Eric Sontag, President and Chief Operating Officer for Wealthspire Advisors, joined Julie Cooling, Founder and CEO of RIA Channel, to discuss how the firm supports its employees through internship programs, technology training, and individualized marketing support.
Wealthspire Advisors is a financial planning led, fee-only, RIA with $30 billion in AUM. Sontag notes that the firm’s best investment has been in its internship program, which grew from eight interns in 2020 to 28 interns in 2024. Wealthspire works to create meaningful work for the interns and sees the program as an extended interview process, with about 25% receiving full-time job offers. Many of those being promoted to advisor or associate today got their start in the internship program.
Wealthspire started weaving AI into the firm’s practices in 2023, with the integration now growing to over 200 people having access to the AI tools. To date, the focus has been on improving the productivity of the advisors and members of the shared service team. Initially, the use cases were on preparing for and documenting meetings, with an evolution to deploying agents to assist with tasks across the firm. When AI is taking notes, advisors can pay more attention to the meeting. The firm seeks to get team members comfortable with AI as a technology rather than training them to use the systems for specific tasks.
The firm’s marketing philosophy is “Find Your People.” Classic marketing plans are built to reach targeted client profiles. Because Wealthspire has 130 advisors who serve over 10,000 clients, each advisor builds a target client profile. The “Find Your People” program selects a small number of advisors each year where the marketing team will build a custom plan to reach their individual target client base. This includes an optimization of the individual advisor’s website, events, and social media presence.
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