The WealthTech Insider

Hosted by Finura Group

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Aug 2026

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About the show

Discussing all things Wealth Tech. News and trends with great guests from all over the industry and the world. Keen to submit a question to our hosts? https://zfrmz.com.au/jQwb2EGV0Rv6HSWcDrFG

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60 recent

August 27, 202621 min

🚨 Big news in the wealth tech world! 🚨 Vanguard is acquiring Altruist for $4 billion.

The financial landscape is shifting, and in this episode, Danni Le Grande and Peter Worn dissect a landmark acquisition that could reshape the wealth tech industry. Vanguard’s recent $4 billion acquisition of Altruist is not just a transaction; it’s a bold statement about the future of wealth tech. Danni and Peter dive deep into the strategic motivations behind Vanguard’s entry back into the RIA space, exploring how Altruist has successfully carved out a niche in a market dominated by giants like Fidelity and Schwab. You'll discover: how Altruist’s innovative tech solutions, including their AI-powered tools, are transforming traditional advisory services into a seamless, tech-driven experience. The conversation takes a fascinating turn as they break down adviser reactions and the potential backlash against this acquisition. With Vanguard now positioned as a competitor in the advisory space, what does this mean for the independent firms that have relied on Altruist’s services? Peter shares insights on the cultural impact this acquisition may have on advisor-client relationships and the broader implications for the market. The stakes are high. Ignoring these developments could leave advisors vulnerable in a rapidly evolving industry. As technology and advisory services converge, understanding this shift is critical for anyone in the financial sector. #Vanguard #Altruist #FinanceNews #AdvisorTech #wealthtech

August 11, 202644 min

The Science and the Art: How Rising Tide's Matt Hale is Building AI Into Advice

What happens when a firm that's brilliant at the art of advice decides to get serious about the science ? In this episode, Danni Le Grande sits down with Matt Hale, Managing Director of Rising Tide Financial Services, for an honest conversation about the AI journey his practice has been on, not over a few months, but a few years. Matt shares how Rising Tide moved from anecdotal, "in-my-head" processes to a documented advice methodology, and how AI Agents now sit inside that journey with one clear job each: file notes, intro-call coaching, implementation, and reviewing advice documents against the firm's philosophies and "Bible." Along the way, Matt and Danni get into the stuff that actually makes or breaks a tech rollout: knowing your own gaps ("I'm the best person to get something from zero to 80%, and the worst to get it from 80 to 99"), running an internal innovation month with a cash prize to build the habit, and the very real challenge of change fatigue. Matt explains why "humans dealing with humans is a recipe for drift," why AI feedback lands differently than feedback from a person ("AI doesn't wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and the camera doesn't lie"), and how he separates his Copilot Agents from his more philosophical "Projects." In this episode: The "science and art" of advice, and why most firms lean one way Using DISC and honest self-audits to understand your leadership gaps Running an innovation month to make AI a daily habit Giving agents one clear task, not ten jobs Agents vs. projects: where each one fits Coaching that doesn't sting, objective feedback from transcripts Reviewing advice documents against your philosophy with a traffic-light system Navigating change fatigue and AI fatigue with your team What to look for (and avoid) when working with consultants

July 29, 202647 min

2026 Predictions: The Mid-Year Report Card

How are our 2026 Wealth Tech Predictions actually tracking? Six months after dropping our 2026 predictions, Danni Le Grande and Peter Worn sit down for a mid-year report card marking their own homework on all eight calls, no cherry-picking. In this episode: The AI governance reckoning : ASIC's shot across the bow, the FPSB's new global CFP guidelines, and looming Privacy Act changes. Platform oligopoly why firms are going 95/5 with a single platform, and what "ecosystem construction" really meansDigital advice finds its audience the MUFG/Investream deal, the shift to chat interfaces, and why client-portal adoption is still stuck at a third of firms. Managed account players moving into licensee territory Evidentia, Encore and the rise of the "CIO" for adviceThe pricing "Australia tax" SaaS inflation, consumption-based billing, and the firm that burned a month's Cowork budget in four days.The global AI-first influx (the one they might've got wrong) BYO AI & on-device LLMs and Technology of the Year: Claude / Cowork. Plus honest talk on token costs, the coming AI bubble, and why your BS radar still beats the bots. Take the Finura Technology Health Check here: https://technologyhealth.scoreapp.com/ #wealthtech #technology #predictions #ai

