Podcast: The Road to UMH.

Jack Sharry: Hello everyone and welcome. Thank you for joining us for this week's edition of WealthTech on Deck. As our listeners know, I'm a long time student and advocate for the confluence of digital and human advice. I study and share what I learned from industry leaders about the dynamics of advisory platforms and what it takes to make them work for consumers, advisors, and firms. And I'm fascinated by understanding what the future holds for financial advice as all of the above come together. And as you may also know, if you listen to our podcast, I often talk about the privilege of speaking to the best and brightest minds in our industry. Today we get all of the above on these topics and they happen to come together in my colleague J. Womack. J. was the strongest advocate behind SEI acquiring LifeYield, which occurred last December. He leads our business unit and is doing some amazing work on many fronts across SEI. As we've worked together over the past nine months, I've found J. to be one of the smartest people I know. This is especially true when it comes to all the different aspects of what we will talk about today, trends around digital and human advice, advisory products and platforms, and what the future holds. But it's not just about knowing stuff. J. knows his stuff for sure. It's about making complex things happen, connecting a lot of dots in a simple, accessible way. J. and I are going to talk specifically about the road to the Unified Managed Household, or UMH, what it looks like, something he's been working on for many years and it's something he continues working every day. We're coming to understand there is a step before UMH that many firms are now engaging with, and that is the multi-account UMA. We'll talk a good bit about that and what the distinction is between a multi-account UMA and a multi-account UMH. J., welcome to WealthTech on Deck. I'm so glad to have you on the show.

J. Womack: Thanks Jack, it's a pleasure to be here.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, we'll have some fun. So J., let's start with you sharing with our audience at a high level about your career history leading up to what you're doing now. So we'll talk more about what you're working on presently in a moment. Given your background, there's little doubt in my mind you would be one of the revolutionaries changing the face of wealth and asset management, retirement and annuity. So fill us in.

J. Womack: Sure, happy to do it. So you know, Jack, I often tell people I was born and raised in California to parents that were a realtor and a financial advisor. My father has worked for New York Life forever. He's semi-retired now. So I grew up in and around financial services. I'm a diehard USC Trojan. I went to college there in the early 2000s. And I graduated and went into aerospace and defense, which was a formative period for me when I think about my philosophy related to execution. I had a lot of fun in my early roles, really wearing this kind of a dual hat between engineering and business, which is sort of always been something I've done, I kind of live in the world of the technical but I'm also very commercially oriented. So I got a chance to work with teams that were designing gas tanks for spaceships that sit behind a lot of the tech that you see today. I got a chance to work on the Global Hawk program where, it was unmanned spy plane, high sensitivity stuff. I was actually there on site when they found Saddam Hussein and all the folks who had classified access found out earlier than the rest of us did. But it was an exciting time and I really learned again a lot about programmatic execution. I got an offer one day to go and work at one of our acquired companies. It was going to be a promotion, a lot more pay, at least on paper. But when the offer came over, HR said, hey, we'll give you the job, but not the title or the pay. So I went home, studied for the GMAT, ended up doing well and eventually attended Wharton where I studied finance. And after Wharton, entered the financial services industry, which is really, I'd say where my story related to SEI starts. I had a great time at Wharton and I started working in institutional investments actually. I joined a boutique firm to launch an environmentally focused hedge fund to funds. Unfortunately, we weren't successful. I have this knack for graduating at the worst times, it seems, you know, in 01 from undergrad and then 07 from grad school. But what that time gave me as the market was sort of experiencing a lot of turbulence was the ability to really understand how to take something from concept all the way through execution from an investment product perspective. And, you know, I do a lot of that today. I'd say the global financial crisis post-business school, Jack, was a pivotal moment in my career because it really started me down this path thinking about how individual investors make critical financial decisions. So many people out of fear sold out of their 401ks and ended up having to extend the amount of time they were working, fundamentally altered their expected quality of life in retirement. And it was really born from what we call these behavioral errors in finance. I got a call from a gentleman, Bernard Delray, who was working with the then chair of the Berkeley economics department and said, hey, I think you're the exact right person to help me solve this problem related to how people make decisions under conditions of risk and how we use that in advice. And I said, great, I'm game, all ears. I ended up leaving my institutional investment roots going the FinTech route. I was the first full-time employee at that startup. That was an exciting time. I mean, we literally built the company from concept to run rate revenue of about 5 million when I left after they inked an anchor client, which was exciting. We were global in nature. I was working with some of the most complex financial service firms across the globe actually in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, continental Europe broadly, the US obviously. And I got a chance in that role to actually understand a lot about the digital journey that firms were going down in wealth management. Startup life, as you know, Jack, is a turbulent one. It was 18 hour days, lots of excitement. And I wanted a little bit less excitement. So I answered a LinkedIn post about a role at SEI in their advisor business. I really wanted to step back onto a larger platform and drive strategic change. It's one of the things that excites me as painful as it can be. It's also the most exhilarating, particularly when you look back. So I joined SEI to transform the investment solutions in the advisor business. We were closed architecture. I built out our managed account programs, launched our first ETFs, started our direct indexing offering and helped to grow that, getting a chance to partner with some of the best and brightest across product, investments, operations. I spent some time then at an enterprise level as chief product officer, really focused on helping establish process by which we can identify, prioritize, and measure those investments that we're making and go to the market with a comprehensive story and set of capabilities that meet the needs of clients across the segments we serve. 

