[Governance Series] Transforming Wealth Management Compliance With David Reeve

David Reeve is the Founder and CEO of InvestorCOM, a compliance technology company that helps wealth management firms streamline regulatory requirements, investor disclosures, and retirement rollover processes. He has led the company for more than three decades, building long-term partnerships with leading financial institutions across North America. David leads InvestorCOM in delivering simple, advisor-friendly technology that improves compliance and enhances the client experience. He is recognized for his expertise in wealth management technology, regulatory innovation, and helping financial advisors become more productive and effective.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:19] David Reeve discusses InvestorCOM’s mission to simplify compliance for wealth advisors and firms

• [5:20] The philosophy behind being proudly simple in fintech

• [7:37] Investor acknowledgment requirements in retirement rollover compliance

• [9:08] Balancing AI innovation with data privacy and regulatory obligations

• [11:28] How AI is reshaping software development and product management

• [14:35] David talks about the evolution from two clicks to a bold vision of zero clicks

• [17:26] Reinventing a 34-year-old company in the age of AI

• [21:24] Pre-trade compliance and the $1 trillion retirement rollover opportunity

• [28:36] Driving organic growth in wealth management through rollover technology
  

In this episode…

Financial advisors and wealth management firms face mounting pressure to balance regulatory compliance, investor protection, and operational efficiency. At the same time, emerging technologies like AI are rapidly changing how firms deliver services, manage risk, and support advisors. How can organizations simplify complex compliance processes while improving productivity and maintaining a high-quality client experience?

David Reeve, a wealth management technology and compliance expert, shares how firms can address these challenges by focusing on simplicity, usability, and automation. He explains the importance of reducing friction in advisor workflows, creating clearer investor disclosures, and using AI to enhance productivity without compromising data security or regulatory requirements. David also discusses how firms can capitalize on retirement rollover opportunities, support advisor growth, and leverage technology to drive more effective client outcomes.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews David Reeve, Founder and CEO of InvestorCOM, about simplifying compliance and driving growth in wealth management. David discusses the impact of AI on advisor productivity, the importance of retirement rollover compliance, and strategies for achieving organic growth. He also explores advisor demographics, investor disclosures, and the future of technology-enabled financial advice.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quik!

• Richard Walker on LinkedIn

• David Reeve on LinkedIn

• InvestorCOM

• "[Emerging Tech] The Future of Financial Advice Automation With Eden Ovadia" on The Customer Wins

• "[Emerging Tech] Compounding Institutional Knowledge for Growth With Ian Karnell" on The Customer Wins

• "[Emerging Tech Series] Transforming Financial Advisors’ Workflows With AI Agents With Chirag Gandhi" on The Customer Wins

• "Tips for Addressing Financial Regulatory Compliance Requirements With Parham Nasseri" on The Customer Wins

• Parham Nasseri on LinkedIn

Quotable Moments:

• “What we want to do is deliver technology, and often our clients are using our tech.”

• “We want to minimize the number of clicks to perform a function.”

• “Some of our competitors deliver disclosures to an investor that could be 100 pages.”

• “External AI is all about, in our world, driving advisor productivity.”

• “Organic growth, we know, is always the best growth. You probably know that in your business.”

  
  

Action Steps:

1. Facilitate open dialogue around technology adoption: Encouraging advisors and staff to share feedback helps identify friction points and creates solutions that improve usability and productivity.

2. Use AI strategically with appropriate guardrails: Leveraging AI for development, quality assurance, and workflow automation can increase efficiency while maintaining compliance and protecting sensitive data.

3. Simplify compliance communications for investors: Creating shorter, clearer disclosures improves investor understanding and helps advisors communicate recommendations more effectively.

4. Focus on retirement rollovers as an organic growth opportunity: Streamlining rollover processes enables firms to capture more assets while ensuring recommendations remain in the investor's best interest.

5. Invest in technology that expands advisor capacity: Providing advisors with efficient tools allows them to serve more clients effectively while maintaining high standards of service and compliance.

   
   

Sponsor for this episode...

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02 

Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn, grow their business.

Richard Walker: 00:16 

Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Eden Ovadia of FINNY, Ian Karnell of VastAdvisor and Chirag Gandhi of Mili. Today is a special episode in my series on governance, risk and regulation, and today's guest is David Reeve, founder and CEO of InvestorCOM. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms.

