Event Summary

It's been an exciting year for the wealth management industry with new partnerships, emerging technology, and innovative products continuing to transform the market. Many of these initiatives are the result of a dynamic fintech landscape, which is broadening wealth managers’ client base and propelling further digitalization across the industry. Nevertheless, trends set by agile fintech firms could pose competitive and operational challenges for traditional wealth managers. Join Cutter Wealth as we discuss some of the top fintech themes impacting the wealth management industry, such as:

New fintech offerings support downstream push of wealth management services
Growing demand for advanced data tools among both advisors and clients
Goals-based planning has become a ubiquitous feature among fintech offerings
Proliferation of partnerships and M&A among tech providers
Fintech developments indicate growing demand for compliance and risk solutions
Blockchain is gaining acceptance across the wealth management industry

Speakers

Cutter

Dru Holmquist

Consulting Principal - Client Facing and Wealth Management

Dru Holmquist has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. He has developed expertise across asset management distribution, investment management, and wealth management technology and operations. Dru is a successful senior leader with a deep track record of collaboration initiation, strategy design, team building, program management and process innovation. He has conducted strategy programs for CRM, client mastering, data architecture, client reporting, client onboarding, trading, research, and portfolio management capabilities. His knowledge spans the equities, fixed income, municipals, commodities, private debt, private equity, real estate, farmland, agri-business, and timber management sectors, as well as the following vehicle types: Mutual Funds, Closed-end Funds, ETFs, UCITs, UITs, Institutional Separate Accounts, SMAs (traditional, dual contract and models), LPs, 529 Plans and REITs.

Prior to joining Cutter Associates, Dru served as Managing Director of Technology for Nuveen Advisory Services, the business organization responsible for delivering the investment and asset management expertise of Nuveen. Dru was responsible for all business applications and technology that supported the Sales, Client Service, Marketing, Product and Fund Administration business teams. He oversaw the deployment of Salesforce as a CRM application, that unified multiple investment manager affiliates by redesigning the lead generation process, sales pipeline stages, sales reporting, distribution analytics, marketing analytics, and client engagement model. In addition, Dru implemented a product and account master, and initiated the business case to begin a client master effort. He was the technology leader that owned the business transformation efforts for the advisory services organization.

Onawa Promise Lacewell, PhD

Director, Consulting

Onawa Promise Lacewell has a research focus on the impact of disruptive technologies on the financial services sector and on the client-facing technology that wealth managers use to support the digital experience of UHNW and HNW end clients. Specifically, she is interested in how wealth managers use digital portals and mobile apps to support the client experience of UHNW and HNW end clients. Onawa holds a PhD from the University of Missouri.

Recent research assignments and publications include the following:

Behind the Login of Wealth Management Client Portals
Benchmarking of Value-Added Services for UHNW clients
The Rising Popularity of Family Offices
AI Throughout the Wealth Management Lifecycle
UHNW Benchmarking

Gina McCafferty

Principal – Head of Research

Gina McCafferty has 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. She served at Cutter from 1999 to 2011 as Principal and Managing Director of CutterResearch, and she was instrumental in growing that business. Gina returned to Cutter in 2017, and established and ran the company’s Wealth Management research division. In 2019, she was appointed to Head of Research, responsible for Asset Management and Wealth Management product development and delivery to over 200 member firms around the globe. Gina was previously at Investit Ltd., where she served for six years as head of the company’s research service. Prior to that, she held senior positions at DST International with product responsibility for their global accounting and performance measurement systems, and at SunGard as Vice President of Client Services for their securities trading products.

Katrina Pirner

Senior Research Analyst

Katrina Pirner has a research focus on financial regulation and the digital transformation within the private wealth management industry. Katrina previously worked in research and investor relations at North America-based financial institutions, including Clarus Securities, Height Securities, and Citco Fund Services. Katrina also acquired experience in EU regulations while completing an internship in Brussels with FIPRA International, a public affairs firm. She holds a bachelor of arts in economics from the University of Toronto and a master of arts in international relations and international economics from Johns Hopkins University.