Jack Sharry: Hello and welcome to WealthTech on Deck. This is our weekly podcast where we explore the convergence transforming financial advice. Each week we speak with executives from across wealth management, asset management, insurance, retirement, and FinTech to discuss how technology, operations, investment solutions, and user experience are coming together to drive better outcomes for investors, advisors, and firms. In conversations with the best and brightest in our industry, we break down silos, share actionable insights, and discover how collaboration is making financial services more connected, efficient, and client focused than ever before. For nearly five years, our podcast has explored the evolving landscape of financial advice with over 250 guests. 70,000 of our episodes and counting have been downloaded. We feature leaders who are looking around the corner at what’s next for the industry. And we highlight how these thinkers and doers are shaping the intersection of digital and human advice. Today, we will speak with Garrett Beam. Garrett leads the Digital Solutions Team at Cetera Financial Group, where he drives the product vision, strategy, experience, design, and execution for various platforms and products. Garrett collaborates closely with users and internal teams, including development and engineering, quality assurance, marketing, training, sales, and other groups to deliver impactful solutions. This includes driving Cetera’s go-to-market activities, adoption initiatives, and ongoing enhancements. Garrett, welcome to WealthTech on Deck. We’re delighted to have you here.
Garrett Beam: Thanks, Jack. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Jack Sharry: Yeah, our pleasure. So Garrett, let’s start with you sharing about your role in working across Cetera. Please, if you would, give us a little color on where you are focused and what you’re looking to accomplish.
Garrett Beam: Yeah, so I am head of digital solutions. I’m in charge of product management and experience for our customer facing digital platform, digital products, digital solutions. That includes our proprietary capabilities that we offer within our platform. It also includes the variety of third party solutions that we integrate with or provide access to. And in terms of what I’m focused on looking to accomplish, if I may start with just a little bit of context, Cetera Financial Group is unique in the marketplace in that our strategy starts with personalization. We’re organized in a multi-channel, what we call multi-community structure that’s anchored around the value of relationships. It’s anchored around the value of personalization. So we have five of these different channels, I won’t name them all, but just for the audience and to illustrate, for example, we have traditional 1099 independent contractor-based advisors that are grouped together with dedicated leadership and advisor-facing support teams. We have another channel that’s comprised of tax professionals that also provide wealth management. We have another channel that’s comprised of banks and credit unions, so on and so forth. We extend that channel and community structure further by being multi-custody. So we leverage our own self-clearing capabilities alongside partnerships with Bank of New York Pershing, Fidelity National Financial, and Schwab. So our digital platform, you know, my core focus area needs to be able to deliver relevant, contextualized, personalized experiences across that channel and community structure and also across that custodian footprint in a manner that gets down to the specific roles of users and makes it easy to do business. It makes it easy to engage with end consumers and investors and clients through a robust digital experience. And at the end of the day drives business success and growth. So that ecosystem and why I share it, you know, Jack, with you and the audience is it’s a fairly complex ecosystem. So it makes for a challenging, but also super fun, super engaging, and exciting set of responsibilities. And so that’s where I get the privilege of spending my time, my focus area and, you know, my energy.
Jack Sharry: So Garrett, you and I probably had our first conversation, I’m gonna guess 15 years ago, maybe a little more. You were at another firm at the time in a strategy role as I recall. So since that time, you’ve worked in a variety of roles across the industry and working with RIAs and independent advisors, advisory firms and so on. My question is, I prepared ahead of time but I feel almost foolish asking it. How are things different today than when you and I first talked almost two decades ago? Because man, what you just described is far more complex than anything I think either of us could have imagined way back then. So, fill us in on the evolution of, your evolution as well as from your perspective, how the industry has evolved and how you’re serving it.