Instead, get Quik! using Quik!, you'll be able to generate completed forms and get back clean, context rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. Now, before I introduce today's guest, I want to give a big thank you to Parham Nasseri, who is a personal friend of mine and also the president of InvestorCOM and a prior guest on my show. Go, go look his show up. He was great.

 But today we have David Reeve, the founder and CEO of InvestorCOM. Over the last 30 years, InvestorCOM has built long term partnerships with global wealth management leaders. From 1984 to 1992, David held a variety of marketing leadership roles at IBM Canada, and his expertise is in building enterprise partnerships in the wealth management industry focused on technology innovation. Dave, welcome to The Customer Wins.

David Reeve: 01:51 

Thanks so much, Rich. I've watched your podcast with great interest. I'm super honored to be part of it and thrilled to join you today.

Richard Walker: 01:59 

Well, I'm happy to have you here. We're going to have a really good conversation. So for my audience, if you haven't heard my podcast before, I love to talk to business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience and the challenges to growing their own company. So Dave, let's understand your business a lot better. How does your company help people?

David Reeve: 02:19 

Well, Rich, you know, I think there's kind of many different vectors to answer that question. But I would say the very first thing that comes to mind is simplicity. Our clients are wealth advisors, wealth firms and their advisors. And, you know, one of the big, big challenges in the tech industry is, is adoption of technology. And so, you know, we've really focused on two words.

And those two words are proudly simple. What we want to do is deliver technology. And, you know, often our clients are using our tech to perform a compliance function, you know, which doesn't fall in the fun category. And so this notion of pride is absolutely essential. And we are, you know, hawks on how we continue to simplify our platform to make it easy for advisors?

 And frankly, they give us the feedback that I think we're doing a pretty decent job there.

Richard Walker: 03:12 

Oh, that is awesome. So I don't know if you know this, my company name is actually Efficient Technology Inc and our product is Quik!. We are all about how we make things intuitive and simple and fast and easy. So I have a great affinity for what you're doing. Before I dive further into the simple idea and how you actually execute on that, your customer, is it the wealth management firm, the advisor, or is it the end client?

Is it all of the above?

David Reeve: 03:38 

It really is all the above. I mean, the people that actually pay for our software are wealth firms, but we very much look at advisors. There's 50,000 advisors on our platform now. So we look at, you know, every single one of those folks as our clients as well. And frankly, the real value that's being delivered is to the investor.

And so, you know, we think of all three of those folks as being our clients, even though it's the wealth firm that typically pays our bills.

Richard Walker: 04:09 

But who actually sees the product and uses it? Is it the advisor or the compliance team or.

David Reeve: 04:15 

Well, again, all three parties to the advisors, the main user. So the UI sits on the advisor's desktop. And again, going back to simple, we want to make that interaction as simple as possible. A lot of what we do though rich, involves disclosure to a client. So for example, we were talking a little bit earlier about rollovers.

If you compliantly recommend a rollover to a client, you have to deliver disclosure. So that piece actually touches the investor. And then, you know, there's a huge supervisory and compliance practice where our dashboards are used by the wealth firm. And so, you know, really our technology touches, you know, all three of those stakeholders.

Richard Walker: 04:58 

Okay. I was asking this because if we're going to talk about simplicity, you have a lot of eyeballs to appeal to. And what I really want to dive into, Dave, is what is it? I mean, you can't just say, I want simple. What are the core philosophies, the core instincts, the guiding principles of your firm that enable you to actually achieve simplicity?

David Reeve: 05:20 

It's a really, really good question. I remember someone saying, if I had more time, I'd write you a postcard. You know, simple is difficult. By the way, one of the reasons we use the word proudly is that, you know, sometimes people perceive simplicity as not comprehensive or not complete or not complex enough. And so, you know, when we talk about being proudly simple, we know it's a heck of a lot more, you know, this in your business, it's a heck of a lot more work to do things simply than complex, certainly when you're rolling out technology.

But I will say, you know, we're all kind of entering or have entered this AI phase, which will even help us with this sort of simplicity goal. But, you know, I would say a couple of things for the advisor. We want to minimize the number of clicks to perform a function. And I remember we were pitching to one of the absolute top wealth firms. And we were so proud telling this particular individual that it was only two clicks to compliance.

