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, the Envestnet team sits down with Rob Morrison, Chief Experience Officer at Savant Wealth Management. Together, they dig into how AI, data, and platform design are reshaping the advisor experience at scale, and why the human element still has to lead.
Read on for key takeaways, or watch the full episode here.
Will AI replace financial advisors?
Advisor technology is evolving quickly, but the real story is how these tools help advisors reclaim time. In Morrison’s view, the next wave of AI and planning technology is finally poised to reduce the heavy preparation and follow-up work that has defined advisory roles for decades. The aim is not to remove advisor effort but to rebalance it so advisors spend more time in conversations where judgment, empathy, and deep understanding of the client matter most.
“The magic is always the more time we can be with clients.”
Coming from what he calls his “old school wealth management days,” Morrison recalls early systems that were powerful yet often added more clicks than they removed. Even effective tools, he says, created friction that slowed advisors down.
Nevertheless, he believes the industry is finally shifting in the right direction. The ratio that matters most is the time advisors spend preparing for meetings compared with the time they spend with clients.
Historically, that ratio has been tilted toward pre-work and post-work. Better integration, AI support, and more dynamic planning tools are beginning to compress those hours and free advisors to focus where they add the most value.
Morrison imagines a near future in which updating plans, refreshing data, and preparing reviews happens “in a snap.” He acknowledges that may still feel like a “Camelot wish” today but sees the industry moving steadily toward that convergence.
Morrison also highlights the potential for real-time access to data as a way to change the pace of planning. “Just imagine, all the changes you make are automatically incorporated,” he says, describing an experience that mirrors the immediacy of a client’s financial life.
Across these examples, Morrison sees AI and integration reducing the quiet but significant friction that has shaped advisor workflows for years.
“There’s a lot of manual work and silly work we do that’s redundant, that we’d rather not do,” he says. When the tools become faster, more intuitive, and less manual, advisors can redirect time toward the work that strengthens relationships and helps clients make confident decisions.
How financial advisors can leverage AI
“There’s going to be low fruit, easy, obvious things. And then I think there’s disruptor elements that could transform and probably should transform our business.”
Morrison sees AI reshaping wealth management along two parallel tracks.
Meeting summaries and routine follow ups
The first is the set of immediate, practical workflow wins. Tools that generate meeting notes, summarize conversations, and automate routine follow-up are already easing the administrative load that has historically consumed advisor time.
He notes that AI can now produce summaries that are “far better than any human can put together,” which allows firms to rethink how much staff support a meeting requires and how advisors allocate their time.
Expand expertise to new disciplines
The second track is more ambitious. Morrison believes AI has the potential to expand an advisor’s effective expertise.
Client experiences today often vary based on an individual advisor’s interests or comfort zones. As firms expand their service maps into tax, estate, planning, behavioral coaching, and more, it becomes challenging for every advisor to operate at a high level in every discipline.
AI, he suggests, can help fill that gap by analyzing client profiles, surfacing opportunities, and guiding advisors to the right services and specialists for each situation.
He’s particularly interested in whether AI can shorten the development curve for newer advisors. Instead of needing a decade or more of accumulated experience to be considered world-class, could intelligent guidance accelerate that journey into a three- to five-year window?
Across both ends of the barbell, the objective remains the same.
“It’s either giving us back time, or it’s adding value,” Morrison says.
AI isn’t here to replace advisors. It’s here to remove low-value work and support higher-value judgment, enabling advisors to spend more time in the conversations and decisions that matter most to clients.
Data, integration, and meeting clients where they are
“Data is the key to implementing good AI.”
Morrison sees data as the foundation for any meaningful use of AI in wealth management. Without reliable, connected information, even the most advanced tools cannot streamline workflows or deliver helpful recommendations.
He notes that while smaller firms can sometimes operate with fragmented systems, growing organizations increasingly recognize the need to unify data across portfolio platforms, CRMs, planning tools, and client engagement systems.
He also highlights a shift toward technology that starts with the client’s world rather than the advisor’s agenda.
“I’m very interested in any of the things where we’re engaging clients more where they are,” Morrison says. “I think our industry kind of missed it for a while, focusing on what we want to talk about.”
This orientation reflects an emerging generation of tools designed around client goals, values, and life priorities, while allowing advisors to perform the technical work behind the scenes.
Operational processes are another area where Morrison expects meaningful change. Tasks such as onboarding and account setup have long absorbed disproportionate effort for both advisors and clients. These steps are prime candidates for automation and cleaner data flows, which can reduce delays and help eliminate long-standing technical debt.
The direction is clear. Better connectivity, fewer handoffs and more intuitive workflows create an environment where AI can function effectively and where clients experience a journey that feels coherent and well supported.
How to embrace innovation without losing focus
“I think this is why a lot of firms kind of hit a ceiling at times… The model that got you to the point that you’re at today doesn’t always serve you in that next chapter.”
