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, filmed live at Schwab Impact 2025, Envestnet’s Blake Wood, Head of Strategic Partnerships, speaks with Franklin Tsung, Growth Advisor at AppCrown, about what integration really means once advisory firms move beyond experimentation and into scale.
Read on for a snapshot of the conversation, or watch it in full below.
Why tech integration only matters if it removes work
After more than a decade of wealth management technology expansion, most advisory firms are no longer short on tools. They’re short on clarity.
As firms layer on CRMs, portfolio systems, custodians, and planning software, the operational burden of keeping everything connected can become its own constraint. Integration, in his view, isn’t about building more connections or producing a better dashboard. It’s about subtraction.
“In order for an integration to mean something, it actually has to displace workflows.”
Tsung’s point is twofold. First, he cautions against evaluating integration purely through the lens of data transfers or incremental workflow improvements.
“It’s not [about] integrating data or bettering workflows,” he says, underscoring that the standard has to be higher. The integration should eliminate steps, not just rearrange them.
“It’s actually that the integration has to remove steps within a practice.”
The right starting point isn’t the toolset, but the firm’s growth intent. Integration decisions should reflect the business the firm is trying to build, and the operational reality required to support it.
“Am I going to be a national firm, multiple offices, cross state lines, acquiring other firms?” Tsung asks. “Then the question is what is the data that’s going to propel you from point A to point B?”
This framing reflects a broader industry shift. As advisory firms professionalize and scale, integration is no longer an IT project. It’s an operating decision tied directly to strategy, capacity, and how a firm wants to grow.
Making CRM a growth chassis, not a reporting layer
“We’ve been integrating multiple portfolio systems, custodian systems, planning software systems, and normalizing that into Salesforce as a chassis.”
AppCrown’s approach to normalizing client and business data starts with a common reality inside growing firms: the data that matters most to running the business tends to live in too many places. Portfolio and performance reporting lives in one system. Custodial data lives in another. Planning inputs sit somewhere else. And the CRM often becomes a place to document activity, not a place to run the firm.
Tsung describes AppCrown’s work as an effort to consolidate those fragmented sources into a single operating view, using Salesforce as the foundation.
“Normalizing that into Salesforce as a chassis, as a data platform to deliver true practice KPIs to help financial advisors make better decisions,” he says.
In that framing, CRM is less a tool for logging notes and more a system for translating operational signals into action. Tsung points to the idea of “true practice KPIs” as the difference between simply seeing the data and being able to run the business with it. He talks about integration as something that should surface the metrics that actually shape decisions, including growth and capacity. Learn what factors to evaluate in an integration partner.
Dashboards that look good but don’t change behavior are not the point.
“It’s not just a colorful dashboard, but it’s actually going to move how they actually go about whether it’s acquiring another firm or growing across state lines,” he says.
This distinction matters because more firms are treating CRM as their operational backbone, especially as they expand across offices, add advisors, or integrate acquisitions. When billing context, flow trends, and household-level information can be viewed together, leadership teams can spot where growth is happening, where it is stalling, and what parts of the business are absorbing the most time.
When CRM stops being a reporting layer and starts acting like a chassis: a shared system firms can use to manage the business, not just document it.
Preserving advisor choice in a multi-custodian world
“The myth is that an integration of multiple custodians and portfolio systems are two different integrations.”
As firms grow through acquisition, multi-custodian complexity becomes unavoidable. Tsung challenges the assumption that custodial and portfolio integrations should be treated separately.
“In our mindset, we do multi-custodial integrations alongside multi-portfolio integrations,” he says.
He also points to Envestnet | Tamarac portfolio reporting platform as an example of how deep reporting capabilities can complement custodian choice rather than restrict it.
“When you layer that in with a multi-custodial choice, whether you’re Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing, and you can bring in demographic details to buff up that household view within a CRM system, well hey, that’s a very holistic and integrated solution set.”
The goal is flexibility at scale. Firms shouldn’t have to standardize away advisor preference in order to grow. According to Tsung, thoughtful integration is what allows choice to persist.
“That kind of aspect and approach gives advisors a choice to grow,” he says.
Redefining digital transformation around client conversations
“Digital transformation really means how do I consolidate the client data to help the financial advisors scale client engagement.”
“Digital transformation” is one of those phrases that shows up everywhere in WealthTech, often without a clear definition behind it. Tsung doesn’t dismiss the idea. But he does acknowledge why the term lands poorly in the field.