 And I'll never forget, he said, that's great Dave. We want zero clicks. And of course, in the world of AI, you know, we'll all be there at some point in time. The other area on the simplicity front is some of our competitors deliver disclosures, which are part of the compliance process to an investor that could be 100 pages. And so we're very, very focused on page count readability, legibility and understandability.

 And listen, we all know as consumers of compliance, most people don't read things. But you know, ultimately we design our disclosures so that they're really sales documents to help our advisors be more successful. And again, simplicity is our mantra there as well.

Richard Walker: 07:04 

I love that concept. If you can help it as part of the sales process to get it across. Yeah, you're delivering because my gosh, my advisor, oh, I get the prospectus is great. Throw them in the trash. You've got to read this notice of privacy.

Yeah. I hired you guys because you're going to keep my data private, right? I'm not going to read that. And it's a struggle, but we're obligated to have those things put out there so that we can say we are compliant. Right?

 Are you doing anything to engage the end investor in a way that proves compliance?

David Reeve: 07:37 

Well, a lot of the disclosure that our clients actually receive, they have to acknowledge, you know, before the actual transaction proceeds. So again, I'll go back to rollovers, which, you know, rolling your retirement assets out of a 401 K into an IRA may be the most important or significant decision an investor makes. And so in order for that to be a successful event, the investor really has to acknowledge that that rollover recommendation is in her best interest. And so there is, you know, really a kind of response mechanism. And some of our clients, Glenn, the client in this case, being the wealth firm, you know, are expecting that there's a response in the form of a DocuSign or digital signature acknowledging that.

So absolutely, the investors are absolutely key in this process because she really needs to agree to proceed before the advisor can move on.

Richard Walker: 08:35 

Yeah, yeah. All right. You said this, like AI is simplifying things in certain ways. I think AI is introducing a whole lot of different types of risks that we have to pay attention to. One of the ones that I was just talking about at lunch is that you take somebody who's not a technologist who doesn't think about soc2 compliance or the regulatory pressures on the system, the technology, and they just design a system.

They just, hey, go build me a system. How are you guys addressing that kind of let's go really fast, but we got to put all the compliance pieces in place too, and manage that balance with AI.

David Reeve: 09:08 

Yeah, that's such a good question. And it's one that I can't completely answer. I don't know if anyone can completely answer that today because that market is evolving so rapidly. I kind of think about pre-cloud. And, you know, we were all amazed and, you know, ChatGPT was helping us do our jobs.

And then all all of a sudden comes this kind of vibe coding technology. And it changed the world. Again, I would say this, that we need to be extremely careful about what data we do and what data we do not. Inject into our AI platform. And so again, our business manages, you know, several hundred billion dollars of rollovers on behalf of our clients.

 And so it's really, really important that we leverage AI to make those systems faster, easier, more, you know, easier to comprehend. But some data can be fed into the AI model. A lot of data cannot. For example, all the books of record information will not be fed in. And, you know, you and I have heard lots about the businesses that are going to be marginalized by AI, and there are definitely those horizontal businesses.

 But when you have a verticalized business like we do, that has critical PII data and a book of record data, you have to be awfully selective about what you would and would not, you know, leverage into an AI model.

Richard Walker: 10:35 

Well, yeah, because we have regulatory pressure. We have government entities telling us what we can and cannot do, at least in terms of penalties and fines if we do it wrong. So we have to adhere to certain types of standards and rules. And so that leads me to thinking about a question my CTO asked last summer, and it was really a couple of questions in a series. One was, what's the definition of a software engineer if we have AI?

Like, what's the role going to become? But the other one was, if I have engineers building products with AI, how do I govern them? How do I ensure quality? How do I ensure they're following a certain standard and a set of rules? And I think that applies to AI in general.

 So are you guys thinking about that? Like, do you use AI with a certain type of boundary or rule set around it or guidelines around it, in your product or in your services? And it's just something you're evolving to.

David Reeve: 11:28 

Yeah. Well, I think and you asked the first question, will AI replace development in the world of software development? You know, I think it will replace a portion of the world of software development. You know, the kind of the junior level coding function that now is, is automated. You know, I think ultimately, and I've got three children in technology who are, you know, very keen in the world of development.

