Bob Santella and Wealth Solutions Report discuss technologies impacting the industry, wealthtech in 2025, his vision for the firm, and more.
Wealthtech continues to advance at a brisk pace, changing the work environment for advisors and professionals in the wealth management space. Wealthtech providers continue to advance new solutions and enhancements to meet the needs of advisors and their clients.
Among those wealthtech providers is BetaNXT, which appointed Bob Santella as CEO on July 1, succeeding Stephen Daffron, who continued with the firm as Executive Chairman.
A few months into his new role, we caught up with Santella to hear his vision for the firm and its implementation, as well as how the firm’s DataXChange pilot program, which is on Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, is proceeding. We also discussed the most impactful technologies for wealth management today and what 2025 holds in store for the evolution of wealthtech.
WSR
What technologies are having the greatest impact on the wealth management industry currently?
Bob Santella
Today’s wealth management clients, especially those in the younger generations, expect a hyper-personalized digital experience with near-real-time data and insights.
Wealth managers are seeking to adopt technology solutions that deliver faster and more accurate reporting and streamline or automate time-consuming manual processes, providing more time to deliver personalized advice with accurate, near-real-time data and recommended next steps. This includes large language model (LLM) AI solutions, which draw on larger quantities of data to automate processes, and quickly summarize that data to deliver faster answers to questions.
In addition, solutions that unify platforms and break down silos for advisors are enabling “connected wealth,” whereby all information required to manage a client’s wealth is aggregated within a solutions-based ecosystem.
The connections are underpinned by data management capabilities that allow applications to “speak” to one another, by seamlessly and securely sharing data, and streamlining the delivery of analysis and advice to clients.
WSR
How do you see wealthtech developing in 2025?
Bob
We expect wealthtech innovation in 2025 to continue to drive the migration of technology stacks and data to the cloud. This ongoing cloud transfer will enable wealth management firms to share data in ways that better ensure its accuracy, and provide not only the sources of the data, but the entire history of the data up to then.
Also, wealthtech next year will continue to provide time savings and data governance enhancements which can help wealthtech data scientists spend less time on data, and more time on developing solutions to meet the needs of customers.
Some of the data scientists we interact with have confided that they spend up to 80% of their time just on collating and cleaning data. —Santella
Some of the data scientists we interact with have confided that they spend up to 80% of their time just on collating and cleaning data. Wealthtech innovation will help the industry eventually eliminate batch data processing in favor of faster near-real-time data processing, so that wealthtech firms have more time to do what they do best: developing and enhancing technology for a better end-user experience.
WSR
As CEO of BetaNXT, what vision are you implementing for the firm and how does that intersect with your expectations for the future of wealthtech?
Bob
My colleagues and I are focused on the long-term vision for BetaNXT, which involves driving the wealthtech technology transformation that will power the next generation of frictionless, end-to-end wealth management. The future of wealthtech aligns with our vision for BetaNXT. Both involve a world where more wealth managers can benefit from connected wealth and utilize that system and data connectivity to deliver comprehensive, near-real-time advice and actionable next steps.
We will go forward with what has always been our core principle: We succeed when our customers succeed. Our customers succeed when their data can do more for them and their client relationships, and that is where we come in to give them that data-driven, holistic view of clients’ financial situations.
Our customers succeed when their data can do more for them and their client relationships. —Santella
With that insight, wealth managers can give each client the hyper-personalized answers they need, when they need it, and how they prefer to receive it.
WSR
Your firm recently launched the DataXChange platform as a pilot program with an anticipated rollout by the second quarter of 2025. How is the pilot program proceeding?
Bob
The pilot program is proceeding smoothly and, so far, we are on track to roll out DataXChange for these participants and other interested clients by the second quarter of 2025. We are expecting DataXChange to transform the way wealth management firms utilize — and optimize — data.
Working with Snowflake, we have created an ecosystem that streamlines the exchange and commingling of all data, both internal and external, from wealth enterprises and their partners — allowing them to turbocharge their operations, as well as the advice and experiences they can bring to clients.
Source: Wealth Solutions Report