June 30, 202631 min

Six Rules to Guarantee a Broken Industry

What if you tried to design the worst possible advice industry on purpose? Pete Worn and Danni Le Grande run Charlie Munger's inversion trick over Australian advice, working through the six rules from Pete's latest Code & Capital : Make sure nobody agrees who the customer is Insert as many ticket-clippers as the law allows Regulate the supply until it collapses Make the living pay for the dead Appoint a dozen umpires who don't agree Demand Ferrari software at Datsun prices The catch? Every rule is real, and none of it was built by a villain. We close on the only move left — subtraction — and what advice firms can actually take away to get better.

June 16, 202627 min

Booed Off Stage: When AI's Cheerleaders Carry None of the Downside

Two commencement speakers got booed off stage for telling rooms full of graduates that AI was an exciting opportunity. Danni and Pete start there — Gloria Caulfield, then Eric Schmidt — and ask the more useful question: what happens when the people most certain AI is inevitable are the ones who carry none of the downside? The downside lands somewhere else. On the graduate. On the PY advisers now vibe-coding their way to relevance out of pure job insecurity. On the associate half-joking that the file-note agent has already replaced them. Danni and Pete translate the backlash into what it means for advice firms: why "token maxing" measures inputs instead of outcomes, why the boss's behaviour sets the whole firm's relationship with AI, and what Finura's Tech Health Check data reveals — that the firms rating their tech change "very successful" have the weakest integration and advice-production scores underneath. Leaders declare victory; the plumbing tells another story. The takeaway isn't anti-AI. It's that you can be better than big tech: reinvest the efficiency in your people, not just the bottom line — and tread gently, because rolling out an agent is the same change-management problem as any big tech project. There are still real people behind the scenes. #wealthtech #technology #peterworn #dannilegrande

June 2, 202623 min

From APRA to ASIC: The Regulatory Clock on AI Just Started

APRA's late-April letter on AI was addressed to Banks, Insurers and Super Trustees. It wasn't addressed to AFSLs — and Pete Worn reckons that distinction will matter for about six months. In this episode, Danni and Pete unpack Pete's latest Code & Capital on what APRA's AI letter signals for the broader advice industry, and what ASIC is almost certainly preparing in the background. They cover: Why AI isn't "just another technology" — and why deterministic thinking gets you into trouble fast The four areas APRA put on notice: cyber, governance, supplier risk, change management Why boards are flying blind on AI literacy, and why the vendor lunch-and-learn is now a regulatory red flag The fourth layer of due diligence no one was doing before — and why it changes everything Fresh data from Finura's latest Tech Health Check: only 57% of licensee-aligned practices run due diligence on tech providers, and 48.6% of practices admit they can't explain every app in their own stack Claude Code in production, frontier AI vendors that can't answer DD questions, and the systemic risks no one is mapping Australia's surprisingly low AI trust scores, UHNW clients refusing meeting recordings, and what Scott Galloway calls "the biggest brand problem of any technology in human history" A practical, sometimes uncomfortable look at the gap between how fast advice firms are adopting AI and how slowly governance is catching up. #finuragroup #dannilegrande #peterworn #ai #technology

May 19, 202623 min

How to Kill an Innovation Economy

Pete's latest Code & Capital landed in inboxes the week after the federal budget — and his frustration was raw. In this episode, he and Danni unpack what the proposed capital gains changes mean for Australian software founders, and why the advice tech sector is uniquely exposed. CGT effectively doubling to 33–47% (versus 20% in the US, 14% in the UK, zero in New Zealand). A $5M exit going from a $1.18M tax bill to $2.35M. 27% of our labour force in the public sector — the highest in the G7. Pete declares his self-interest upfront: he's one of the founders this is aimed at. But the conversation is bigger than any one company — it's about who'll bother to build for Australia's 15,000 advisers when Silicon Valley won't, and when Singapore and the UAE are rolling out the red carpet. Plus: why the practice owners listening should think twice before haggling their software vendors on price, what offshore PE ownership of super admin tells us about the future, and Pete's wife Catherine's surprise cameo. A productive rant — with a constructive ending.#wealthtech #technology #federalbudget2026

