Jack Sharry: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us on this week’s special edition of WealthTech on Deck. Our industry has been slowly but surely transforming itself from an individual product and sales business to a more coordinated solutions and guidance business. Firms of all kinds are in the midst of acquiring tech and product capabilities and working toward coordinating those capabilities to produce better financial outcomes for consumers, for advisors, and for firms. We’re still in the early stages of this sea change but more firms are spending more time and resources to build comprehensive advice platforms capable of incorporating the entire scope of an investor’s household accounts and implement strategies to manage risk and minimize tax drag to produce better results. We’ve embarked on a series of conversations on our WealthTech on Deck podcast platform to focus on this critical path for financial services. Our new series is called WealthTech in the Weeds. We’ve already had a couple of podcasts air that you can find on our website. And our plan over the coming months is to get into the details with experts from across the industry around what it takes to build a coordinated and comprehensive advice system. All of our guests for this series are serious, experienced pros who are from the been there, done that school of getting stuff done. I’m very pleased to have longtime friend and colleague, Roger Paradiso, join us for today’s discussion. Roger is global head of advisor portfolio and technology solutions at Franklin Templeton. He is also executive chairman of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, a Franklin Templeton property. Those of you who have been around for a while you may know that Roger is the guy who invented the UMA. I know there are many authors of that, but I happen to know on good authority, he is the guy. He invented the unified managed account. So in his current role, Roger is acquiring, integrating, and coordinating various tech and product offerings on behalf of Franklin Templeton as they build out their comprehensive advice capabilities. Also joining our discussion is Mark Hoffman. Mark is the co founder and CEO of LifeYield. Mark and the LifeYield team have more experience at more different firms in building comprehensive platforms than anyone in the industry. For today’s discussion, we’re going to focus on connecting the dots and developing all that is needed to provide advice across a client’s full portfolio. Roger and Mark, welcome to WealthTech in the Weeds.

Roger Paradiso: Thanks, Jack.

Mark Hoffman: Great to be here, Jack. Thank you.

Jack Sharry: So, Roger, why don’t you describe at a high level what you’ve built and are continuing to build at Franklin Templeton. You have a lot going on, but it might be good to… people are reading about in the news. You guys have had some good press coverage. You’re putting together a lot of stuff. But why don’t you tell our audience about what’s going on in Franklin Templeton and the stuff you’re working on?