What I sort of see happening is that the function of software development and the function of product management, I think, will merge a little bit. I mean, it's absolutely incredible if one of our clients, you know, gives us a wish list of integrations that they want to see, and we just, you know, this happens on a weekly basis. I mean, 3 or 4 years ago, Rich, that would take us two months to take away, develop massive amounts of resources. In many cases, you just wouldn't do it. Whereas now that can be a 3 or 4 hour activity and you're coming back to the client and saying, you know, is this really what you're thinking about?

 So, you know, I think that merging product and software development is really, really interesting and I think will feed an immense amount of creativity into the development function. And I think that's super exciting for the function. On your second question, how do you make sure that AI quality is high enough? Frankly, I think the answer is AI, because so much of the quality assurance or even using AI to, to, you know, look into any bugs or defects in software. It just, it's, it's, it's, you know, as, you know, that's a bit of a needle in a haystack activity, kind of like compliance, just the ability to fast forward and use technology versus a human brain to, to, to, you know, do QA to find any issues is, is, is a real win.

 I think ultimately it requires a kind of, you know, human analysis to make the final call, but, you know, the ability to find that needle in the haystack to me is such a massive win and ultimately will drive a higher level of quality in the software that's being released.

Richard Walker: 13:49 

Yeah, I have a hard time thinking we're not going to have humans in the loop in a lot of these really high quality outcomes that we're looking for. I agree. And I know, I know the AI is getting more and more sophisticated, but it's still limited by the context. It's limited by what you inform it with, and it's limited by how you want it to behave. One of the things I've noticed is that AI often is seeking the fastest solution.

Is that the best solution? That depends on your perspective. But I think in certain cases it's not. So you have to kind of guide it in certain ways to break its normal behavior, to perform the way you want it to perform. When your customer said to you, we want zero clicks, was that an AI answer or is that a deterministic answer you could provide?

David Reeve: 14:35 

That was a question we were asked three years ago, you know, long before any kind of ambient advisor technology was even considered. But I'll never forget it because we were so, so proud of, you know, two clicks compared to, you know, I think our competitors might have been ten clicks. So we were just so proud of that. It was quite a, you know, kind of slap in the face to say, can you do zero? But you know what, Rich?

It's really interesting. We just had a board meeting a month ago where we presented our long term AI strategy, and that's exactly where it's going to zero clicks that, you know, you've got all of these conversations, whether they be telephone, email, text conversations that are now consolidated into an AI model and the advisor will just not be as required. I think the advisor will always be required to review the content, but rather than, you know, going through a complex application, she can now just review what the AI model has created. And yeah, whether we get to zero clicks, I think that's a, you know, I think that's the right moonshot for sure. But, you know, I mean, to me, external AI is all about in our world, driving advisor productivity.

 And I think it goes to an infinite level of improvement.

Richard Walker: 15:59 

You know, you're implying something that I think is really fascinating about the age we're in with AI. So forgive me. How long have you had your company?

David Reeve: 16:08 

Well, the company has been around for 34 years. And so I'm showing my ripeness there for sure. But, you know, to be honest with you, Rich, we've been in the US market for five years and we've been a pure SaaS business for about the same period of time. So, you know, of course, a three-decade-old business goes through a bunch of different chapters and transformations. And I kind of think of our business as being more of a decade-old business, but we have been around since 1992.

Richard Walker: 16:39 

So the reason I'm asking, I mean, my company is in its 24th year. And I think in order to last decades. You have to keep reinventing yourself. You have to change your business models, your practices, your infrastructure, your technology footprint, your innovation, your vision, all of it. It's a metamorphosis.

Just keeps unfolding and folding. But what you were implying, I think what you were talking about just a minute ago. In my view, AI is forcing so many of us, maybe all of us, to reconsider and reframe what our businesses are and should become. Because if you were given the hard question three years ago that you couldn't solve, and now AI is saying, hey, maybe it is possible to solve it, the only way to get there is to completely change how you view what you do internally. Are you guys going through that?

 Am I seeing this right?

David Reeve: 17:26 

We are. We are totally going through it. And it's an interesting exercise. And, you know, it's mostly fun and exciting, but it's not fun and exciting for everyone. So, you know, I think you really have to, from a leadership standpoint, take the approach that some people will grasp and run with it.

