Anthony Montufar is Chief Digital & Client Experience Officer at Equitable Advisors, where he leads enterprise digital strategy, advisor technology platforms, client experience innovation, and product transformation. Throughout his career, Anthony has held leadership roles across major Wall Street organizations, driving advisor productivity, digital transformation, relationship management, and product strategy initiatives that enhance both the advisor and client experience. His background spans digital sales and marketing, advisor platform experience, strategy and enterprise product management, with a focus on aligning technology investments to business growth and client outcomes.
Today, Anthony is responsible for advancing Equitable Advisors’ vision for a modern, integrated digital ecosystem that brings together advisor enablement, client experience, wealth management strategy, and product innovation to help advisors deepen relationships, operate more efficiently, and deliver greater value to clients.
In our conversation, Anthony discusses how AI is changing expectations around speed without changing the fundamental role of financial advisors. He talks about why product teams should focus on solving real workflow problems before introducing new technology and why measuring business outcomes matters more than measuring adoption. Anthony also shares why trust remains the foundation for the adoption of advisory technology.
Designing for outcomes, not AI
You’ve led digital product strategy across several of the largest wealth management organizations. What expectations do advisors have today that simply didn’t exist before AI became mainstream?
Both the clients’ and advisors’ expectations have changed, but not so much in terms of the output, final product, or engagement mechanism. That hasn’t changed in many years, but how we do it surely has. How quickly things evolve has changed significantly as well.
As we’re still in the early innings of what AI really means and what it will become, expectations from advisors and clients are primarily about speed. It’s the ultimate output and how you get to it, how it can be delivered from a service offering or relationship management perspective. What could have been developed or produced previously in two weeks can now sometimes take two hours.
A lot of firms and teams want all of the latest and greatest, and they want it yesterday. That mindset hasn’t changed, but the expectations for what it would take for large enterprises to provide this level of support have changed.
It’s up to us to stay grounded on the “why.” Why are we doing something? Why are we enabling something faster today than yesterday? That allows advisors to understand it’s not just “do it because.” It’s because of what it enables — a new feature, a new part of an advisor’s practice that they couldn’t provide to clients before. Ultimately, the speed at which it has happened is the big difference.
Many organizations are adding AI features everywhere. Why do you advocate rethinking workflows first?
I feel very strongly about this. Again, the important question is, what’s the why? It’s not technology for technology’s sake or AI because everybody else is doing it. It truly is about determining which processes are fragmented today or don’t exist. Maybe you want to scale your practice from supporting 150 clients to 300, and you think creating a new workflow or adding automation using AI will make the difference.
It’s about identifying what your problems and opportunities are, and how you can solve them. Often, it can be solved by AI or other technologies. Other times, however, it’s not technology at all. We all know the fastest way from point A to point B is a straight line, but oftentimes finding point B is the most difficult part.
Is what keeps product leaders up at night different today than it was a few years ago?
I think the problem is the same, but how it gets solved has changed. From a product leadership standpoint, that’s the dynamic culture we live by. We understand each day what changes, what moves, what’s different, and what’s similar. That’s the beauty of the world we’re in — it’s never the same workday.
Where we provide value is evaluating the landscape, seeing how something works in our space, and continuing to evolve. Before, we could have been in the evaluation stage for a year or 18 months. Now, the company we’re evaluating might not have even existed 18 months ago
Even the number of technology options has grown exponentially. Every day new companies emerge because it’s much more efficient and faster to build a platform and provide an offering. The differentiator becomes: How do you scale it? How do you future-proof it? It might be the right solution today, but how do you ensure you’re still here tomorrow? That’s something everyone should be thinking about continuously.
Building an adoptable advisory platform
Advisors have different business models, client bases, and levels of maturity. How do you design a platform that feels standardized enough to scale but adaptable enough to serve very different ways of working?
Advisors have always been unique and intricate. They’re ultimately business owners running their own companies. For firms and teams like mine, we are the advisor’s business partner — we support them in their independence. Even if we look across 10 different advisor practices, each one could have five advisors. Very quickly, a multitude of variations emerge.
There are certain ways of doing business where we say, “We support you. We provide different tools at your disposal,” whether that be people, process, or technology. We cover the core elements around security, governance, controls, and compliance to ensure that their practice continues to thrive.
From there, we allow optionality depending on where the practice is today. It could be growing, part of a succession plan, or changing its client base. From a platform standpoint, you need core elements that define the standard. Then on top of that, advisors can select from a menu of capabilities that plug and play to meet their needs — that’s the key.
It’s what we call a Goldilocks mentality — your best tools and best processes should be at the forefront and continuously evolving, while allowing practices to build the toolkit that’s right for them.
Product teams often focus on measuring adoption. But I would think in your case, advisor success is what really matters. How do you determine whether a new capability is helping to drive those stronger business outcomes?
