Some 2,300 financial advisors, including investment managers as well as independent and dual-registered advisors are expected to arrive in Hollywood, Fla., this week for Pershing’s annual INSITE conference.
The conference is one of the industry’s largest, with over 130 presenters and some 50 break-out sessions. Themes of the conference this year are the ways technology is changing the way investors relate to their financial service providers, the millennial generation and how the rise of women as both primary earners and financial decision makers will change the advisor-client relationship.
Top speakers at the conference include Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state and current professor at Stanford’s business school. Rice recently cancelled a scheduled commencement address at Rutgers University after students there protested, pointing to her involvement in decisions leading up the Iraq war. Pershing chief operating officer Lisa Dolly will moderate a Q&A with Rice.
Wharton School of Business marketing professor Jonah Berger will speak on what he calls “social epidemics,” or how some things become popular when others do not. Berger’s recent best-selling book Contagious: Why Things Catch On attempts to show how social influence, or peer influence, shapes the products we buy and how anyone can use the principals of social engagement to create widely adopted messages.
Also on tap to present a keynote presentation is Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X-Prize Foundation. Diamandis knows how incentives motivate behavior, and how innovation is used to solve problems. A Silicon Valley veteran, his foundation began by holding a competition to motivate entrepreneurs to come up with a workable plan for private spaceflight. Rounding out the Keynote presenters is Susan Greenfield, a neurophysiologist who will speak on how technology impacts our brains, and former New York Yankee coach Joe Torre, the author of Joe Torre’s Ground Rules for Winners: 12 Keys to Managing Team Players, Tough Bosses, Setbacks and Successes.
Beyond the keynotes, Sameer Jain, the chief economist for American Realty Capital, will speak on the case for creating income with alternative investments (like REITs). Robert Ewing, the co-head of U.S. equities at Putnam Investments and Steven Lipper, investment strategist at Lord Abbett, will give an overview of the stock market. Mark Tibergien, the CEO of Pershing Advisory Solutions, will also present on the state of the industry.
Attendees will also get a chance to review Pershing’s enhanced NEXT360 platform and an introduction to Pershing’s new Retirement Plan Network, the Pershing Turnkey Management Account, and the new NetXInvestor Portal, an investment portal meant to appeal to millennial clients. Advisors will also learn more about Pershing’s FundVest 200, a list of mutual funds selected by Lockwood Advisors that seeks to bring “institutional-level research” to fund selection for retail advisors.