About 1,000 financial advisors descended upon The Boca Raton resort in Boca Raton, Fla., this week for the fourth annual Wealth Management EDGE conference.
The three-day event kicked off on Tuesday with workshop panels focused on investing strategies, allocating to alternative investments, artificial intelligence and a focus on high net worth clients.
WealthManagement.com’s staff is leading panels throughout the conference as well as covering the event. Check back to this space often as it’s updated with highlights from the opening workshops.
Be Iron Man
Jump AI CEO Parker Ence
Parker Ence, who has been a tech CEO four times, talked about the state of AI and advisor-focused AI, including his own company, Jump, which was founded in mid-2022 and launched into the market in 2024.It won last year’s EDGE Demo competition, had five employees early on and 100 now, and now serves 10,000 advisors.
As the host, Focal co-founder and CEO John Connell said during his brief intro during the EDGE AI Assembly afternoon workshop: “You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to be AI aware.”
Ence, followed up in his presentation on how to think about AI, noting: “If you are not already implementing this [AI] you are already falling behind.” “The way we look at this: there is a lot more fun to be had building that Iron Man suit for advisors,” rather than repeating the development of some of the simpler use cases of the past.
Classification and prediction—based on what it is already familiar with—are what AI is best at right now. Generative AI is much harder.
Tax Planning Takes Time
(L-R): Philip Herzberg, Orian Williams and Drew Superstein
In a session addressing tax strategies for upper high-net-worth families, panelists discussed the advantages of tax loss harvesting. Drew Superstein, partner, Superstein PA, Certified Public Accountants, described one client who used the strategy to offset capital gains from a home sale of about $1.5 million.“
They worked with their financial advisor, and they were able to offset $1.5 million in losses to offset the gain, so they had almost zero taxable income,” said accountant Superstein. “They used the tax savings to put a little more money into that home.”
Such setups, however, take time, with Superstein noting that the strategy took about three years of planning.