Roger Paradiso: Sure, Jack. Thanks. And thanks for having me. Love to be back here. Thinking about it from an industry’s perspective, I think one of the things that we from Franklin Templeton’s perspective as one of the largest asset managers, right, a $1.5 trillion asset management company that has been in the business for a very long time, and have been serving clients around the globe for a very long time. And, you know, the reality is, is the business is changing very dramatically, especially for asset management companies. And while our core belief and business is always around the manufacturing of great investment solutions and products, I do think if you really want to make remain relevant in the industry going forward, you need to do more than just that. You always need to have core products, great investment performance, a broad swath of solutions. But that’s just not enough these days. And so one of the things that Franklin Templeton continues to think about is what are those additional levels of service that we can provide to make us more relevant with our partners and our advisors? And that’s the way we’re always thinking about it is how do we make our advisors’ clients better? How do we give them better performance in different ways, better solutions to make their businesses more effective, and to be able to continue to help drive our advisors to be the best that they can be? And so that’s one of the things that we started to think about is just what does that look like? That was one of the first mandates that we were kind of challenged with, and it’s specifically around a separately managed account area of the marketplace. Although we clearly go around, you know, from alternatives to all different types of products. One of our first areas was thinking about is in a separately managed account space. And we really started to think about that in terms of what does that look like in five years? What does that look like in 10 years? And although I think it’s gonna look dramatically different than what it does today, you need to start to lay the groundwork today to have the proper infrastructure in place, the proper technology and the proper solution, so that you can continue to evolve and grow off of that. And so that’s the way we started to work with it. To us, you know, it clearly is built around personalization, customization, and ultimately curation, when you continue to evolve in this and so those are the, the areas that we recognize as important as clients are dealing with the rest of their lives that way, whether it’s the way they shop, whether it’s the way they set their travel schedule, or their car services, everything is at your fingertips. It’s built around what your needs are, and should be addressable. And so that’s the way we started to think about that in the separately managed account space. And, and so we recognize that, that in order to fulfill that, to make us most relevant, we need to be thinking about, how do we go about doing that? And so we always think about it as, do you buy something? Do you partner with someone? Or do you build something? And all three carry different characteristics with them. All three have challenges to them and rewards to them. And I think each situation is different. There’s no one common way that we think about as the right answer. It’s really about what are we really trying to solve for, and in that, what’s the best way to be able to go about it? So there were some that we’ve made big purchases on. And so we’ve done that with our acquisition of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management that has a Canvas platform, which is a custom indexing platform. When we looked at that, we recognized that that technology was at an advanced state to what we saw in the rest of the industry, not just from a UI and UX experience. But more importantly, from an investment experience, their roots are dated back into a quantitative investment team. And when you’re really thinking about how can you add value, it’s going to come from an investment mind built into a technology that’s relevant to today’s standards. And so they met that criteria. And we made that purchase, and we’re having some great success with that. But we recognize that it can’t stop there, that there are other types of solutions that are needed and will continue to be needed, especially in different types of market environments. And when you’re dealing with things like increased volatility, or you know, clients that have other types of problems, they may be trying to solve for low cost basis positions, concentrated positions, you have to be thinking about, well, how do you reduce risk in portfolios and/or how do you increase cash flow, and you can do that through options capabilities. And so we purchased an options trading team to become part of Franklin Templeton. And now they are considered to be Franklin’s most managed option strategies team that are, are capable of building an independent option strategies, we’re combining them with some of our investment strategies as a product. And then we even explored other areas, you know, areas that maybe aren’t as mainstream yet, but great in terms of ways that we could educate ourselves, stay on the forefront and be relevant, and making sure that we’re not missing something along the way. We made a partial investment in a company called Eaglebrook, which is basically a crypto TAMP provider. So a great way for advisors to work with their clients. Give them a full service in terms of from account opening, to manage your selection of separately managed crypto portfolios, to the actual custodians in holding up those assets there. And so, a great way for us to be able to participate in something that’s unique. So those were three investments that we had made over the shorter term. But we recognize that there’s a much wider network that we have to continue to work with. And Franklin Templeton has continued to make investments in multiples of those, and we’re bringing a lot of those together.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So, Mark, you’ve worked with Roger on a few projects. And I know you’re a fan of the work Roger and Franklin Templeton are doing, including the work LifeYield Does with Franklin Templeton’s goals optimization engine as well as with AdvisorEngine, another property that’s part of the Franklin Templeton set of offerings. So your thoughts on what’s happening at Franklin Templeton? I know that you’re a fan, so why don’t you weigh in?

Mark Hoffman: Yes, absolutely. Well, Franklin Templeton really has assembled all the right pieces to create customized strategies and advice for financial advisors and advisors to produce solutions. So an example would be income generation, Roger listed a few downside risk protection, tax optimization, but within their world class investment products and model portfolios, and really each property that Franklin has represents, or presents an on ramp for advisors, starting with scalable portfolio customization, including the direct indexing that you get with Canvas. The goals optimization engine that you mentioned was really financial planning, including retirement planning, and then the fully loaded advisor platform at AdvisorEngine that has CRM, performance reporting, multi custodial capabilities, surrounding customized investment strategies for advisors that use it. So it’s not your father’s money management firm anymore with just closed in mutual funds. It’s… Franklin is supplying full fledged custom strategies and advice to support an investor’s complete range of needs.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, and one other thing we forgot which we should never forget because we… it all started with Franklin Templeton, I think it was 12 years ago, our Social Security optimization tool is used by thousands of advisors every year, it’s part of what the retail/wholesale side of Franklin Templeton has used for a very long time to help help advisors help their clients maximize their Social Security benefits. So we take it for granted, because it’s been around so long, and it’s helped so many people. But that’s yet another tool that we’ve done together. So… talk a little bit about that. So as you know, the industry has long been focused on individual products, counts, tools, and solutions. But we’ve not distinguished ourselves for coordinating it all to improve the investor experience and enhance their financial outcome. So what we are seeing is the challenges in coordinating all these elements, we’re seeing a shift at this point toward a more coordinated effort. And what what we would say about all that is that financial planning is good. But how do you implement it? We all, I think, would all agree with that. And how do you do that over time, not not only initially, but over time. So fill us in on where you see things going across the industry and what you’re thinking about at Franklin Templeton, because you’re assembling the tools. And I also know you’re thinking about how you connect, coordinate, make things happen so it’s easier for the advisor to implement and create better portfolios and solutions?