Jack Sharry: So what I'm hearing, J., is really what you started as a rocket scientist, that's what I just heard, I think earlier on. You decided as some things didn't go the way you might have liked early in your career, you decided to go to business schools. So you went to Wharton to figure out finance and all that's around it. So you took your rocket science skills, you took your finance skills, you applied them, institutional investing, and then later into a startup and winds up at, it sounds to me, because you wound up as the Chief Product Officer at SEI. Taking all that background, applying it to what is a very complex organization as I've gotten to know and settled into SEI. They do so much so well in so many different ways and a lot of it very technically oriented. Seems to me that you came to the right place at the right time to kind of pull it all together and really help to work with many others obviously, but start to pull it all together as a story that it's really about the full breadth and capability of what SEI was up to, is up to, is doing. Talk about that, if you would a little bit.

J. Womack: Yeah, Jack, it's a great observation. And I do feel really fortunate that I landed at SEI when I did. We were in the middle of a technology transition, moving to the SEI wealth platform. We catalyzed a product evolution and transition going from closed architecture to open architecture. And I'd say in looking at the trends in the industry, sort of understanding where value was, to your point, it was understanding the different components and piece parts we had informed by all those conversations I had with all the wealth managers and asset managers globally that allowed me to really see, you know we had unique capability here. And if we could just bring together a consistent front office experience, a set of investment solutions that emphasize delivering value to the clients, which we can talk more about later. I think that comes from tax management and then surround sound around that. We had a winning value proposition. So I did, I was lucky when I landed and have had fun building since I've been here.

Jack Sharry: So let's talk a little about that, because not only are you one of the smartest people I know, you're also one of my favorite people, because you were the advocate behind SEI acquiring LifeYield. So I will be eternally grateful always. But more that you saw things that, frankly, so many in the industry kind of got, but not really. I'm sure at SEI, because it's so operationally and technologically focused on what it's working on now and refining its capabilities, which I'm quite impressed with as I've observed it. But you were really talking about the next gen, the next thing, the next where's the world going? So you've been talking about the concept of UMH and you've done that along the way. You might talk a little bit about some of the work that you've done over the past many years around tax management, because that's sort of precursor to what you're working on now. But talk about that evolution as you became Chief Product Officer, as you started to build out capabilities, then we'll get into where you see things going specifically around the whole concept of multi-account UMA versus multi-account UMH. So just talk about that aspect of the journey because it's pretty critical to where, at least I see the world going, I know you see the world going and really some pretty exciting things coming.

