Making Markets · Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

Ritik Malhotra - The Future of Wealth Management - [Making Markets, EP.66]

·36 min·2 clips

Marketing is the hardest problem because every advisor needs something bespoke, not a standard template.

1. Making Markets features Ritik Malhotra and his company Savvy, focused on the future of wealth management and independent RIAs. 2. Eric Golden hosts the conversation, and Malhotra is Savvy’s co-founder and CEO, bringing experience from two startup exits and a 2021 launch. 3. The episode asks whether a vertically integrated platform can help advisors leave large institutions and run independent firms more efficiently. 4. Malhotra says he sold a cloud storage company to Box in 2014 and a fintech business in 2019 before turning to wealth management. 5. He describes becoming “completely broke” to having life-changing money, then finding the advisor experience useful but operationally clunky. 6. The early pain points included mailing documents, no dashboards, no project management, and heavy reliance on outdated workflows. 7. Malhotra says conversations with 100-plus advisors showed that many firms were trapped in older institutions with weak technology-first thinking. 8. He says some independent advisors now manage seven to 12 different software systems and spend more than 50% of their time on data reconciliation and software management. 9. Savvy was created in 2021 as a vertically integrated firm and platform that provides software, services, and middle- and back-office support. 10. The goal is to remove everything except the advisor-client relationship and let advisors run practices the way they want. 11. Malhotra says the best fit is already-independent advisors, solo entrepreneurs, groups of advisors, and people actively deciding to go independent. 12. He describes independence as a tradeoff among freedom, family time, and higher take-home upside, with fear around what can go wrong during a move. 13. Savvy’s core buckets are practice management, operational execution, and marketing and growth. 14. He says operational pain shows up in custodians, account opening, trades, rebalancing, and special cases that third-party systems often cannot handle. 15. Marketing is backed by an internal agency plus software that helps advisors define ideal clients, niches, and messaging, then run campaigns. 16. The firm chose not to build only software because compliance, onboarding, custodians, and RIA operations create too much nuance for a pure point solution. 17. Malhotra says he calls the system a “checkerboard” because some boxes are built by Savvy, some are integrations, and some are still not a fit. 18. He says the hardest area to standardize is marketing, while financial planning is often handled through data integration with tools like eMoney and RightCapital. 19. The episode has a pragmatic interview style, with detailed operational examples, recurring references to advisor workflows, and a calm, explanatory tone. 20. Listeners who care about RIAs, advisor operations, or wealth-tech infrastructure will get the most value, while people seeking trading ideas or personal finance tips may skip it.

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