For years, the industry has been predicting the disruption of the financial advisor model, all the way back to when commissions were no longer regulated in the ’70s, which led to the rise of the discount broker. The ’80s and ’90s brought forward no-load mutual funds, and the internet gave us online trading. And now, here in the 2000s, we have the emergence of the robo-advisor, or the computer-automated investment platform, giving cynics even more ammunition to predict that advisors will go the way of the travel agent or taxi driver.
I am much more bullish on the future of the financial advisory profession. Despite all of these financial services and technology innovations that have the potential to put human advisors to the test, their role and importance in helping investors navigate complexity and meet their goals have only increased in demand. Advisors have proven time and time again that they can adapt to these structural changes quite nicely. In fact, advisors have been able to respond to these changes by engineering new models that take advantage of commission and technology disruption.
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