J. Womack: Yeah, it's a great question, Jack. And before I answer, let me sort of give two things that really characterize the lenses through which I view the world and the industry, because it's really important for understanding how I think about things moving forward. So first and foremost, I'd call myself a systems engineer. I actually did electrical engineering for a little over three years before I switched to econ. I build like a lot of people do, had a lot more fun in business, but it informs how I think about things coming together. I'd say the second piece is that I'm naturally strategic, meaning just the way that I consume information in the world has strategy at its core. So there were some interesting trends that I saw specifically in the industry and the primary one was fee compression. So when people discuss fee compression, a lot of it is really centered around this question of active versus passive. But I think it was a broader rebalancing of client expectations and advisor response to that, right? Advisors wanted to give clients lower overall investment costs or total cost of implementation, if you will. And if they're going to take a dollar out of someone's pocket, it'll be an asset manager's, not theirs. And so when you think about fee compression, it was really a question about value. And I'd love to take sole credit for this, but I was working on the investment solution side, thinking about eliminating the line between technology and investments. And I took a piece of paper that had this kind of tax wedge. It's our famous tax wedge chart, over to my colleague, Jeff Benfield, who had a piece of paper that had like tax centric front office capability on it. And we both agreed that over time, then organizations that win will be the ones that deliver durable value and you can get that from tax. So that was the insight. 

Jack Sharry: And J., how long ago was that? Just to give our audience a frame of reference.

J. Womack: That's a great question. That was probably in 2019.

Jack Sharry: Okay, so you guys were working on… you've been working on… SEI has been working on taxes for I think it's 20 or 25 years, right?

J. Womack: SEI has had tax overlay and tax management, tax sensitive interests at the core of asset allocation, design and product delivery for, as you said, Jack, over two decades. So it's very much part of our organizational DNA. And it's something that I came to understand when I first got here and really figured out how to apply as I got a better sense of our technical capabilities, our investment capability in the investment management unit. And really what our clients were asking us for, it was really talking to advisors that brought this all together.

Jack Sharry: Sure. Now, as you and Jeff got together and you both agreed that taxes were, I know you know this, but basically the most significant cost a consumer has to confront. Why don’t you describe a little bit about some of the stuff you did then. And of course that's on the road to UMH. So why don't you take us through that journey?

J. Womack: Yeah. So, I had the great fortune to sit in a demonstration where the LifeYield team at the time was showing their householding capabilities. And so I anchored in my mind on quantifying the benefit of tax as an unlock for UMH, advisor comprehension, and meaningful representation of benefit to client. And so that was something I tucked into the back of my mind. I'd say at that time, we were doing a lot of work on direct indexing and a lot of the focus was on lowering the implementation costs and the benefits of tax loss harvesting. But if you kind of take those solutions to their natural end, they represent a really elegant way to take low basis stock, optimize around it and hold it as the core part of a UMA. We've done a lot of development in building out our UMA capability. And so we got to the point where it was really about, how do we bring these things together in a comprehensive way? We have, or had have a custom high net worth offering on our platform. And the core premise behind that solution is it's a million dollar minimum household size. You bring all of your accounts together. The investment manager will invest the assets across all those accounts. They'll loss harvest, they'll transition, they'll deal with low basis stock positions. But most of the people doing that today, it's a very manual process. You can deploy tech in different components or steps in the process, but there's not an integrated solution. Anecdotally, growing up, I played with Legos a lot. So I reached back into my mind and the Lego blocks that were LifeYield and the LifeYield APIs, our UMA capability, some of what we were seeing in platforms and the product set that we had the great fortune to build out at that point in time and it really came together in such a clear way for me, Jack, that we were on the cusp of being able to deliver UMH, or I should say multi-account UMAs as a step to UMH, which was incredibly exciting.

Jack Sharry: So one of the things that's been fun for us on the LifeYield side as we've been integrating ourselves into SEI and all that we do and would love to have you comment on this. So J., that systems thinking that he does so well, saw all these components and has the ability to kind of connect the dots or connect the Lego blocks, if you will, around how you put it all together, how you make it available, really how you make it work from a systems standpoint, because this stuff has to work together. And that's sort of the magic, if you will, it's not so much magic, it's a lot of hard work, but what's underway, I'd love to have you comment on this, is what's underway is the LifeYield sort of front and middle technology software around pulling it together, quantifying the benefit, coordinating around things like tax loss harvesting, asset location, transition, rebalancing, income generation, all at a household coordinated level. So that's the dream, that’s where the industry's headed… We've certainly spent a lot of time on this podcast and as a business talking about UMH. But one of the things that has really hit me recently is you and I havr talked to a number of our clients and also prospective clients is that there may be a step before all that, that UMH is, the industry's heading that way, but it's struggling with it. I think it's fair to say and struggling mightily. And sort of something that I just, for at least for me, the past few weeks, it's really crystallized as you've described all this to our clients and prospective clients is that multi-account UMAs… Make that distinction because there's also a further distinction, not to make this more complicated than it needs to be. Different way to deal with an asset manager, different way to deal with a wealth manager. So talk us through those pieces because you're talking about your Lego block metaphor. That is what's going on here. You're making a pretty complex Lego design. Talk a little bit about what that looks like.