Morrison has spent enough time inside both small and large firms to understand the tension that emerges as organizations scale.
Early in a firm’s life, decisions can be made and implemented quickly. As headcount, services, and complexity increase, change slows. What once took days can stretch into months as leaders balance communication, training, and the realities of a larger advisor force.
He notes that this is where many RIAs stall. Growth exposes inconsistencies in how advisors operate, how technology is adopted, and how new initiatives are rolled out. The systems and habits that worked in a small practice rarely map cleanly to an enterprise environment.
The result is friction, fatigue, and competing priorities that dilute the effectiveness of even the best ideas.
Against that backdrop, Morrison warns about the risk of chasing trends for their own sake. He admits he personally loves exploring new ideas but emphasizes the discipline required to keep a growing firm aligned.
The filter he relies on is straightforward: What problem are we trying to solve, and for whom? A tool that does not meaningfully address a real workflow bottleneck is unlikely to add value at scale.
For him, the lesson is consistent. Scaled firms succeed when they stay grounded in the problems they are trying to solve, resist the temptation to chase every innovation, and create structured ways to learn from the people closest to the work.
Growth brings complexity, but it also brings the opportunity to build systems that elevate the entire advisor force rather than relying on individual effort.
Building a multidisciplinary platform around your tech stack to service complex lives
“You have to meet clients and advisors where they are and create a platform of services and tool sets.”
Morrison describes Savant as a Midwestern, employee-owned firm rooted in evidence-based planning and investing, serving mass affluent, high-net-worth, and increasingly family office clients. Complexity, he notes, is a given, whether from career success, concentrated equity, business ownership, or life events such as the sudden loss of a spouse.
His firm’s response has been to build what he repeatedly calls a “platform.” It is not a single product but rather a curated set of services, tools, and specialists – often referred to as an RIA “tech stack” – designed to meet clients and advisors where they are.
On the tech side, Savant’s core stack includes portfolio management and reporting through Envestnet’s Tamarac, CRM through Salesforce, and planning via both eMoney and Envestnet’s MoneyGuide Pro. Around that core, the firm is piloting tools like Lumien, an Australian FinTech they have invested in to deepen client conversations, and Halo, a health and longevity survey used to inform planning around aging.
On the people side, Morrison emphasizes the shift from a lone-advisor model to a multidisciplinary one.
In a single prospective client call, he notes, Savant may have someone from tax, wealth transfer, investment research, and the lead advisor all on the line. Many advisors joining through M&A, he says, are looking precisely for that “cavalry backing me up” after years of wearing every hat themselves.
For younger advisors, the platform is as much about coaching and foundations as it is about tools. Serving clients well still starts with service: earning trust, delivering consistently, and then layering on growth.
With humans at the center, financial advice will not be replaced by AI
“As long as we stay focused on the North Star of the client, we can’t go wrong.”
Despite his enthusiasm for AI, data infrastructure and platform building, Morrison ends on a cautionary note. He worries that wealth management has at times focused too heavily on investments and technology at the expense of the human experience.
“I think we have missed the mark in serving clients,” he says, adding that “there is some risk in what is happening with technology and AI that we miss it again as an industry.”
From his vantage point, the last 25 years of progress in advice have come not only from better tools but also from stronger feedback loops and deeper client centricity.
Technology, he emphasizes, must serve one of two purposes: either give advisors back time or add value for clients. In practice, those two goals are inseparable. Time saved should be reinvested in higher-quality conversations, better listening, and more relevant guidance.
Morrison also challenges the idea that new channels or digital formats can replace the fundamentals of trust. Digital engagement may broaden reach, but many investors still rely on human connection when they are making decisions that involve their life savings.
Rapid-fire reflections
As part of Inside WealthTech’s speed round, Morrison offers his quick takes on topics reshaping advisor conversations:
- AI’s role: “It’s all of the above.” Morrison views AI as a mix of co-pilot, disruptor and overhyped promise, depending on the use case and the problem at hand.
- Finfluencers: “I think it is a pipeline.”
- Steak dinners or podcasts in ten years: “Probably both.”
- Are private markets mainstream? “Largely already are.”
- One change to old wealth management: “More focus on the human beings we are serving.”
Across these answers, Morrison reinforces a consistent theme. Tools, channels and asset classes may evolve, but the work of advice remains rooted in human connection and understanding.
Stay Inside WealthTech
Watch the full episode of Inside WealthTech with Rob Morrison to dive deeper into how Savant Wealth Management is approaching AI, data, and platform design to support both advisors and clients.
And make sure to follow on LinkedIn for upcoming episodes featuring leaders redefining wealth management through technology, data, and human-centered innovation.
Learn more about Envestnet’s wealth management technology platform and how it enhances the fundamentals of advice and support team-based advisory models.