Roger Paradiso: Yeah, I think it’s a complex one, right? Because there’s so many different pieces when you’re talking about trying to not only build these solutions, but to manage them over time for individuals. And so this is an ongoing process. And I think an ongoing evolution within our industry. For us, we’re not thinking about it in terms of trying to be a full fledged provider of all technologies or all solutions. We look at ourselves as an investment company, we’re really trying to enhance the investment propositions and solutions that we can deliver via technology that can make advisors and clients more effective. So in many ways, I think technology today is allowing that to happen at a much more rapid pace, I think that there was always this understanding that there was a closed environment, and everyone had to kind of build their own closed environment. And when you came into it, you stayed in it, and you were destined to whatever that was. Today, I think just with the explosion of new technologies and capabilities of being able to connect them together much more seamlessly, I think we’re starting to see that making us more effective. So we can build and/or buy or partner with these different technologies, have them API based, and be able to connect them together uniquely, in terms of not having to use the entire proposition. In many cases, we’re just using pieces of the proposition, like in our Canvas portfolio, or technology, where there’s a great transitioning tool that’s in there, many clients come to us and say we’d love to just gain access to the transition tool to be able to help us to solve for a piece of our problem. And so that’s where I think the uniqueness in the industry is coming is that, for the first time that I’ve seen, because of the ability to be able to integrate different technologies, and you guys are a big picture of that, like LifeYield is being a piece of of that you can easily connect, solve for the problems that you’re trying to solve for, and bring together a unique proposition that you could never do in the past. And that’s allowing people to become… a company to become much more nimble, much more effective, and actually delivering a very high level of of content and the userware to be able to work with.

Jack Sharry: Sure. Roger, appreciate that. And Mark, I know you’ve done a lot of work not only across the board, but certainly with Roger of late where we’ve had some conversations with some well known firms around some solutions they’re trying to solve for. And while we can’t identify who those firms are, we can say that there’s some big opportunities for people that, Roger mentioned partnering, as firms have their areas of expertise, they can work together to help create solutions for the firms and ultimately, the advisors and clients we serve. So maybe you want to weigh in on that, Roger… and then maybe you’d want to weigh in on that, Mark. And Roger, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that as well. So fill us in, Mark.

Mark Hoffman: Well, it gets back to what Roger is identifying. So as the core capability, any asset manager, investment manager has to have good returns, good products and, and have had them and, and continues to support and have them. And then building off of that, there’s the trend that, you know, advisors need solutions, and the solution is more than just the investment product, they absolutely need that. But they need a solution, which can often be in part attained by technology. And so an example would be you’ve got some investments, but as Roger said, maybe there’s assets that are illiquid or get rather large and they’re not diversified. They’re just… it’s a locked position or has a certain timeframe. And you need to be able to manage the risk around that for the client and then you know, once the time is up, then you can diversify some of those assets. But what do you do with it? And often it means there’s more than one moving part. There might even be, you know, there could be multiple accounts that are involved in the process of helping manage a particular client’s wealth and then the client. There’s different age groups. And so different age groups beget different challenges. An accumulating client that’s young and just starting to save and is trying to maximize their contributions is different than somebody who’s approaching retirement and needs to know, what’s the advice that they have, what should they do, how should they position their assets? How should they organize their portfolio? And then of course, there’s retired clients who are generating the income off of all their savings and investments. And that’s also a complex problem. So, you know, these solutions need to have customized views to benefit the clients and their particular needs. It’s a fun challenge that we’re all… that we all work on together.