Garrett Beam: Yeah, in that amount of time, a lot’s changed both personally and from an industry perspective. So for me personally, I have worked in a lot of different functions over the course of my career. I started in corporate finance, I shifted into corporate strategy. That’s where our paths first crossed, Jack, as you know. From there, I was the Chief of Staff to the Chief Marketing Officer at the firm you mentioned. I ran customer experience, strategy, insights, and analytics. And now for the last six or seven years, all at Cetera, I focused on digital and on technology. And the combination of those kind of functional domains, I’d like to think has served me pretty well relative to what I’m focused on and a steward of, you know, as it pertains to kind of where the business has evolved to and where we’re going. Because I would argue wealth management and all things associated with financial advice is undergoing the most transformative change that we’ve ever seen. And that was kind of pre-AI. The rise of AI is only going to accelerate that transformation. There’s lots of different factors to that. As you no doubt know, there’s a big part of it is demographic shift, not just advisors, but also, you know, end investors and consumers. But one of the biggest contributors and the one that I really anchor a lot around is the evolution of consumer preferences, the evolution of consumer behavior. If you just think about how much has changed relative to your preferences, my preferences, all of our preferences. We’ve become so accustomed to easy to use customer experiences and solutions in all aspects of our life. We naturally expect the same when it comes to our financial lives. We want, you know, we want more power, we want more control, we want to be able to do more ourselves. We want it to be easy, we want it to be engaging, you know, and that’s forcing wealth management to…
Jack Sharry: And one other thing, Garrett, if I may interrupt, I apologize. We want more money.
Garrett Beam: That’s right. Yeah.
Jack Sharry: We want more money.
Garrett Beam: Who doesn’t?
Jack Sharry: Yeah, of course.
Garrett Beam: And we want to achieve what we’re trying to achieve, whether that’s a business owner of a financial advisory practice or you and me as end consumers and investors and the aspirations that we have for ourselves individually and for our families. So there is an aspirational aspect to the evolution for sure. But all that to say is it’s pushing wealth management broadly and wealth tech in a really healthy and really good way, more so than we’ve ever seen before. And that’s both a challenge but also, you know, an opportunity.
Jack Sharry: Yeah, we’re like minded across the board in all ways. I think, it sounds like I know you’ve had a variety of roles and different angles from which to look at our industry at all levels, consumer advisor, firm level, et cetera. I too have been through a lot of that, most of that. And one of the things we’re sort of shifting gears as we go into 2026 with our podcast. And the theme I’ve sort of focused on, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, is the idea of convergence, that lots of stuff is coming together. Basically what you’ve just described with all those different custodians, all those different in-house capabilities, all those vendors that I’m sure you’re working with, I know you’re working with. It’s all converging and really you’re being tasked in your role, as I understand it, to figure out how to make that seamless, easy, fun, even perhaps, experience about how to manage a business or how to manage one’s money. So talk about that complexity. Talk about what you’re doing about putting the puzzle pieces together. How are you achieving or seeking to achieve what you’re, I know you’re setting out to achieve. How’s that going and where are you in that process?
Garrett Beam: Yeah, it’s almost the great convergence, if you will. So feel free to use that.
Jack Sharry: Did you steal that from someone? Because I think I stole it from someone.
Garrett Beam: Yeah, I’m sure it’s been used in other sort of venues or forums, but within wealth management, what you just described in terms of the different puzzle pieces, and then you think about the macro forces of change that I was talking about, there’s just this broad-based and overarching convergence. And the importance of putting everything together in a cohesive manner has never been more important than it is today. And if you think about the different pieces that you talked about, whether it’s technology, operations, product, investment solutions, et cetera, from an advisor, financial professional, financial institution perspective, it’s a close sibling, I would submit, to the consumer expectations, right? You can’t deliver against those consumer expectations without a more robust set of capabilities, solutions, and experience than those financial professionals, institutions have ever had, right? And that then requires more connectedness. It requires not just integration of technology, it requires integration of business processes. It requires engineering of the business and designing experiences in a more holistic way, not siloed, not bifurcated. And that in and of itself is, is a challenge. We solve for that in a variety of different ways. I would say the first is through people and process. So having the right talent, having the right roles, having the right people leveraging those, their respective expertise together. And then from a process perspective, we employ, I would argue, a highly robust customer experience, user-centric design thinking business discipline. So that’s part market user research, that’s part collaboration with internal stakeholders, whether they’re in operations, customer service, supervision, risk and compliance, et cetera. And perhaps the most important is the iterative co-designing that we do directly with advisors, with support staff in those advisor practices, and even at times, Jack, with end clients. That co-design and that changing that paradigm and solving for those business outcomes and experiences together is probably the most powerful technique that we employ. And that brings us closer and closer more quickly to that connectedness and cohesiveness that we’re describing.