I’m passionate about this. We work in a world where just because someone uses our product doesn’t mean that it’s a success. In our business, if one person is using our platform for 14 hours a day but their business is suffering, that’s a failure on our part. Maybe their usage numbers are through the roof, but they’ve lost 20 percent of their clients or can’t attract prospective clients — if that’s true, then we’ve missed the mark.
It comes back to what problem are you trying to solve? Are you trying to help advisors reach more clients in less time? If so, that’s your metric. Or, are you trying to scale knowledge more quickly or provide additional certifications? In that case, that’s your measure of success. It’s not, “Build software, people use it, and we all go home and high five.” We enable advisors to drive their businesses through the functions we create.
The other element is qualitative versus quantitative measurement. Sometimes you can’t measure success purely through facts — you also have to understand client sentiment. How are people receiving these capabilities? Often, your goal is simply for someone to feel better when they interact with your product. It’s not always about usage, and it’s also not just a numbers game.
We’re a goals-based business. If we’re not supporting clients in reaching financial success and happiness through their advisors, then ultimately we’re not succeeding.
How technology should enable people
You mentioned quantitative vs. qualitative data. When you think about what AI should automate, are there parts of the business that you very strongly feel should remain with humans?
Yes, I do, and I think this is a healthy conversation to have. We often use the terms AI and automation interchangeably, but automation has existed forever and will always continue to exist. AI, however, has become much more mainstream over the last three to five years.
It boils down to who is in the middle of that? Who is that client? Who is that advisor? Which parts become table stakes, and which parts do we actually want a professional advisor — a human being — to provide guidance, judgment, and perspective?
There are elements that AI, automation, and technology are phenomenal at, but in our world in particular, we spend a lot of time preparing for the unknown. A lot of clients will say, “Why do I want to engage with an advisor? Well, because I want to make more money.” But I think this needs to be reframed. People engage with advisors because they want to set themselves, their families, and their loved ones up for the future in the most productive, successful way possible. One day, we won’t be here anymore, and sometimes, bad or unexpected circumstances happen. People use advisors to plan for those things so that if they occur, the people they love aren’t severely impacted.
AI, technology, and tools can make all of those processes more seamless and efficient, but the human element of having a conversation will always exist. Customers and advisors truly want the balance between EQ and IQ. For example, there are many things that customers didn’t have access to before but can now access instantly through technology. The differentiator is how to put tax strategy, estate planning, and everything else into their personalized life.
We’re always going to have clients who trust AI tools, but ultimately want someone to sit with them when they go through a difficult life change or plan for the future. That’s why I believe high-EQ advising will continue to matter.
You place a strong emphasis on advisor enablement — not just on shipping technology, but on surrounding it with onboarding specialists, workflow experts, and marketing support. Where have you found product teams often overestimate what software alone can accomplish?
It’s not about who has the fastest, best, or most up-to-date technology. Of course, that’s a big part of success and our company’s accomplishments, but it’s a balance. A lot of firms actually have the opposite problem — they have the latest and greatest technology, but they’re experiencing a training problem. They can’t get enough people to understand how to utilize the product, implement it, or integrate it into their business. That technology then sits on the sideline.
That’s where having a dedicated enablement team makes all the difference. It allows advisors to say, “Here’s the problem that I’m having today,” and then determine which tools or processes to integrate into their business, whether that’s marketing support, advisory services, consulting, or digital enablement. That’s where you find the sweet spot and how you ultimately win.
It’s also no longer good enough to have one win. You have to stack wins day over day and week over week. Everything has a role to play, whether it’s the markets, geopolitical events, or broader industry changes. I’m a big believer in the team concept. The strongest advisor doesn’t need to be an absolute expert in every area — instead, they need to know how to most effectively leverage the resources around them to build the business, grow the practice, or protect it.
How do you think about trust as AI becomes part of advisor and client experiences?
We’re a relationship-based business — that’s the industry we’re in. Every firm has access to slightly different tools, products, and services, but distinctions between them are fairly small. The biggest difference-maker is the people who support you day to day, week to week, or month to month.
Trust is paramount to everything we do. We spend a lot of time building trust, and if it’s lost, it’s very hard to gain back. Neither clients nor advisors want to experience loss of trust. That’s why at Equitable Advisors we feel very strongly about continuously leading with insight and guiding with empathy.
Yes, conversations can be about the numbers, the model portfolios, and the investment selections — all of which are important. But it’s also about how the interaction made the client feel. How do we ensure the human connection remains the most important part of what we’re doing?
I often think about a story I heard where someone described their week by identifying the good, the bad, and the interesting. If all three created meaningful conversations, they felt it was a successful week. I think the same way about the advisor relationship. If something good, bad, or interesting happens, and my advisor is the first person I want to call for guidance — as well as to ensure my goals are still on track and my family is protected — that’s success. That’s where trust becomes the most important part of the relationship.
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