Roger Paradiso: We’re seeing it in all different ways, Jack. I mean, it’s really interesting as you start to bring all of these solutions to our partnering firms, just the different levels of engagement, I would say, you know, I expected it to be more towards the RIA network, and that you could do more directly with them, because they needed the resources. But it’s going well beyond that, it’s going up to the aggregators, it’s going up to the independents, it’s even in the wire houses where, you know, many of them are focused on very specific projects and have very big projects going on, and that they’ll look to be able to join on with some partners to do some interesting side roles in terms of trying to solve problems that they maybe, you know, didn’t have as their core, but of interest in in terms of being able to tackle on the sidelines. And so from some of the midsize firms, we’re seeing really interesting combinations when we’re going in from an asset manager’s perspective, able to work with them from some of their investment professionals, but also add in our investment professionals and help them develop as an outsourced CIO model allocation models that meet their requirements based off of what their CMEs may be saying, or as well as their views may be in the marketplace, but we can help them with our multi asset class team. In developing those asset allocations, we can add value in terms of manager selection, in terms of those portfolios for them, not only ours, but others, third party managers as well to fulfill what they’re trying to accomplish. We’ve also inserted within that, then you’ve taken those models, and we’ve offered them our portfolio analytics technology, our PAT group, which is an analytical tool. And we’ve been able to post those models up now on our portfolio analytical tool, where their advisors can now see their models and then play with them and do some analytical work of other views in that. We’ve then also attached our, our consultation team or our CFA team, where they’re actually now working with the advisors to help think about converting their portfolios into these firm level portfolios. And then connecting that even further to Canvas for straight through implementation and execution. And you think about that. It’s just the power, that that was custom built for that individual client. That’s just pieces of what we have to offer. But that’s what met their needs. And we were able to be able to piece them together, to be able to solve for that. Others that you know, I know, we’ve worked on together, Jack and Mark, I think had been really interesting when you think about organizations that may be trying to solve for unique problems, when you’re trying to think about restricted stock, and how do you take that restricted stock when it is available to be sold? And how do we think about liquidating those stock plans for individuals, then be able to set up a strategy where that money can then automatically funnel into the solution to be able to capture those assets. And then think about how do you effectively manage that over a longer period of time, and do that effectively in a tax managed offering. And so unique opportunities, things you would never think of, but ways that you can really start to leverage all of our capabilities.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, it’s interesting, I’m gonna ask Mark to weigh in on this in a moment, because we had a recent conversation with a firm that had a set of circumstances, issues, challenges, they wanted to sort out and Roger has all sorts of capabilities at the Franklin Templeton shop in terms of model management and very sophisticated ways to manage those models. LifeYield, of course, has a tax-smart multi account manager. And we do tax optimization across different different holdings, different account types, et cetera, et cetera. And you kind of put those together. And you could come up with some really interesting stuff. So maybe you want to, Mark, you want to weigh in, at least at a high level, we don’t want to get into too much detail or reveal too much. But point of all this is that just taking what each side does well combining them in a capability with a with a firm to show them how to really improve outcome for clients and, and frankly, everyone else in the food chain. So, Mark, you want to weigh in on that?

Mark Hoffman: Well, I sort of look at the work that we’ve done with Roger. He’s really supplying… his firm supplies a lot of the content, obviously, there’s technology that supports that content, but he’s supplying important content. You know, as well as some of that. And LifeYield, obviously, we’re really a technology company, a technology firm. And we’re supplying, you know, some of that connective tissue, if you will, to all the complex systems that a firm needs to operate, you have to coordinate and connect the investment strategy across a firm’s multiple programs and accounts to get and realize the full benefit. And we basically have lived in a single account, single product world for so long where the thinking is rather siloed. And, as Rogers alluding to, to solve some of the problems that are out there in today’s world, we have to break down some of those silos and really coordinate the content and coordinate it with using technology. And then the nice thing about that, in some ways, is that you can actually measure the benefits because everything’s more digitized, more digital, you can actually show the value. And say that, here’s the work that we’ve done. And this is why it’s worth paying us some fees to do it, because you’re saving a lot more.

Jack Sharry: So really what we’re talking about is kind of an overlay situation. LifeYield providing the overlay. And then Roger the depth of solution far deeper than anything I’ve ever seen since I’ve been around in terms of what they’ve amassed. So what’s interesting, as we move toward a UMH, multi account, unified managed household kind of environment, there’s some really interesting things I think, in the offing in terms of putting all that stuff together. And it really requires, or it’s necessary anyway to do this as partners as opposed to trying to do it all yourself. You just can’t. It’s too complex, too much going on and all the rest. So it’s interesting times ahead. One of things I wanted to have you weigh in here, Roger, because you have all these capabilities, you’ve touched on many of them, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you refer to this as the wheel of wealth in terms of all the different capabilities. Why don’t you just talk a little bit about that? Why you’re doing that? I certainly know why, because we’ve talked about it a bunch. But where are you going with all that? What is it that you’re trying to achieve ultimately?