Other people kind of need to, you know, be helped along the way. So, you know, I think our team is doing an absolutely exceptional job on internalizing AI. And what that essentially means for us is just faster development. Our releases are just happening at a much higher pace, kind of similar to the example that I gave you. And then onboarding is dramatically faster in our business as well.

 So, you know, that kind of internal opportunity, I think hopefully most firms are grasping that today. I also think that, you know, it really, really supports young people in the business as well. You've got so many, you know, digital natives. The reality is there are not hordes of, you know, AI experts out there for any of us to hire. So really, you know, bringing in young people that are just digital by nature is really wonderful, which I love kind of going back to, you know, our long business tenures, I mean, the joy of working with and developing young people is such a wonderful thing.

 But listen, I would say I am just going to accelerate that for sure.

Richard Walker: 18:50 

Yeah, I heard some interesting stats. I don't know how true they are or how relevant they are at this moment, but to share what I heard, somebody said, only 16% of the human population is really using AI at all, has been introduced to it. It's still a massive amount of people who have not used AI. Maybe some never will. And out of that population, less than 2% really even understand how to use AI, and 0.5% are using it for software development.

David Reeve: 19:23 

That's interesting.

Richard Walker: 19:24 

Which seems astounding to me.

David Reeve: 19:25 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I hadn't heard that I had dinner on Friday with a group of business friends, and the subject was AI, and there was an AI expert that led the conversation. And he sort of gave the very opposite view that, you know, by 2035, 98% of functions will be performed by robots and by AI. So he's taking kind of the extreme, we'll call it perhaps the Elon Musk extreme view of where AI is going to lead us. You know, we have a long way to go to get there.

But, you know, when you think about a commercial AI and again, think about, you know, cloud code as being, you know, a whole new generation of AI, it really has not been on the market for long at all. So not surprising that we're seeing that degree of adoption. I mean, a flip side of that, Rich could be, you could say that just massive adoption in a short period. Because when you look at, you know, other forms of significant technology transformation, really in the last century, it's taken a lot longer to really be adopted than AI has in the last year or so.

Richard Walker: 20:37 

Yeah. And look, I'm also in a vacuum, an echo chamber. I'm around a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders and technologists. And so this is what we all talk about, obviously. But you get out in the real world and talk to others that are like what you can do, what, how. And so I do think some of those stats are meaningful, but it also points to what you were saying, like, you can't just go out and hire the person who knows everything about AI.

They're very rare to do it. So getting a younger generation who can learn it faster than the rest of us, who can dedicate their time and their brains to it, I think is a really savvy idea. You know, I want to go back a little bit more in terms of compliance. Where does your product focus on compliance like advertising, compliance, surveillance and reviews? What are you guys doing with our products?

David Reeve: 21:24 

So we've got a whole platform that supports, I'll call it Pre-trade compliance in the wealth management world. And Pre-trade is just something that's evolved with most Western regulators in the last 5 or 10 years where they say, you know, doing post-trade compliance isn't good enough. You need to perform these pieces of analysis to essentially ensure that it's in the investor's best interest. The one area that I'll just speak to, and I could go on with a bunch of things we do, but this, this, this $1 trillion that's rolling from four one to IRAs. I mean, that's a very compliance focused event.

And so what our software ensures is that the advisor, when recommending a rollover to the investor, has performed all the required function, comparing cost, comparing service, comparing fit, and then providing kind of that data for the firm to be able to put some guardrails around what should and shouldn't, you know, be approved from a rollover perspective. So, you know, this is a super regulated function that we're focused on notwithstanding a deregulatory agenda. You know, broadly in the industry, it's still a, you know, it's got a very bright light on it because you're often rolling out of a 401 K that is low to no fee into an IRA. That's a much higher fee. And so, you know, we've got to ensure that's in the investor's best interest before that happens.

 And so, you know it's a thorough analysis. Again, we have to do it in a simple manner. But you have to, you know, tick a bunch of boxes to ensure that you perform that analysis and, and ensure that disclosure goes to the client. So that's, that's really our focus and part of the business that we're really expanding quite, quite rapidly.

