Written by: Jordan Waxman | Managing Partner at HSW Advisors at HighTower
Financial advisors know better than anyone how hard it is to predict the future, especially when it comes to the markets. But by taking a closer look at emerging trends both within our industry and beyond, we can begin to get a sense of what lies ahead for the world of financial services—and prepare accordingly.
Futurist, author and founder of the Future Today Institute Amy Webb gave a fascinating talk at last week’s HighTower Apex summit on the future of financial services. Here are some of her insights on what’s coming, and how to adopt a more forward-looking mindset:
Trends represent fundamental shifts in human behavior, technology and information —and there’s more to them than meets the eye. For example, our fascination with building flying cars (Jetsons, anybody?) isn’t so much about flying as it about automation. To see the future of something, you must pay attention to the future of everything —so we must look outside of finance to identify which emerging trends will affect our business and clients. In tech and business, we’re training machines to make decisions for us using the values and ideals we’ve instilled in them. Algorithms don’t just crunch numbers: they’re already learning to emulate what humans do. Artificial intelligence will transform a number of industries, including financial services. In the future, jobs like investment banking sales, client relationship managers, portfolio managers and analysts will be done by machines. These advances will demand and create new jobs that don’t exist today , such as alternative currency specialists (think: Bitcoin), hybrid MBA-anthropologists, voice interface managers, and deep-learning quants.
For more insights from HighTower’s 2017 Apex summit, search the hashtag #HTApex on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