Roger Paradiso: Yeah, and maybe just to touch on that last topic. Because I think that the whole idea of UMH and tax management services, really complex, right, because I think that there, there are different levels of it. And I think it’s the term is used pretty widely in the industry and can mean lots of different things for different situations. And so when I think about at the individual account level, I think one of the cool things as this business evolves, is the question is, in one way, I think about it as is what we’re doing, just because we’re doing it, is it really right, right? Just because we’re… it’s normal for us, does that make it the right way to do it? I’m always questioning that in my head. And so one of the things that I just keep thinking about again, and I go back to this is we created, and you said in the beginning, Jack, creating the UMA, right. And part of that, I look at it as that was like one of the coolest things because it was solving a problem, which was you know, at that time, do we really need to do that today? Time has evolved again, it’s 20 years later, and is this idea of of being able to have to segregate each manager in an individual account, and be able to show each manager and its reporting of it, and allowing each manager to do its thing independently, is that really the best solution? And I almost think that there’s a next evolution here, that’s really starting to happen. And that is, do we really need sleeve level accounting? Do we really need sleeve level management? Yeah, we do want the integrity and we want the intellectual capital from the managers. So we don’t want to stop that. But do they need to be segregated? And does that really allow for the best outcomes in that? And so I look at this as is, you know, when we’re trying to bring different investment solutions together, it’s not about just trying to piece managers, it’s really about what are the outcomes that we’re trying to really achieve? What’s the type of tracking error that we want to be able to establish to whatever index or custom index that I’m building? And then how do I stay within those parameters, which whatever solutions that I want to bring together, indexes, active managers, combinations of them together, that to me is where it started to move and let it be in a single account. So that you can do that and you don’t need to break up pieces. Because it’s really, does the client really care about the pieces? I don’t think they really do. They’re worried about the outcome and what you’re really trying to achieve. If you can do that, then you can really start to effectively manage that account, especially… specifically around taxes, and the capabilities of being able to do that. And if you can then do that and actively tax manage daily throughout the day, and be as effective and be nimble as you can to be able to help that account be able to achieve the best after tax return. You can then be really able to add value within that and then you layer on to that the second layer of what you guys spend so much of your time on is now asset location and how are you effectively being tax sensitive, and tax managing among all of those pieces to be able to do that? Well, that’s not something that we’re going to be doing and capable of doing. That’s when you need to bring in a partner firm that could really allow you to be able to be much more holistic with this solution, and then be thinking about which securities, and what account structures, and how do you be most effective when you’re thinking about it at a second layer. And so I think that’s where we’re going, as we’re becoming, we can start to break down a lot of these walls that we created for, you know, whichever reasons of the past, and really start to think about it much more holistically about what’s the right way to get to the best outcome for the client at the end of that.

Jack Sharry: So, Mark, I’m sure you have some thoughts on all that, this is where you spend your time. So why don’t you… what do you have to offer above and beyond what Roger had to say?

Mark Hoffman: Well, I mean, it’s not going to be more to offer, it’s more supportive in that we have a chief investment officer, Paul Samuelson, on our team, and he’s run many simulations for clients over investor scenarios over the years. And he’s done so, getting to what Roger is saying an asset location and combining multiple registrations to really try to get the best after tax return for the client. Because if you make every account look the same, you’re not really going to get the best outcome for that client, to Roger’s point. And generally, we found that in investor scenarios, investors who have between a half a million and $7 million of investable assets, when they’re going to transition into retirement and using their investment assets to provide the bulk of their retirement income. It’s important to coordinate the different accounts. And we found that the largest component of tax alpha really is asset location. And it can increase the after tax balance of the portfolio by 10% year over year, on average, both in good and average market conditions. And in poor market conditions, you know, often saves a couple of allows the portfolio the balance to last a couple of years longer. And there’s been research done by a number of firms Morningstar, Ernst and Young, and Vanguard that are all supportive and that can, to boil it down as far as a better outcome is that it can often mean several million dollars more in after tax balance for that client, which they can use as more income or they can use as a bequest.