“Digital transformation is a very loosely held term. It’s used by anyone and everyone,” he says.
Tsung offers a more grounded interpretation that starts with the advisor-client relationship, not the tech stack. The purpose is to consolidate client data in a way that helps advisors engage consistently, especially as their books grow.
“Digital transformation really means how do I consolidate the client data to help the financial advisors scale client engagement,” he says.
That definition also reframes what “progress” looks like. It isn’t a new system for the sake of modernization. It’s whether the technology improves the quality, speed, and repeatability of client conversations, from onboarding through ongoing advice delivery.
“Digital transformation has to mean something rather than just saying, okay, here’s a new CRM,” he says.
Tsung ties that “meaning” to concrete moments where advisory firms either gain leverage or lose time: gathering information during new account opening, capturing and routing leads, and standardizing how firms apply policies across households.
“How do I capture information from the client from a new account opening perspective? How do I capture leads much easier?” he asks.
He also points to the increasing need for firms to systematize suitability and investor eligibility conversations as alternative allocations become more common. That is where consistent data, applied through a consistent process, becomes operationally important. By framing transformation around data consolidation and engagement, Tsung positions technology as an enabler of advisor judgment rather than a replacement for it. The point isn’t to automate the relationship. It’s to give advisors and their teams a cleaner, more complete client picture so they can act faster, stay consistent, and spend more of their time in the conversations that matter.
When back-office tools become front-office expectations
“Financial advisors are trying to capture all the conversations and get back to their clients faster.”
Looking ahead, Tsung sees a continued blurring of back-office and front-office technology. Tools that once lived purely in operations are now being judged by how well they support the client experience, especially speed, follow-through, and consistency.
“I think you’re going to see a lot of back-office solutions considered front-office solutions to support financial advisors,” he says.
He points to AI-enabled note taking as one example of that shift, driven by a simple reality of the advisor’s day: meetings stack up, and the work around them does too.
“They have meetings. After the meeting, there’s post-meeting work, and then there’s also pre-meeting work,” Tsung says. In that environment, advisors are looking for technology that helps them stay more present with clients without turning the relationship into a set of automated touches.
“What advisors will demand from their vendors is technology solutions that help them become more digitally in front of their clients without losing the intimacy,” he says.
Tsung’s caution is that automation alone can miss the point. Many tools can speed up follow-ups. Fewer can do it in a way that preserves the human dynamic that actually wins and keeps relationships.
The next phase of wealthtech, in Tsung’s view, will require that balance: more scale and responsiveness, without trading away trust.
Scale as a strategic advantage, not a limitation
"Scale is a weapon."
Alongside his views on integration and digital transformation, Tsung also pushes back on a common wealthtech assumption: that the most meaningful innovation has to come from the newest entrants. In his view, firms with established distribution and the ability to invest can be just as disruptive, especially when they apply scale to real advisor needs.
“Legacy, maturity, doesn’t mean that you’re not innovative,” he says.
That perspective shows up clearly in how he talks about custodial competition. While he names the incumbents that continue to shape the landscape, he also points to large platforms that can bring differentiated capabilities because of their reach and resources.
“When you look at custodial competition, you’re looking at Schwab, Pershing, Fidelity, but now we have Goldman Sachs, Advisor Services, GSAS,” he says.
For advisory firms, the takeaway is less about picking winners and more about building an infrastructure that can flex as the market changes. If the stack is designed to accommodate new providers, new capabilities, and shifting client expectations, scale becomes an advantage rather than a constraint.
Rapid-fire reflections
As part of Inside WealthTech’s speed round, Tsung offered quick takes on topics reshaping advisor conversations:
- Custody competition: “Scale is a weapon.”
- Client priorities: “The future is going to be more performance driven.”
- Private credit: “It’s a rising asset class that has room to grow.”
- Market structure: “You’ve got so many non-traditional asset classes coming into a traditional model portfolio.”
- What to retire: “Let’s throw out model portfolios.”
Taken together, his answers reinforce a consistent theme: scale matters, but only when technology reduces friction and keeps the advisor-client relationship at the center.
Stay Inside WealthTech
Watch the full episode of Inside WealthTech with Franklin Tsung to hear more about how integration, data consolidation, and workflow discipline are shaping the next phase of advisory firm growth.
And make sure to follow Envestnet on LinkedIn for upcoming episodes featuring leaders redefining wealth management through technology, data, and collaboration.
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