Richard Walker: 23:11 

Well, yeah, if $1 trillion is going to roll over every year, that's a massive, massive growth opportunity for advisors, right? I mean, we talk about generational wealth transfer. Is that part of it? Is that what is causing it as these rollovers?

David Reeve: 23:26 

Well, I think, you know, a lot of rollovers are driven by demographics. So yes. Is it you know, is it caused by the intergenerational wealth transfer? No. But both are factors driven by demographics.

Yes. And so, you know, you've got an aging population. You've got, you know, a lot of underserved investors as well. So the government is, you know, looking at, you know, different regulatory, you know, kind of initiatives to ensure that we've got a better served population from a retirement standpoint. And so, you know, I think demographics drive, you know, a lot of these factors, the intergenerational wealth transfer, I think is a huge, huge issue facing the industry.

 I mean, one of the pieces of data that we all know is that our children are not likely to be served by the financial advisors that serve us. And in many cases, that's really the issue of the advisor who's not, you know, really investing in relationships with that next generation. So it's a super complex issue. But interestingly, what we need to do is make advisors. You got all that happening.

 Meanwhile, you've got a huge de-population of advisors, as you know. Aging advisors age out and not a lot of I don't know about the young people, you know, not a lot of young people are becoming financial advisors. So there's a real need in the industry to make those advisors more productive so that they can, you know, serve, serve a greater number of investors. I think we all know by now that robo is not going to eliminate the advisor. It's going to make advisors more effective.

 But, you know, that comes back to how do you put technology in the hands of advisors to allow them to serve twice as many, three times four, you know, five times as many clients and do it in an effective manner. And, these are all generational wealth transfers, the kind of retirement anxiety and how to solve for that in a declining advisor population. And you and I both know technologies in the vortex of all of those issues, for sure.

Richard Walker: 25:37 

Yeah. So I don't want to go back to AI too much. Well, I always do. Actually, the robo advisor idea really would have been different if it was robo AI. But even then, I think AI is lacking the human capacity that we seek in our advisors and our relationships.

So it is an interesting time. And funny enough, when I was an advisor, I joined my mentor in his business and he wanted me to come in and buy him out over five years and take over his clients and work with their, their children. So, I was too young to understand the clients. I didn't have kids. I didn't have kids going through college.

 I wasn't at retirement age. I didn't have that kind of wealth. They did all that. But then I didn't like their kids. It was the other funny thing, like, how are we going to keep their kids if I don't even like working with them?

 Because they're different attitudes, different ideas, etc.? You know what we need, Dave? We haven't had a good movie out to prop up Wall Street and make it look sexy. I mean, go back to the 80s with Gekko Gordon. I mean, we 're just not that glorified anymore.

 And so how do we attract more people into this industry and help it grow that way?

David Reeve: 26:48 

It's, you know, you know, I think of the financial advisors who are my age and stage in their career. They've got some of the best careers of anyone. I mean, they completely control their flexibility. It's a, it's a great, you know, wealth creation model for them. You know, I remember when one of my kids was kind of revisiting her career journey and I mentioned an investment advisor to her.

And, you know, it's kind of like mentioning life insurance or something. So, I agree with you that I think human contribution towards helping people manage wealth effectively is more recognized, you know, and sort of call it that empathy EQ thing that you know will never be automated as that's more valued. You know, I think perhaps there's an opportunity to create more of a career path because I think it's a fabulous career. It's a really important societal contribution. And yet, you know, it seems a little bit out of fashion in the course of the last decade or so.

 But, you know, I think that'll reverse as opportunities present themselves. For sure.

Richard Walker: 28:01 

I think so. I also feel like the younger generation cares more about people than we ever have. Yeah. And so why wouldn't they want this calling? Why wouldn't they want to be part of, you know, this kind of world?

There's one other thing I'm going to present to you because I've been hearing this more and more. I'm hearing more firms talk about organic growth versus acquisition growth. There's always mergers and acquisitions. That's always the case. But I'm just stunned by how many people I've met in the industry talk to in the industry, where the words are really about how do I enable more organic growth?

 What do you think the answer is to that?

David Reeve: 28:36 

Well, organic growth, we know, is always the best growth. You probably know that in your business. I know that in my business you can acquire stuff. But you know the value of growing organically is great. The problem is it's a bit slow.