Jack Sharry: Yep. So Roger, why don’t we get back to the question about the wheel of wealth, I know you guys have put together a lot of stuff and you’ve touched on a few of the things, but talk a little bit about the strategy behind that, because it seems pretty comprehensive, you’re really looking at a variety of ways to improve outcomes for clients. And ultimately, over time, the stuff will all get coordinated. And it’s all a work in progress, I grant you. But why don’t you talk a little bit about what you’re putting together, why you’re doing it, where you guys think you’re going with all that? It’s pretty impressive.

Roger Paradiso: Yeah, I think it’s you know, it is Franklin Templeton’s, ultimately, custom wealth solutions. And that’s what we’re doing is we’re bringing all of these pieces together under one spot so that we can think about this much more holistically than than we traditionally have. And so one of the great things that we talked about earlier is solving problems for our partner firms and their advisors and clients. Franklin Templeton has accumulated a tremendous amount of of these solutions over time. And we’ve really been able to now bring them together as a single solution of the way that we can talk about how we’re partnering with our partnering firms. So when we start to talk about with our clients, like what’s important to them, and how can we be helpful to them, we hear things like oh, customization, or tax management, or risk or outcome based goals and outcome based solutions. And we start to think about, well we have these solutions in house. And so that’s the way we’re positioning it now is what’s important to you as our client, where are you on your journey? And how can we become more relevant to you in terms of helping you along with where you are, and that may be in a single solution that we have, or it may be in multiple solutions that we have. And so when you think about the brands, they’re just amazing from Canvas to Managed Options trading strategy group, GOE, you guys had mentioned GOE, is a goals optimization engine, a way of doing an accumulation and decumulation. Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions, which is our multi asset class team that can help with OCIO work and multi asset class, we have the portfolio analytics tool, which is the analytics behind individual funds and/or models that you can develop and it’s a great tool that advisors can use. We have the Franklin Templeton Academy, which is there to be able to help with education and be able to help position whatever it is we’re working with. We have Fiduciary Trust, First Trust and Estate Services. We have a donor advise fund for philanthropy. And we have investments in companies that can focus on our old business and how do you integrate them more effectively from a technology perspective and bring great alternatives into different types of structures and combine them with other solutions. And so that’s just an example of the types of solutions that we have and the brands that come along with that. And so we’ve now brought them together so that we can position them more strategically with our partner firms, help them become better from whatever position that they’re in and use the pieces that make sense to them. And then what we’re doing is, is really looking at each one of these pieces, and saying, each one should be able to stand alone. And so each one runs as their own business, we allow them to be able to be nimble, keep the entrepreneurial spirit, focus in on what it is that they really are specialists at and allow them to continue to grow their piece of the pie. And then I have a small team, which is myself and a COO and a CTO and a project manager. And we are now sitting above these or around these, to now allow them to continue to remain nimble and allow them to become the best that they can be. And we in a way become an interface into Franklin, the larger entity. And so that allows us to be able to make sure that we’re not inundating any of these companies, it’s just natural, when a smaller company becomes part of a larger company, it typically goes bad, because not for anything… anyone’s wrong reason. It’s just too many people want to get the access to them, you’re putting too many demands on them, you need this from tech, you need this from finance, you need this from legal. And before you know it, they lose focus on what’s important. And so we built a structure where, I call myself and our team, we’re the moat, were there to be able to protect them. And to be able to then be able to see where the interface anything that’s happening between us comes between comes through one of those four people, and that we can control that and allow them to continue to act independently. And then each one’s got to be able to show, you know the success of each of those. And so each one needs to remain relevant in their space and continue to, to grow. And they become part of as you call it, the wheel of wealth, Jack, they become part of that equation. And so each one is playing their role to be able to help the solutions that we want to be able to bring to our partner firms. And you can measure them in different ways. Because we can think about this as in terms of not everyone has to be profitable as a standalone. Because at the end of the day, we want to do it from a relationship standpoint, but they have to make sure that they’re remaining relevant, and is a top tier player within their space. And that’s the way we’re thinking about it is that that allows us to really be able to do something, I think that’s really innovative, really cutting edge. And with the support of a company like Franklin, allowing that to truly take place. I think that this is positioning Franklin in a very unique position in the way that we can better partner with our firms, our partner firms, and that we can become much more relevant for them in the future.

