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Robbie Cannon: The Evolution of Asset Management - [Making Markets, REPLAY]

·54 min·3 clips

Robby says asset management moved from product-centric trading to advice tech, with AI now inside Morgan Stanley and Morningstar.

Eric Golden opens by framing the episode around how markets are shaped not just by price, but by structure and behavior. He introduces Robby Cannon as a longtime asset manager who built Horizon Investments from the ground up, grew it to $7 billion in assets under management, and sold the firm in 2021. From there, the conversation turns to how the asset management business has changed over the last quarter century. A major thread is the rise of private equity-backed roll-ups. Eric pushes on the idea that consolidation should work the same way it does in other industries. In manufacturing, a buyer can standardize operations and squeeze efficiency through the stack. In advisory businesses, that breaks down fast. The firms being bought often use different custodians, model portfolios, vendors, and technology stacks, so the hard part is not the acquisition. It is the integration. That is where the episode spends most of its time. Buying advisors is one thing. Getting them to work from the same playbook is another. Eric and Robby keep circling back to interoperability, not as a buzzword, but as the day-to-day work of making a roll-up function. The more technology the industry adopted, the more those differences mattered. The episode also makes a simple point about change. A slow industry can still move quickly once a tool proves useful. Robby and Eric use digitized onboarding as the example. It sounds basic, almost dull, but it took out a tremendous amount of cost and wasted time that should have been gone years earlier. The lesson is not that every new tool transforms the business overnight. It is that once something works and fits the way the business really runs, the industry can adopt it faster than people expect. Another thread is the customer side of the business and where advice delivery is headed. The conversation keeps coming back to the shape of the modern advisory firm, what the buyer really gets in a deal, and how much of the old operating model survives after the handoff. Eric keeps pulling the discussion away from abstract optimism and back to the operational mess underneath it. What breaks when different workflows have to live together? What actually gets standardized? What never does? The episode does not romanticize asset management. It treats the field as slow-moving, shaped by pressure, technology, and consolidation more than by sudden reinvention. That makes the details matter. This is not a story about one clever idea solving everything. It is a story about infrastructure, incentives, and the work required to make firms function at scale. Robby also sounds broadly optimistic about where advice is headed. The future he sketches has fewer advisors, not more, but those advisors are better supported and better equipped. That future depends on the industry continuing to absorb tools that reduce friction and improve service. Eric keeps that tension in view throughout: skepticism on one side, progress on the other. Some changes look obvious in hindsight. Others feel unnecessary, or even a little silly, when they first show up. But the episode keeps landing on the same practical conclusion. When a process saves time, lowers cost, and fits the way the business actually works, the market usually finds a way to adopt it. The result is a clear look at how asset management changes from the inside.

As heard by us

A practical look at how asset management changes when scale, technology, and consolidation collide.

Robby Cannon's visit to Making Markets is a clear look at asset management and the changes since he founded Horizon Investments in 1999 and sold it in 2021.

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Why you'd press play

You want a serious tour of how asset management actually works, from growth and roll-ups to the friction of integration.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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