Why the tech stack of the future is no longer one-size-fits-all

Advisor360° President Darren Tedesco talks about how an open and integrated tech stack helps broker-dealers meet their business needs now and in the future.

Video transcript

Chip Kispert: Now, as you look at integrating, right? Because we talked to a lot of advisors, "Hello, I want to have estate planning, I want to have financial planning, I want to have these different pieces of the puzzle." Obviously Advisor360° is going to integrate those to be able to support those and that's the next gen or current gen, as well.

Darren Tedesco: Yeah, again, open but integrated or open and integrated is the way most companies should be thinking about their tech stacks and we're no different. Again, we've got 30+ partners already in our ecosystem, we'll probably have another 30 within the next year or two, frankly. As we built out scale both with advisors now serving over 20,000 total people, or 400,000 client portal logins, for example, we've got people who are looking to build into that ecosystem to provide value.

Getting back into a point I made earlier, it's important to note that just because we could do everything, we are an all-in-one system, it doesn't mean we generally do. I just recently wrote a blog post on this that was focused on the car dealership, right? So you can think of us as the car dealership. We build and support cars. There's a lot of companies out there that are point solutions where you can go buy your car seat, you can go buy your steering wheel, you can go buy your transmission, right? That's not really what we tend to do. We tend to build the car. Now, I can build a Civic and I can offer a Ferrari, right? It depends what you want to do.

I think advisors of the future need to think about their relationships and broker-dealers, frankly, are in that same bucket, they need to be thinking about what advisors need a lower end car and what advisors need a higher end car. And then how do I license that and make that work and drive the productivity?

Chip: And tailor the solutions to the different needs.

Darren: Yes. Yeah, it should never be a one-size-fits-all. Anyone who's building a one-size-fits-all probably is not going to win long term.

Chip: Absolutely, seeing it before, it hasn't really worked out.