Jack Sharry: Roger, that’s great. I’ve been… you know, you and I have talked about this a good bit. I think what you’ve put together is really just awesome, frankly, and, Mark, the role that LifeYield plays, we do this in a variety ways. A lot of people don’t fully understand what LifeYield does, because we… it depends on the firm, it depends on the circumstance. But we partner with all sorts of firms in really helping them connect and coordinate all the capabilities they’re putting together. So why don’t you talk a little bit about the role that LifeYield plays in terms of as an overlay, as an optimizer, as someone who’s really looking to generate tax alpha, but maybe for our audience that may not be familiar in this kind of context as it pertains to what Roger and others are doing around building capabilities, but then ultimately you got to put… make them all work together. So why don’t you fill us in on the role that you see LifeYield playing now and then on into the future?

Mark Hoffman: Sure, well, philosophically, even though we’re a technology company, we think like Roger just described that he’s organized his whole group and team into, and that’s because we serve clients that all have different needs, the high level goal is the same, we want to improve the benefit for the end investor, we want to do it in a way that our clients can make money doing so. That’s why you’re in business. But we’re… my point is that we’re very flexible when it comes to working with our different clients, you really have to be. So some of the properties and some of the things in the wheel of wealth that Roger talked about, we’ve been called into partner, have been partnering like you had said, Jack, with Social Securities since 2014. And built a great relationship… you know, when you build a good relationship with a partner, then you get more opportunities. And so we’ve integrated as Franklin wanted to have an accumulation and then a retirement planning tool, which was GOE, we became an engine within that to do a multiperiod analysis in a tax-smart way and, you know, be the guts of that. We’re white labeled with our technology. And, you know, we’re now having discussions on other things that we can help with other components, other things, other projects and things that Franklin’s interested in, including some of the tax-smart withdrawal capability we have. And one of the things that LifeYield always tries to do whatever the project might be, is we really try to quantify the benefit of what we’re doing. So another example with, this particular example is with a large wirehouse, we worked with them for two years on a multi account project. And when the project went live, the client payback in terms of tax savings surpassed the cost of the project in 10 months. So it took, and this is… these are good metrics, it took longer to actually implement and execute than it did to have a payback. But that takes, the firm has to have the strength and the resolve to say this is going to work and we got the right people on it. And oftentimes, you have good outcomes both for the firm, and certainly in this case, for the for the investor clients.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So, gents, this has been really enjoyable as always talking to you guys, you’re leaders in your respective and collective field, so much appreciate that. But, as we look to wrap up, anything you want to share with our audience, as far as some key takeaway. Roger, do you want to kick it off?

Roger Paradiso: I mean, to me, it’s our business is evolving fast, technology is becoming much more powerful. And clients are demanding much higher levels of a relationship as well as a solution. And we stand the greatest opportunity in my 30 years in this business for the next 10 years ahead. So I’m looking forward to it.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. Mark, how about you?

Mark Hoffman: Yeah, I’d say there’s, I agree with Roger, there’s so much opportunity right now, as complex as it is. I mean, we see the retirement market itself evolving at a hastened pace, the Federal Reserve came out with some analysis that said that the percentage of retired Americans was fairly stable at 15% until 2008. And as of last year, it’s now 20% of the American population. So really, as research that shows that the retirement assets are, in 2022, about 31.5 trillion, that’s a lot. But they’re projected to grow to 47 trillion in 2028, which is an increase of 16 trillion in just 16… in six years. So what that really says is that this retirement advice, the holistic advice, the wheel, and the choices that the client has to customize what their solution is to get a better outcome. It’s all very key for any of any firm in the wealth management space to be aware of, and to know that they have to play a useful role within that wheel, however they fit. They have to find what they’re best at doing. And they have to articulate that and express it and then execute on it. It’s all about execution.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So, Roger and Mark, it’s been a great pleasure to spend this time with you, I’ve enjoyed our conversation, as always. I’ve enjoyed it very much. For audience, this is another podcast in the series of WealthTech in the Weeds. We’re going to be announcing more guests shortly but other names that you will recognize and people that are busy doing what we just talked about. If you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we’re doing here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. Mark and Roger, thanks again. This was great. I really enjoyed it.