Inside WealthTech – from the technology powering the advisor’s stack to the WealthTech companies defining the industry, we deliver the stories and strategies behind smarter advice. Each episode features candid conversations with industry leaders about the technologies, ideas, and partnerships transforming the way advisors serve clients, grow their practices, and redefine financial outcomes.
In this episode, Envestnet’s Molly Weiss, Group President, Wealth Management Platform, and Blake Wood, Head of Platform Strategy, are joined by Marla Sofer, Founder and CEO of Knomee, a behavioral data platform helping advisors scale personalized knowledge and deepen client trust. Filmed live at Future Proof 2025, the insightful conversation explores how emotional intelligence, client values, and behavioral insights are becoming the next competitive advantage in WealthTech.
Keep reading for a recap of the conversation, or watch it in full, here.
Shift focus from products to people
“If it doesn't resonate with your client, it doesn't matter”
Kicking off the conversation, Sofer describes an industry at an inflection point: advisors are realizing that differentiation can no longer come from products or models alone.
“The biggest shift happening in wealth,” she says, “is everyone is waking up to see it's not about the product. It's about the client.”
For Sofer, this isn’t just a marketing shift, it’s a mindset reset. Decades of product innovation have given advisors the best portfolios, tools, and models on the planet, but none of it matters if clients don’t feel understood.
“And so I'm super excited about this client-centric, behavioral finance-driven, ‘what do they care about?’ she says. “How are you positioning what you sell to differentiate your offering so that you can meet what's coming down the road?”
In other words, the real edge isn’t in what advisors build—it’s in how well they listen. Successfully navigating that shift means leaning into the human side of advice, the part that doesn’t show up on a balance sheet.
“People want to talk about the fluffy stuff,” she adds. “It used to be considered soft. We don't ask about emotions. We don't ask about values. We don't ask about how you're feeling… That's changing. And I think it has to change.”
Turn client understanding into scalable knowledge
“The knowledge doesn't scale across the team or even across that client's household.”
What Sofer means by “knowledge” isn’t numbers or benchmarks, it’s the lived insight advisors gain from years of listening, observing, and connecting with clients.
The problem, she says, is that this understanding often lives in one advisor’s head. It doesn’t extend to the rest of the team, the next generation of the household, or the digital systems supporting them.
But that’s the gap Knomee is designed to close.
“What we're seeing and what Knomee solves is how do you enable that knowledge of your client to scale, not only at a point of onboarding and intake, but between meetings, when something's happening in that client's life.”
By capturing and distributing behavioral data, Knomee turns relationship intelligence into something shareable and actionable. The platform connects what advisors know about clients to the systems—and the people—that need to know it.
“Knomee is a behavioral data platform that enables knowledge to scale. It enables everything you need to know about that client to be plugged into the system that needs to know it, to the person that needs to know it,” Sofer says.
The goal isn’t to replace human empathy with automation, it’s to extend it.
“We power an advice-driven future,” she adds. “We want humans in the mix because trust and relationships and emotions require the human. But just like you use AI to help you write, you use Knomee to help you deliver better advice.”
Scale emotional intelligence across the enterprise
“The IQ side of how we've built businesses in our industry for decades is scaled, it's solved. What we're trying to solve is how do we scale the EQ side of the business.”
Shifting from data-driven efficiency to human-driven connection, Sofer explains that the next competitive frontier isn’t about analytical horsepower. It’s about emotional intelligence, or EQ.
While IQ measures technical and problem-solving abilities, EQ reflects the capacity to understand, empathize with, and respond to the emotions of others. When it comes to advice, that means knowing not just what a client has but how they feel about it.
However, Sofer says, advisors aren’t often trained to do that.
“They’re not trained to go into a meeting and have the right questions at the right time. And I’ve got to say, even when they are, they're still human. And so they're not doing it consistently from one to the next.”
That gap in consistency is what Knomee is designed to close. The platform helps advisors turn empathy into a repeatable, measurable process using what Sofer calls “short, tiny digital adventures.”
Drawing inspiration from wellness and dating apps, Knomee gamifies the process of sharing values and emotions, transforming what was once a static intake form into a dynamic, trust-building exchange.
“The job of a dating app is to build your profile. The job of Knomee is to build your profile,” Sofer says.
