of this is that’s a real financial plan. It’s like I actually have, here’s me today, right? And it’s like Waze, right? What are all the paths I can take, as to course correct and adjust. And I’m gonna decide I want to take like the highway here and get off at the exit there for five seconds. And then I can get back on the highway and beat everyone else, right? There’s all these different like analogies you could use. But ultimately, people want the personalized path. That’s what they’re looking for. And they know it’s going to change, they know there’s going to be reset buttons, you know, a divorce, birth of an unexpected child, like whatever it is, like, all good plans go awry, right? The best laid plans analogy, this is what people want. And so you have to have that data layer, you have to have the insights, the consistent insights driven to employees and consumers in a common way, so that they can collaborate around that to create that course corrected personalized path, and always off ramp to humans when necessary. So I hope that makes sense, Harry and Jack, of where we’re taking this.

Jack Sharry: Totally.

Harry Bartle: It does, it does

Jack Sharry: Harry, please weigh in with your final thoughts?

Harry Bartle: No, I was just going to make the comment. You know, I always joke about this, you know, my advisor calls like, “Hey, we got to update your plan.” I’m like, “I know that you’re going to tell me I’m underinsured and that I don’t save, that I don’t have enough saved yet.” Like we don’t need to update it for you to tell me that again. But I’m not under insured because I don’t want to be more insured. So you need to stop telling me that. Like, the personalization to know what’s important to that person.

Michael Liersch: Harry, you’re self insuring, obviously, in some particular way. Yes.

Harry Bartle: Yeah, my wife is beautiful. She’ll get remarried, she’ll be fine. Like, it’s fine. Don’t let Sam hear that… we got to cut that.

Jack Sharry: I’m sending it to her.

Harry Bartle: No, I’m joking. But you know, like that personalization. I don’t have, that’s a brilliant path. It also, you know, just thinking about that, like the personalization makes me frame the way I talk. You know, I always stand up on a soapbox and say you can’t do proper tax management unless you’re managing it with asset location across multiple accounts. But that’s not true for people that want to work… like, some people, taxes might not be the most important thing. So how… what, are you going to shove asset location down their throat if that’s not the most important thing? Right? So I think that’s an interesting way to look at it is, you know, and especially through LifeSync, right, if you could say, taxes are the most important thing to me. Well, let’s educate you on what tax management within investments is. It’s, you know, asset location, tax loss harvesting, and you could learn about that right in the app, because that’s the most important thing to them. That’s, it’s… I’m starting to think about that a little bit differently.

Michael Liersch: So, Harry, along those lines, all the things you just said, what we’re seeing in our research is, to your point, it’s not that people don’t prioritize things like taxes, or asset location, or insurance, or all those types of things. They just have rationales for not optimizing them in the way we would do with our analytical and our scientific frameworks. And that’s what we need to dig into. And what we see for most human beings is,like it or not, because I know everyone says, we’re all family and other focused, they all want their own test to start from them as an individual, their own experience, even teenagers, they want to be a sentient independent human being, and then choose what they want to share and do jointly with other people. And that is a core dynamic, Harry, right, in terms of tax optimization. If you don’t want to do that, you know, at a household level, well, it constrains you in a lot of different ways, right?

Harry Bartle: Yeah. And educate me on what the constraints are. And then maybe I’ll change my mind. Don’t just yell, like, don’t just keep telling me, I need more insurance. I have millions of dollars of insurance. I don’t need more insurance, right. Like, educate me, as to you know, that’s a really interesting analogy to think about that from a tax standpoint.

Jack Sharry: Yeah. This is great. Well, guys, this has been a lot of fun. I’ve really enjoyed it. I expected it because anytime I talk to Harry and anytime I talk to Michael, I learn something which I have once again done and the dynamic of the two of you on really has made it all the more fun. So thank you for a wonderful conversation. For our audience, this podcast is part of a series of many WealthTech in the Weeds podcasts we will be sharing over the next few months where our guests describe the benefits and lessons learned from building multi account financial advice platforms. We hope you’ll share this podcast with your colleagues. There’s a lot that’s not understood about this dynamic. I just learned a bunch more that I didn’t know, that I didn’t understand just today. So thank you guys for that. If you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we’re doing here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. So thank you again, Michael and Harry, it’s been a real pleasure. Thank you.