April 28, 202625 min

Be a Good Breaker-Upper

Canceling Adobe shouldn't feel like escaping a hostage situation — but it does. Fitness First, Foxtel, gym memberships, subscription perfume (yes, really), and a lot of advice tech vendors share the same playbook: make it easy to sign up, and brutally hard to leave. In this episode, Danni and Pete sit down in person (a rare one) to unpack the latest Code & Capital newsletter — Breaking Up Is Hard to Do — and ask why so many software companies still prey on apathy instead of earning loyalty. They draw on 37signals' "easy on, easy off" philosophy, Basecamp's pause-and-price-lock approach, and David Heinemeier Hansson's idea that every business is a referral business — and cancellation is the moment that decides whether you get a promoter, a boomerang, or a detractor. They ground the conversation in Finura's Technology Health Check Scorecard data (n=279+ Australian advice practices): 73% of firms aren't fully happy with their current advice CRM 81% don't run an RFP when choosing tech 37% skip due diligence on new vendors 49% don't have a comprehensive understanding of their own tech stack 33% have zero integrations They also look at what AI-driven MCPs will do to vendors whose entire retention strategy is "hoard the data," why transparent pricing beats coupon-code chaos, and what practice owners should take from all of this — because if you're running an Advice business, your clients are judging you on exactly the same things. Pete's tip: design your cancellation experience like a marketing exercise. Danni's tip: audit your vendor contracts before you need to leave — check the exit terms, not just the onboarding pitch. https://finuragroup.com/ #technology #financialadvice #wealthtech

April 21, 202613 min

Jurassic Park, Glasswing & the Personal Finance Land Grab

Danni went to New Zealand for a week and the AI world lost its mind. Pete catches her up on the news that matters — starting with Anthropic's "Mythos," a model so powerful they refused to release it publicly after it uncovered up to a million vulnerabilities in major software in a matter of days (cue Jurassic Park: "scientists were so obsessed with whether they could, they never stopped to think if they should"). Then the conversation shifts closer to home: Perplexity is now letting US consumers plug their bank accounts, stocks and health data into their own Bloomberg-style dashboards, and OpenAI just quietly acquired Hero — an AI financial planning startup. Pete and Danni unpack what it means when the world's biggest AI companies start muscling into personal financial management, why regulation is the only real moat Australian advice has left, and the uncomfortable question every practice owner needs to answer: if your service is purely digital, what exactly are clients paying you for? #technology #wealthtech #financialadvice #ai https://finuragroup.com/

March 31, 202658 min

The New Advice Engine: Why Ops, Tech and Growth Can't Be Separate Conversations Anymore (with Mark Zaglas)

Mark Zaglas is back. Our most downloaded guest ever returns to go a level deeper on what's changed since last year's "Stagnation to Scale" episode — and a lot has changed. Encore Advisory Group has been acquired by Evidentia, Mark has launched his Big Six Insights series, and the industry is facing an inflection point where the pace of change has doubled but the margin for error has halved. In this episode, we unpack the rise of the COTO (Chief Operating and Technology Officer) — a concept Mark has coined for advice businesses that can no longer treat operations and technology as separate functions. We dig into why so many firms are still running on rusted sales engines, why confidence is the barrier nobody talks about, and what it actually looks like to unrust your growth capability in 2026. We also flip the script — Mark interviews Danni on what she's seeing with AI in advice practices, from foundation models to purpose-built agents, and why the firms winning right now are the ones mapping their processes first and applying AI to the right jobs second. Plus: the client who showed up to a review with their own Claude-generated financial plan, why operations is like an escalator you never get off, and Mark's 5P growth engine audit you can do in 90 minutes this quarter. If you enjoyed Stagnation to Scale, this one picks up exactly where we left off — and goes deeper. Take our free Technology Health Check at finuragroup.com to see where your practice sits. #finuragroup #technology #dannilegrande #encoregroup #financialadvice