“You’re incentivized to share your profile on Hinge because you want a good match. You're incentivized to share your profile on Knomee because you want to get more value out of this high-trusted relationship.”
Through this approach, Sofer believes EQ can finally scale, allowing advisors to connect with clients as people rather than portfolios.
From values to value: connect meaning and money
"We’ve learned something in the last decade and a half about trying to sell into people's values without knowing their values.”
Sofer is referring to the industry’s long experiment with ESG, or environmental, social, and governance investing, where good intentions have, in some cases, outpaced real personalization. Advisors, she explains, have tried to match products to broad social causes without first understanding what those causes actually mean to individual clients.
That disconnect, she says, erodes trust.
“You can’t sell into values without knowing values. Until you deeply understand what somebody means by their value of the environment and sell into that one person, you're not coming through on that promise to align with your values.”
If firms could truly understand what clients mean by their values across the client base, Sofer explains, they could easily design or recommend investments that reflect those priorities directly.
“What if you had at scale, how many people actually mean that they want to pull plastics out of the ocean? I got a product for that. How many people mean that they want more women CEOs at the head of companies? I got a product for that.”
By connecting meaning and money at the individual level, Sofer notes, advisors can transform values-based investing from a performative exercise into a genuine expression of client identity.
Measure engagement and depth of trust
“I wish more advisors measured depth of engagement. How many of my clients are all-in?”
For Sofer, the real measure of success in advice isn’t referrals or assets under management. Those numbers show business growth, not relationship strength. Real insight comes from understanding how deeply clients are engaged and how consistently that trust shows up across interactions.
“How deep is the planning you're doing? Are you linking your entire planning portfolio, everything you're offering on two numbers, the age they retire and the age they die? That's not very deep.”
Instead, Sofer believes engagement should be measured by the richness of the planning conversation itself—how many aspects of a client’s life, values, and emotions are reflected in the plan, not just their financial milestones.
“How many components of that client's life and their emotions and what matters to them are you tracking to deliver this depth of financial plan?” she asks.
For Sofer, that’s the real benchmark of value: an advisor’s ability to understand, anticipate, and show up for clients at the moments that matter most.
Intelligent innovation and the companies shaping trust
“When you share this data with me, I'm going to improve your life.”
Innovation, Sofer says, isn’t just about building new technology, it’s about earning the right to use data in ways that feel trustworthy and beneficial to the client. She highlights Clear, the identity platform known for frictionless airport security, as a company that embodies this idea.
“A company that I love, that I think is an inspiration to Knomee and who I just I think they're doing something so cool is Clear,” she says.
“It’s this concept of I own and create my data profile, and I choose when to receive the value I determine as valuable through it.”
To Sofer, that model of transparency and client control represents the direction wealth management needs to move: clients share information when they know it will deliver meaningful value in return.
“I feel like one day, maybe, Clear, if you're listening, you may want to take a look at Knomee. We are going to be the financial component of what Clear is building toward.”
She also points to Envestnet’s orchestration capabilities as another signal of progress—an ecosystem approach that connects tools, data, and experiences across the industry.
“You're bringing it together. And I think that is the future of the orchestration layer on top of all of the different hundreds of vendors you see here.”
Rapid-fire reflections
As part of Inside WealthTech’s signature speed-round, Sofer also shares her quick takes on the trends shaping the future of advice and investing:
- Client communication: “Ask the client. Text, video, or in person. Depends who you're talking to.”
- AI and advisors: “It’s a shiny object distraction… Does that mean you should ignore it? Definitely not.”
- Wealth transfer: “It’s already reshaping the industry… It changes everything.”
- One piece of “old wealth management” you’d throw out tomorrow: “Focusing on the product and the portfolio and comparing yourself to an arbitrary market measure…That's not what we do. We help you plan your life.”
In addition to her rapid-fire takes, Sofer leaves advisors with a simple reminder: the future of wealth management won’t be defined by benchmarks or technology alone, but by the empathy, adaptability, and human understanding that connect them.
Stay Inside WealthTech
Watch the full episode of Inside WealthTech with Marla Sofer to learn more about how Knomee is helping advisors scale empathy, strengthen client relationships, and bring behavioral insight into everyday advisory workflows.
And make sure to follow Envestnet for upcoming episodes featuring leaders redefining wealth management through technology, data, and collaboration.
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