And by the way, organic growth rates in wealth are anemic. They're 3 or 4%. Of course, you've got higher performance, but generally speaking, it's extremely low. I mean, we happen to be focused on the biggest organic growth opportunity, not in the next five years and the next 2 or 3 decades, which is driven by this notion of rolling assets from a non advised, you know, entity called a 401 K into an advised entity. And all the reasons why, you know, that's, that's more important to the investor.

 We just talked about empathy and guiding. It's not about better stock picking. It's just about, you know, having human advice beside you. And so that's a massive growth opportunity. And yet, you know, it's a growth opportunity that traditionally has been full of friction through the process.

 So I would just speaking to a wealth executive this morning who, you know, they've kind of given up on rollovers as an opportunity until I took her through the math that said 1500 advisors, 20 rollovers a year, which is the average 300,000 average, it's $9 billion in assets that you'll add to your firm. So, you know, I think some of it is, is, you know, getting refocused around organic growth. I think inorganic growth, M&A growth are expensive. It obviously has cycles. And so, listen, I think a lot of firms will kind of reorient their business around, around organic growth.

 And, one of the biggest opportunities happens to be this rollover piece, which we're very lucky to be at the center of right now.

Richard Walker: 30:25 

Yeah. And if you can create less friction in the process, make it easier or as I say, remove roadblocks In the process that's going to make it easier for everybody. Dave. I'm getting to the end. So I have to wrap this up.

I really have enjoyed talking to you about this. Before I get to my very last question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?

David Reeve: 30:46 

Well, you know, we're super active on LinkedIn, and we've just surpassed 4000 followers, which we're proud of. So investorCOM on LinkedIn, there's a ton of thought leadership. Our team does a really exceptional job in the palm. As you mentioned, he early leads that effort.

So please follow us. And we've got lots of action on LinkedIn. I personally am pretty active on LinkedIn, my email address at investorcom.com or our website as well. Investorcom.com is a great way to find us. And yeah, I mean, I would say the number one channel that we focus on is LinkedIn.

Richard Walker: 31:26 

Nice. That's awesome. Good success there. All right. I always ask this question till the end because it's one of my favorites.

Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?

David Reeve: 31:41 

Oh, that's such a good question. Because, you know, at my stage, there's so many people that you've learned from, I would say the one person who started my career at IBM. I don't know if you've ever heard of that company, but it used to be the largest. I'm kidding. But you know, IBM used to be the current, you know, Amazon or Meta. And so I started my career there and I had a boss at IBM.

His name was Harry Winter. He's no longer with us, which is very sad. He was quite a guy, but he was an incredible balance of a leader that always put the customer first, and he was just an amazing guy in that regard. And but he also was so supportive of, of his team, of his team members and, you know, running a big corporation. There was lots of politics.

 And I'll just remember how he would sort of fast forward through customer issues or internal corporate issues and just, you know, kind of always do the right thing. So just his simplicity is also just a great guy and, you know, would be a bit of a backslapping guy, but he was a wonderful man and a great mentor to me.

Richard Walker: 32:48 

You know, I share this with you because my mentor was an IBM executive.

David Reeve: 32:52 

Come on.

Richard Walker: 32:53 

Yeah. No. 30 years plus at IBM, a lifer at IBM, he ended up doing the global business planning for IBM. And then I met him when he took over a subsidiary that he negotiated the purchase of and then became the leader of it. Yeah.

It's so fascinating what we've lost touch with IBM represented back in the 80s and 90s, you know.

David Reeve: 33:16 

Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly that sort of corporate commitment towards long longevity. And, you know, young people often view 3 or 4 years as being like we viewed 10 or 15 years, but that's a two way street. And IBM was a great example of that. And I cheer that company on whenever I see them in the news because it's just I have such great memories.

And I bet that's really that's a small world.

Richard Walker: 33:40 

Yeah. All right, I gotta wrap this up. So I want to give a big thank you to David Reeve, founder and CEO of InvestorCOM, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out his website at investorcom.com. And don't forget to check out Quik! at quickforms.com where we make processing forms easy.

I hope you enjoyed this discussion. We'll click the like button, share this with someone, and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Dave, thank you so much for joining me today.

David Reeve: 34:07 

Thank you Rich. It was a real pleasure.

Outro: 34:10 

Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.