Tag: Portfolio Management
The WealthStack Podcast: Building the Modern Investment Management Stack with Sterling Perkins

The WealthStack Podcast: Building the Modern Investment Management Stack with Sterling Perkins

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Wealth management firms are being asked to support more assets, deliver greater personalization and provide clients with increasingly real-time experiences. But behind the scenes, many investment teams are still operating across disconnected portfolio management, trading, CRM, accounting, compliance and reporting systems. As artificial intelligence moves from copilots and chatbots toward agents that can actually perform work, that fragmented infrastructure may become an even bigger constraint.

In this episode of The WealthStack Podcast, host Shannon Rosic sits down with Sterling Perkins, director of solutions consulting at Ridgeline, to explore what happens when the investment management tech stack is rebuilt around a single system of record.

Key takeaways:

  • Why embedded AI with access to client, portfolio and transaction context could have an advantage over bolted-on tools
  • Why AI could allow firms to grow AUM without increasing headcount
  • How Ridgeline moves portfolio workflows from modeling through compliance, trading, accounting and billing
  • How firms should think about governance, permissions and human oversight as AI agents take on more responsibility 
  • Why the capacity created by AI can be reinvested in client relationships 

Resources:

Connect with Shannon Rosic:

Connect with Sterling Perkins:

About Our Guest:

Sterling Perkins is the Director of Solutions Consulting at Ridgeline, where he works at the intersection of wealth management and financial technology. He began his career as a financial advisor at Baird, helping grow a book of approximately $100 million across roughly 100 client relationships before transitioning into wealth technology. Sterling later spent six and a half years at InvestCloud, where he served as Global Head of Product and Global Head of Sales Engineering, before joining Ridgeline. His experience as both an advisor and technology leader gives him a practical perspective on investment management operations, AI, portfolio technology, and how firms can use connected systems to support growth and client service.

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The WealthStack Podcast: Rethinking Technology, AI and the Advisor Experience with Freedom Dumlao

The WealthStack Podcast: Rethinking Technology, AI and the Advisor Experience with Freedom Dumlao

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Technology in wealth management isn’t just changing, it’s colliding with reality. Advisors are expected to deliver deeply personalized experiences, operate at consumer-grade speed and navigate increasing complexity, all on top of legacy systems never designed for this moment. As AI accelerates what’s possible, the real challenge isn’t adopting new tools, it’s rethinking how technology supports the advisor experience from the ground up.

In this episode of The WealthStack Podcast, host Shannon Rosic sits down with Vestmark CTO Freedom Dumlao to go behind the curtain of modern wealthtech and unpack why advisor experience, data integration and agentic AI are now the real battlegrounds for scaling RIAs. 

Key takeaways:

  • Why consumer software experiences are redefining advisor expectations at work
  • How integration challenges quietly drain time and limit true personalization
  • Why agentic AI is the real leap forward
  • Why the advisor’s moat is validation, not information
  • How compliance doesn’t kill innovation, it sharpens it

Resources:

Connect with Shannon Rosic:

Connect with Freedom Dumlao:

About Our Guest:

Freedom Dumlao is the Chief Technology Officer at Vestmark, where he leads the firm’s technology strategy with a focus on resilience, scalability, and building long-term client confidence. He brings a disciplined, hands-on approach shaped by senior leadership roles at Amazon, Zipcar, Flexcar, Wayfair, and Drift, including his work on the Alexa machine learning and AI platform. A strong advocate for open-source communities, Freedom also serves as a board member and treasurer of Ruby Central. Outside of work, he enjoys woodworking, cooking, and spending time with his two daughters building robots and experimenting with electronics.

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The WealthStack Podcast: Portfolio Personalization Without the Ops Headache with Wes Caywood

The WealthStack Podcast: Portfolio Personalization Without the Ops Headache with Wes Caywood

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As advisors race to deliver “personalized” portfolios at scale, a hard reality is setting in: most personalization is still just a model tweak with a nicer label. Meanwhile, clients want more hands-on service, more transparency and more customization, while firms are trying to grow without hiring an army of operations and investment staff. The result is a widening gap between what clients expect and what legacy portfolio tools can realistically deliver. The firms that win won’t be the ones stacking more complexity. They’ll be the ones using automation to deliver truly bespoke outcomes, with clearer decisioning, tighter risk controls and better records behind every trade.

In this episode of The WealthStack Podcast, host Shannon Rosic sits down with Wes Caywood, head of distribution at Pave Finance, to unpack what “real personalization” actually means in 2026, why portfolio complexity rarely translates into client-perceived value and how automation can make portfolio management more defensible, not less. 

Key takeaways:

  • How to modernize portfolio management with “blowing up” your existing workflows
  • Where AI actually fits in portfolio management
  • Where the personalization gap shows up most clearly (and why it becomes an ops and time problem fast)
  • What automation should capture for compliance, auditability, and transparency 
  • The biggest mistake firms make when evaluating portfolio tech

Resources:

Connect with Shannon Rosic:

Connect with Wes Caywood:

About Our Guest:

Wes Caywood is the Head of Distribution at Pave Finance, where he works closely with advisors and firms to modernize portfolio management through thoughtful use of technology and automation. With more than 20 years in financial services, Wes brings deep experience working with sophisticated clients, family offices, and advisory teams. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former Navy officer, he is driven by a service-oriented mindset and a focus on helping advisors deliver personalized, well-prepared client experiences at scale.

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