J. Womack: It's an interesting question, Jack, and one that, you know, as we've had different conversations with intermediaries, right? Home offices, with asset managers, with advisors that I've, I've really tried to crystallize in my mind. At its core, starts with the investor, Jack. It's who everyone's focused on. And in particular, this 2-3 million dollar household where you get this interesting inflection point and a lot of degrees of freedom when it comes to tax because of the amount of taxable investable assets that they have at their disposal. So this question of UMH is investor centric and it's all about the household balance sheet. And there really are two parties that are supporting these investors in their journey to try to accumulate wealth so that they can live the lives that they want to live comfortably. There's the wealth manager. So they're really the ones that I think the term UMH applies to, right? If a wealth manager can get to the point where they can manage the household balance sheet, can you imagine the stress relief and the wellness that could propagate, right, throughout the base of investors that avail themselves of those services? So, UMH, I think, is a wealth management concept. It's about the asset side, the investable assets, all of the real estate, right, insurance, all of those things that deliver value at different points in time over an investment lifecycle. And it's the liability side. It's the banking credit, security back lending, all those things that those households can avail themselves of. Where the asset management and wealth management firm intersect is on the investment side in the UMA. So if these wealth managers are now trying to move their focus up to the relationship level to work with clients and they're focused on delivering real value, all the action’s in tax. As asset managers are responding to what they see, they're saying, shoot, right? A few years ago, the industry was all about the UMA. So a lot of investment has happened over the past three to five years to support UMAs. But if now wealth managers are saying, I care about the relationship, for me, that's planning, that's the investment implementation, then the ongoing relationship management and review. It is that multi-account UMA that becomes the intersection point. And candidly, Jack, it's the right first step, I think, for the industry to be taking holistically because of the things that we can take down. That's where a lot of the value comes from. That's where a lot of the assets are. And that's where a lot of the tax benefit is for most clients before you start moving across different wealth strata, of course.

Jack Sharry: So this is the big aha I've had in the past month, literally. And I've been at this as you know, and anyone that's paying attention to our little podcast here, I've been working at this thing for 16 years, trying to figure out how to communicate about it. That's really what it's about. You're more the engineer and making it work. I'm more the, who do you make it so people understand what we're talking about? And one of the things that struck me, I go through the history and you were there for much of it, in terms of the various conversations, but there were many, conversations literally within the past month that started with Scott Smith at Cerulli, we were talking and they did a study on the importance of tax. 82% of platform developers, builders say that tax optimization is their top priority. And they also found in the Cerulli study that 73% of clients say they hope their advisor advises them on how to minimize tax. So those are the two numbers. And Scott pointed out at the time and continues to that those really shocked him, how big those numbers were and that they seem to have jumped. So to sort of trace it through it, and I'd love to have you pick it up here in a moment. So to trace that through, he mentioned to a particular client of Cerulli's, they had asked who should they talk to about tax optimization. They mentioned SEI LifeYield, we had the conversation. You and I spoke with them and we filled them in on this particular firm. And they heard you kind of got into this multi-account UMA concept. They're an asset manager, this particular firm. And you sort of laid out what could be. And this was at the end of August. The guy was going on vacation the following week. He said, can we talk tomorrow? So he wanted to move quickly. You'll remember this. And then as soon as he got back from vacation, let's talk some more, then brought on his head of distribution. And since then, I can name five other firms we're having the same conversation. And it's like a light went on that for the asset manager piecing together within a UMA, a single account ways to deal with multiple sleeves. And I'll add one other piece that I'll turn it over to you, J. Another big driver behind this, couple of big drivers really is that the desire to preserve the ultra high net worth or the high net worth through alts, that's in the rage. You can't pick up the industry news without reading about that. And what are the issues with alts? Liquidity, risk, tax, and more. So how do you put it in a model? So pick it up from there. That's really sort of, at least for me. That's where I went. Oh, I get what we're up to. This is the thing to solve first. We do this. The UMH, and I love your distinction, I hadn’t really thought of it this way, is more of a wealth manager thing and the multi-account UMA is more of an asset manager thing. But I'll leave it to you to piece that all, what I just said together.