Jack Sharry: So talk a little more about that. I hear you loud and clear that’s, all the right stuff of, or elements or formula menu, whatever. How do you make it work? What you’ve described, given the complexity of the ecosystem that you oversee and manage and are trying to make more efficient and effective, how do you go about it? And certainly some of it’s the technology itself, but there’s an interconnectedness that needs to happen among the technologies, not all of which, by the way, were designed to do that. I mwan they were designed to work within their own. In my view, I’d love to hear your thoughts. In my view, increasingly, it’s going to be about how you connect the dots, how you make it all work together. My hunch is based on what I’ve heard so far. You’re doing that, but tell me, how are you doing it?
Garrett Beam: Yeah, well, in addition to the people side of things, the process side of things, just some other elements of how we approach and solve for that include, you know, we’re very thoughtful and strategic about what capabilities, and this is more on the technology side of things, we feel like we absolutely need to own and have be proprietary kind of within our platform and experience. What are those capabilities that we want to rent and integrate with trusted third parties? Where are we providing choice in terms of those capabilities? Where does it make a whole lot of sense to not provide choice and really do it one way to scale both our business and the businesses that we serve? And that creates a fabric, if you will, and a blueprint for how we think about the set of capabilities, the connectedness of those capabilities, and then how we supply those capabilities. Is it ours or is it a partner’s? And then to what level of integration from a technology capabilities perspective makes sense, right? In some cases, deep, deep, deep integration is absolutely necessary. In other cases, lighter integration is just fine. And in other cases, the ability to leverage a capability on a standalone basis without any integration is also perfectly fine. So just having the discipline around how we manage the platform, the experience kind of strategy with respect to a supermarket of capabilities, because that’s what is required in the business that we’re in, is a big, big part of how we strategically approach the determination, but also the execution of driving that connectedness.
Jack Sharry: As part of what you’re doing, I gotta believe there’s some human element in terms of the training, the hands-on, the help. And so, talk a little bit about that, because I know we all do. We have to go to help desks to help us figure stuff out, because we just can’t figure it out. So talk about the role of that as part of your overall strategy. Clearly, you’ve got the technology pieces, a lot of them, it sounds like. How do you help the advisor then use them more efficiently and effectively?
Garrett Beam: Yeah, a number of different ways. We do leverage the platform, the digital experience, to drive some of the kind of self-service discoverability, how to use things, how to kind of leverage and get the most out of said capabilities. So there’s an element of digital self-service for sure. But just connecting back to the context that I shared earlier around Cetera’s business strategy in terms of community, our community-based approach, we within our advisor and business facing teams within each of the communities, we’re providing a robust level of consultative help and support on a range of, you know, opportunities to really clear the way for growth and success of those respective businesses. And technology is a part of that. So we integrate the platform, the capabilities and what those capabilities bring to bear in terms of value and benefit as part of that consultative offering within our growth team structure that is aligned to each of the communities, right? And within each of those communities, it could be a bank or a credit union over here, a tax professional providing wealth over here, et cetera. Those teams know those businesses the best out of anyone. They’re tailoring, they’re contextualizing that consultative, that partnership, that relationship as part of their knowledge and intelligence around that business. And so they’re able to really effectively through that partnership help them understand what to use, how to use it to drive success relative to the goals that they have. So it’s a marriage of both the scale, really super scalable digital platform with the unique structure that Cetera has in terms of our consultative help and support that brings those two things effectively together.
Jack Sharry: I’m not sure if this is something you want or can share, but I’m curious, how many people do you have working on this stuff with you?
Garrett Beam: Well, I would say we have hundreds of people that are working on kind of the digital experience side of things from the team that I have the privilege of leading to our engineering and application development folks, to folks in info security, and our own talent that is part of that are partners that we partner with from a development perspective or fulfillment perspective. So there is a significant ecosystem of both people and resources that we direct towards all of this stuff, which that won’t surprise you.
