Welcome to “Show Me Your Stack,” a series from Financial Planning in which we interview those who deliver financial advice to learn what tools they rely on to make it happen. Rising client expectations are driving the need for more powerful tech tools, and we’re digging deep to find out why advisors prefer certain solutions.
Grant Blindbury is a partner and key member of the management team at FMB Wealth Management in Thousand Oaks, California, where he leads strategic planning initiatives and serves on the executive and investment committees.
Over his more than 25 years with the firm, previously known as Fields Financial Associates, Blindbury has developed a strong sense of what kind of technology can give him and his firm an edge.
When he first joined — spending his first two years as an intern while earning his bachelor’s in business and economics from UCLA — the firm was a “mom-and-pop shop” owned by a husband and wife team who were his parents’ investment advisors. At that time, the firm mostly focused on asset allocations. But by 2007, he had become a partner, and the firm’s focus shifted to wealth management and more comprehensive planning, rebranding as FMB Wealth Management.
Today, the firm has five advisors, 12 total employees and $643 million in assets under management (AUM).
READ MORE: Marrying tech to advisor minds: Show Me Your Stack
While FMB Wealth Management may not be the largest firm out there, Blindbury said he uses its boutique nature as a differentiator and competitive advantage.
Having a distinct client-facing tech stack, including using Libretto for financial planning, has separated the firm “in a meaningful way from the pack,” he said.
“We do not want to try to compete as a … one-location RIA with a common stack from a client-facing perspective,” he said. “If we’re out there trying to compete with eMoney Advisor or MoneyGuidePro in our stack against the thousands of other firms that are using that same tool, it’s hard to differentiate yourself. So, on the client-facing tools that we use, we spend a lot of time trying to find out what is the best tool out there.”
READ MORE: Advisor tech choices for the long run: Show Me Your Stack
As the firm has been steadily moving up-market, Blindbury said he has been able to sit in front of higher and higher level prospects — and the tech choices are helping him land them.
“We can show them something and have them say, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen this before. This is cool. This is what I’ve been looking for,'” he said. “Those are the things that we’ve been hearing consistently, and in the initial prospect meetings, we’re pretty sure that that’s been the major driving force in allowing us to get larger clients and larger numbers of larger clients.”
Scroll down the slideshow to see what Blindbury feels are some of the most important pieces of FMB Wealth Management’s tech stack and why — and which tools didn’t work out.