J. Womack: Yeah, it's, I think you've made great points and I think the observations are spot on, Jack, and very consistent with how I've been sort of thinking about over the past few weeks and some of the light bulbs that have gone off. I think that what's happening, Jack, is this shift in expected service delivery informed by high net worth solutions effectively coming down market and folks thinking about how to scale that. I think the other piece is this, I've talked about this before, it's a blurring of the lines between investments and technology, right? And so I think those two things are in part creating this demand. I'll go back a little bit to where I started and some of those conversations with Jeff. You asked how I saw these things coming and I referenced that conversation. 

Jack Sharry: When you're talking about your conversations, it's Jeff Benfield, who actually is responsible for the technology support of what J. is describing. So he's the guy that makes it… responsible for making it all work within the infrastructure of SEI.

J. Womack: That's right. Jeff owns operational and technology integration for experience. And he's been a great partner over time. And so, you asked how I saw some of these things coming. It was those conversations. But I'd say the other thing is, I view the world through the lens of strategy. I'm very data informed in that context. And the thing that we saw in industry studies that was reinforced in a study that Jeff did as we were thinking about design for some of our front office capability is that implementation gap that you referred to earlier, Jack. The data at that point in time showed roughly 92% of investors expect some sort of tax advice broadly from their advisor. That's reinforced in the Cerulli data around that single, you know, the single digit millionaire households. And at the time, the data suggested only about 40% of advisors, 40 to 45, depending on the study, did anything related to tax, specifically tax management in the context of client portfolio management. Where you've got that degree of implementation shortfall between client expectations and service delivery, it really represents opportunity. And the reason there's that shortfall is because this stuff's really hard. And technology has gotten to the point now where to that comment earlier about eliminating the line between tech and investments, unlocking value from tax fundamentally requires that you have integration between technology, front office tech, investment operational technology, and that you've got products that operate in that kind of connected ecosystem. And so, you know, the conversations that we're having, a lot of the aha moments and the threads that are coming in from these asset managers, I think are emerging because they don't naturally have that operational expertise in house. They've never, or not had to manage UMAs. They manage these parts or make models available. And this is convergence of product service and tech. And so it's kind of a new way to engage and go to market. And I'm excited to say that we are one of few firms, if not the only firm that has all of the component parts to deliver best in class solutions across that technology set in partnership with asset managers and with the services that we can provide operationally through our investment manager services division. We're literally best in class across that entire stack. And that's what's exciting because I think we can be a key driver of convergence here in the industry and an enabler for a lot of these firms.

Jack Sharry: So let me add a little bit more, I'm gonna pile on here because when you talked about the tech, the operations, the product, another piece that's in the middle of that tech operations and product is enabling the portfolio manager to look more broadly than just at their particular product, their account, or later and larger would be household. But the idea is that tax informs their investment decisions, which right now it does a little bit for an account, but when your context is around the whole household, that's one piece that I think is important to note. We're doing a lot of work around that kind of stuff as well. The other piece I'd add is that, and we see this with some of our, with our largest client, which has benefited from being very tax oriented. And what they do is they demonstrate the value, and especially since we can quantify the benefit in dollars and basis points, it causes consolidation. So the other thing we haven't talked about, why don’t you weigh in on this, because I know this is something you spent a lot of time on, that if you can coordinate multiple accounts in a tax-efficient way and you can quantify the benefit, you can give cause for people to consolidate, that they're going to be better off and therefore they're going to want to centralize it or coordinate it or consolidate it.