Jack Sharry: No, no, not all. I’m sort of fascinated. Just I’ve been around a while, obviously you as well. And I’m just thinking back to 15 years ago. I mean, kind of the tech thing was sort of a new notion and the idea of having a digital solutions group, trying to pull it all together, at least was not part of my imaginings. But of course you do that. It’s, it’s struck me as one of the most important things you can do. Back in the day, I forget what we were talking about, whatever it was 15 years ago, is probably likely about product, you know, about investment product. You know, that was sort of the, where things began and end. Now it’s about that connectivity. So I’m curious, where do you see things going? You know, now that you are, it sounds to me like you’ve got your arms around the ecosystem as much as one can, you’re leveraging all the different resources that are available to you, both internally, externally, partners, and what have you. Where do you see this going? Because it really comes down to at the end of the day, how do we make it seamless, easy? I’m thinking about a comment that Rob Pettman shared with me when he was at LPL still, he’s now at TIFIN as you know, and he said you know if you need a user’s manual, you have a design flaw. Basically, if you make it too hard and people aren’t using it, you got a problem. And I’ve always loved that quote. So where do you see things going, because I don’t think we’re… we’re somewhere on the right track but I’m not sure we’re all there yet. How do you see things unfolding in terms of making it so easy that it becomes second nature and no book is required, manual is required to figure out what to do or a team of people that are there to help you figure things out? Where are we in that evolution towards something that’s more seamless and easy?
Garrett Beam: Yeah. Well, I think it really harkens back to the forces of change that I was describing and sort of this larger one around the consumerization of wealth management and wealth tech and all of the experiences therein, because the need to respond to the end consumers’ expectations is why we as businesses exist, right? Without that end customer and the delivery of value, you don’t have a viable business. And the world is changing, consumers are changing, the world of kind of financial wellbeing and wealth management, quote unquote, is changing. And the more that we sort of consumerize wealth tech, the more you deliver against that promise that you’re describing, which is the intuitiveness, the easy to use, the, I’m just thinking about one of the brands that just jumps to mind relative to ease of use and just certainly disruption and just changing the paradigm completely is Uber. I mean, if you think about just the… All of that, the ease of use, the intuitiveness, the transparency that’s part of the experience, you know, all of it is a really one of the many very good barometers for sort of consumerization of something that went from, not nearly as good an experience to just, an experience that I just described, right? And so, so for me, I think about the ways in which from a people, a process, a partnership perspective, a discipline perspective, how we can create the kind of systematic inertia to continue to move us along a trajectory that adjusts and refines the standards continuously. What was good six months ago is no longer good. And so that just push is a part of the broad innovation, creativity, and just change in business, period. And I would say we in wealth management are seeing maybe a more dramatic impact in that area because of consumer expectations and what’s going on sort of more broadly with society and sort of with us as people and the expectations that we have and that’s a really healthy thing in my view because it’s pushing us to be better, faster, and that’s also an exciting ride at the same time.
Jack Sharry: Sure. Love what you’re saying. Love what you’re doing. What you’ve articulated, what you’ve highlighted is impressive. It’s huge. I mean, I know all of it, but just to hear the way you’ve sort of laid it all out, it’s impressive with what you’re doing. Before we look to close our conversation for today, we have covered a lot of ground, but is there anything we haven’t covered that you want to make sure we might share with our audience where they may gain some benefit?
Garrett Beam: Well, just maybe to elevate a little bit the kind of where are we headed. You know, one of the things that I think about, that we think about is this world where advisors deliver higher quality advice across a greater scope of domain coverage than they ever have before while advising more people than ever before. And if you think about that, you sort of scratch your head and say, well, how is that possible? And a big part of how that’s possible is everything we were just talking about in terms of the digital and the tech experience accompanied by AI, right? And the enablement of those two things together are a big part of how that reality manifests. But also in and with partners that understand these trends. They understand what’s going on. They’re innovative. They’re constantly pushing for better. And because of that, they’re providing those advisors with the right solutions and capabilities. So, you know, I think about that and then I think about how that will ultimately lead to better outcomes for clients, to greater financial security, greater financial protection. And then what really gets me excited is that there’s also the opportunity to increase access, democratize advice more than we’ve seen. You know, as a father of a 14 year old and 11 year old, you know, one of the things that’s on my mind too is, how do we increase financial literacy of the next generation and beyond? And I think that’s there for the taking because of some of these same forces of change and convergence. And that’s exciting. It’s something that I keep front and center and gives me even more sense of purpose. So I would just share those thoughts.