J. Womack: I think that's exactly right, Jack. And that's why I think UMH in its full realization is really a wealth management consideration. If you're sitting there with an investor who is a millionaire when it comes to their overall wealth and have single digit millions in investable assets at the household level, there are lot of degrees of freedom that you have to exercise tax management capability. There's asset location, which is optimally putting assets with the right registration type to account for taxes. There's the ongoing multi-account rebalancing and loss harvesting. And then if we think about the average age of investors in the industry and this kind of transition of boomers out of their working years and accumulation into decumulation, it's being really tax smart in that decum cycle so that you can minimize the tax burden. It's not just the order of withdrawals. It's being really tax smart as you're taking withdrawals. And so when you think about the picture that you're representing to the client, if you have the ability to show them what you're managing, but how if they just bring in that account that's with their college friend or is with that person with whom they have an affinity, into the equation, you can actually unlock a lot of benefit from a tax perspective. It is a natural on-ramp for asset consolidation and it enters the conversation so naturally. And it's scratching at that point that we made earlier about the thing that clients really care about. You're speaking directly to minimizing that tax burden. And I got to tell you, Jack, at SEI, we've had the ability to represent the benefit of tax loss harvesting from across our tax managed solutions for a long time. There's nothing like hearing from advisors who thought they were going to have tough conversations with clients in down markets, but showed them some of the benefits of tax management, and it totally altered the conversation because they basically paid for the advisory fee plus some in a given year. So, you know, I think that to your point about consolidation, everyone's looking for organic growth. This can be an enabler of that because of how it brings held away assets naturally into the conversation.

Jack Sharry: Yep This is fascinating. Of course, you and I talk about this stuff all the time as we do with our colleagues and now with clients and prospective clients. So a couple more things I want to get to as our time grows nigh. We're also doing a lot of work around workplace and around insurance and annuities. So talk a little bit about that. How does that… it's the same kind of dynamics, a little different aspects to it. But why don't you describe that, if you would.

J. Womack: It's a great question, Jack. It's a workplace, I'd say broadly, annuities as an investment solution and retirement income generally are areas of a lot of interest. When I think about annuities, they get a little bit of a bad name for a whole host of reasons we don't necessarily dig into. But from an insurance perspective and a value to the client perspective, they can be an important tool in the advisory toolkit and can solve real problems for investors who have concerns about the durability of their retirement income. So one of the things that I noticed that you all knew inherently post acquisition was the immense utilization of our social security optimizer and income layers, right? And so for both wealth managers and insurers, they found that if they can represent annuities in the context of answering the retirement income questions clients have, it's less about selling an annuity and much more about solving the retirement income problem. So we are leaning into that heavily with some insurance partners and trying to find ways to help them accelerate distribution while also solving real problems for clients. I would say insurance, again, long history, valuable resource, we're part of the wealth advisory toolkit, sometimes underutilized, represents big opportunity. And when I think about insurance here, I'm talking about technically, so still in the annuity space, for those high net worth households that are also high income, you can defer additional taxes leveraging really streamlined vehicles. And so if we can show those vehicles in the context of UMH experience, and quantify the benefits of leveraging them for those high net worth households, when it comes to accumulation, we think that it's less about selling annuities and it's more about optimizing for taxes during accumulation and it totally alters the conversation. I'd say the last piece and it's related to workplace, individual investors have assets in two primary places, in the wealth management channel or in the workplace channel, right. And you've got a number of single digit 401k millionaires and so when you look at record keepers or those who are in workplace, they're also looking at this household balance sheet problem at a segment of the population that from a wealth perspective is underserved, but still needs advice. So UMH has the potential to play an integral role in workplace as those providers are looking at ways to deliver more value to plan sponsors, solve real problems for investors. And we sit in a position where we have capability that can operate in both of those spheres. And so I'm excited about leveraging insurance to solve the individual concerns around their retirement income and the durability and stability thereof. I think, you know, annuities are a great tool for increasing the capacity for tax deferral for high net worth, high income investors that are in the wealth channel. And as we collectively try to do right and provide advice to a broader swath of the U S population, there are really exciting things that I think can happen in workplace. So we sit in a really privileged position, Jack, to drive incredibly positive and valuable change for investors that I think is also going to deliver value to those intermediaries and asset managers who understand this and start taking action around it today.

Jack Sharry: Very cool, very exciting. So J., we've covered a lot of ground. We've clearly there's a lot of plate spinning and you're doing a lot of that spinning along with our many colleagues working on all this kind of stuff. Any key takeaways you want to leave with our audience? Because there's a lot going on here. And it's if you could maybe boil that down to maybe a small number of takeaways that you might leave with our audience.

J. Womack: Great question, Jack. And I'd leave them with tax is where all the action is. We talked a little bit about it. It's where the biggest misalignment between client expectation and advisor behavior is. So if you solve that, you create a really compelling value proposition that will be attractive to people and create stickier relationships. I think multi-account UMA is the foundation of getting to UMH and really closing that gap from a tax perspective. That's where you have the ability to actually deliver comprehensive tax management. And I think it's where asset managers and wealth managers today can kind of collaborate, right? Wealth managers can communicate what their needs are. Asset managers in combination with parties like us can, can solve those with technology products and services. And I think the last piece is there's a lot of complexity here. And so the best advisors are spending hours and hours trying to get this right for clients. With technology, in particular, the way that we're building and integrating it, these things become available at the click of a button. So if you're thinking about organic growth and scaling your business, you have to do this with technology or else you will drown. And you're just going to fall behind the people that get it right over time.

Jack Sharry: Yep. Well, it's exciting times. We're obviously working on all this stuff every single day. And the good news is the reception in the marketplace is strong. Whether you're an asset manager, wealth manager, insurance, annuity company, whatever you are, they're trying to figure out how to coordinate all the different elements that need to be coordinated. And the biggest of which is how do you minimize taxes? That's sort of fundamental. Also important in the equation is how to manage risk. And then frankly, how do you incorporate other ways to improve outcome like Social Security optimization and other things that we could go on and on and on about. But the point is, a lot of elements to be considered. It's being developed over time. The race is on. And I'm glad to be working with a great firm that is in the process of not only figuring it out, but also making it available. So it's been a lot of fun.

J. Wmack: Hey, we have a big bank in market doing UMH today, Jack. So, we’re doing it.

Jack Sharry: True, true. That’s all true. Very true. And much more to come. So, terrific. I appreciate that. So, ne last question, J. And always my favorite. Of course, you gave me a little bit of a hint as to what you were going to share with me. It’s such a classic J. Womack response. But, talk a little bit about what you do outside of work for fun that you're particularly passionate about. So fill us in.

J. Womack: Yeah, it's a great question, Jack. So as a kid, in the 80s, the title nerd had a negative connotation. I think now it's sort of come full circle. And if you're a nerd, you're cool. 

Jack Sharry: Sure.

J. Womack: Hey, man, these $1.2 billion offers to these AI engineers. Golly. So there's a great segue. I spend a lot of time really trying to understand AI and what I call a new operating system. In a lot of applications, people are bolting AI onto existing process and systems. And I really think embedding AI and fully realizing capabilities at scale requires rethinking the operating model and how AI actually integrates. You can't bolt it on to broken stuff. You've got to re-engineer processes. And so I think a lot about that. And I think it's where a lot of action will be across a number of industries, including ours. I think to bring it full circle, I think doing that well is how we win in reviews and really help drive this realization of UMH over time.

Jack Sharry: Man, I am so glad you're on our team. You're the kind of guy that gets excited around AI opportunities as a fun thing to do. I'm so glad you are leading our team and doing all the good work that you're doing. So J., thanks. This has really been a wonderful conversation. Really appreciate it. We're gonna have to have you back. There's so much we didn't get to, but all exciting stuff. So thank you for that. For our audience, thanks for tuning in today. If you've enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we're doing at WealthTech on Deck, we're available wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check us out at our dedicated website, wealthtechondeck.com. All our episodes are there, along with blogs and curated content from many folks around the industry. J., thanks again. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. And learned some stuff too, as well. Thank you.

J. Womack: Thank you so much, Jack. I appreciate it and I'm happy to come back anytime.

Jack Sharry: We'll do that. Thanks.

Host: Thanks for listening to this episode of WealthTech on Deck, our ongoing conversation about improving financial outcomes for all. This podcast is brought to you by SEI and produced by Turncast. Subscribe to future episodes in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can connect with our host, Jack Sharry, on LinkedIn. For more information about our perspective on the future of financial advice, visit our website at wealthtechondeck.com