Jack Sharry: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for inserting AI in our conversation because no podcast worth its salt doesn’t talk about AI. It’s not a podcast or not worth its… not worth the two letters. I’m kidding. But thank you for that because I share your point of view. AI is going to play a vital role, but I believe more under the hood, more where the advisor and consumer are going to benefit from what it does. And people like you and me are there to try to figure out how to incorporate it in such a way that you don’t know it’s there. So, and yeah, there’ll be applications. I’ll be using AI every day. I never thought that would happen either. But it serves a certain role, but I think so much of the power exists when it’s built into that ecosystem you described, when that connectivity becomes a more well-oiled machine. And I also appreciate your comments on where this all goes, which is to that next generation of our kids, our advisors, our grandkids, in my case, all very powerful stuff. So I appreciate your sharing that as we talk about… Anything to add to that? Because this is, I want to sing a hallelujah for like, yeah, this thing’s going to all work out. This AI thing is not going to take over the world in a bad way, I think it’s going to take over the world in a good way. That’s my own personal view. But any thoughts on that?
Garrett Beam: I agree. I think we are all still in the nascent phases and sort of early innings of understanding the capabilities, implications, and just power of AI. But embracing it and really leaning in and harnessing the power and leveraging it for all that it is capable is certainly a mantra of ours and me and my team in particular and others across the Cetera organization. So it’ll be fascinating, Jack, just to see how everything unfolds given just, you know, pace of change and sort of how rapid everything is evolving, not just AI, but everything sort of around it. It’s an exciting time and it’s gonna be fun.
Jack Sharry: Great. So Garrett, thank you. This has been a great conversation, great information. As we look to wrap up, any key takeaways you’d like to share with our audience before we head to our last and most important question, which I’ll ask in a moment, but anything you want to add in terms of key takeaways for our audience where they might benefit from your wisdom.
Garrett Beam: Yeah, appreciate that. I would say first is what we’ve talked about in terms of the consumerization of wealth tech. So that’s gonna continue to accelerate, not just because of AI. AI is gonna fuel that acceleration, but I view that consumerization as a really healthy, a really good thing. It raises the bar for us. It raises the bar for suppliers of capabilities in wealth management, for advisors, for the companies that are in the sort of marketplace, it requires that we continuously adjust our standards. It requires that we aim for something greater, something bigger, something more ambitious. So that’s the first one. Second, were just talking about tech and AI are gonna transform business, period. Wealth management, wealth tech’s no different. Advisors, providers of capabilities, they must embrace tech and AI to better serve their clients, to better scale their businesses. And frankly, we need it to help balance the supply and demand dynamics that are moving forward in terms of increased demand for advice and questionable supply, or just sort of stagnant supply from an advisor’s perspective. So that’s two. And then three would be what we were also talking about from an industry and profession perspective is that we have an opportunity to dramatically broaden access to high quality financial advice, more so than we ever have before. And that requires change, it requires being bold and innovative, but the conditions are there for the taking. And what gets me most excited is the prospect of being able to positively impact the lives of millions more people. Reaching and helping millions more is just exciting. And tech, AI, a lot of the things that we talked about are how we do that. And for financial advisors, affiliating their business with a partner that understands the trends and offers them cutting edge solutions will position them for long-term success. So that would be the third.
Jack Sharry: That’s great. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. This has been a lot of fun. So our last question, always one of my favorites, my favorite in fact, what do you do outside of work that you’re excited or passionate about that people might find interesting or surprising?
Garrett Beam: I am passionate about soccer, or football for the rest of the world. I am an avid English Premier League fan. I live in San Diego. We just got a major league soccer franchise in San Diego for the first time last year, made it to the semi-finals of the MLS playoffs in their first season. It was the most successful first year of an expansion team in the history of the MLS. My 11 year old son plays competitive soccer. It’s what he’s most passionate about. I play with him. We play with our five year old chocolate lab who also adores playing soccer. And we’ve started to incorporate live soccer match experiences into our family travel experiences. So me, my wife, our two kids, we took the kids for their first time to Europe last summer. We saw two European national tournament games, otherwise known as the Euros, in Germany. We were just in London this last, end of last year. We saw our first English Premier League match in London, and we have plans next summer to attend a World Cup match in Boston and do some fun stuff in Boston and New York. So I enjoy watching soccer, TV or live. I enjoy playing soccer, mostly with my son and chocolate lab. But it forms an epicenter of sorts in our household these days and we get a lot of joy from it.
Jack Sharry: Love it. Love it. That’s great. Good to hear. Good for you. Good for your family. So Garrett, thanks. This has been great. Really have enjoyed our conversation. For our audience, thanks for tuning in today. 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. 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. Garrett, thanks a lot. This has been a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.
Garrett Beam: Thanks so much, Jack, really appreciate it. Great to see you.
Jack Sharry: Good to see you as well.
