Episode summary
Building Growth Through People, Technology and Advisor Support with Neil Turner
Summary
Neil Turner argues that the most important growth metric for an advisory platform is net new assets, because it shows whether a firm is expanding faster than the market while still preserving margins and reinvesting in the business. He says NewEdge’s model is built to help advisors grow by removing friction: giving them more time, more flexibility, and more support so they can focus on client relationships rather than firm-building chores.
Turner describes three main engines of growth: partnering with advisors who already know how to grow, building a professional business development team to convert digital and custodial leads quickly, and recruiting advisors and teams that bring assets with them. He says digital lead generation only works well when a specialized team responds in minutes, because independent advisory practices are often competing against firms with dedicated hunters and closers.
He also says AI is changing both client expectations and firm operations. Clients are increasingly using tools like ChatGPT and Claude to ask sharper questions, so advisors need compliant AI tools and better control of their own data. His broader point is that technology matters, but culture and talent matter first: firms need people who genuinely respect advisors if they want lasting growth.
Key takeaways
- Neil Turner says net new assets are the clearest health metric because they show whether a firm is growing above market rates.
- Turner says NewEdge targets about 10% recruiting growth and another 10% from advisors, for roughly 20% all-in asset growth.
- He says digital leads convert best when a dedicated business development team responds within 3 to 5 minutes.
- Turner says AI will matter most for firms that own their data and can build a secure data lake.
- His final point is that firms must hire people who believe financial advisors create real value.
Notable quotes
“the number one health metric of a firm is is your ability to to perform better than the market”
“We want to recruit at about 10% a year. Um so, if we do we have a billion we have a Today we have about 100 billion in assets, we'll want to recruit around 10 billion”
“They're competing with enterprises that have professional business development”
“the first thing you have to do is find people who are passionate and care about financial advisors”
How the episode opens
I am Suzanne Siracuse. Welcome to season 4 of my podcast focused on the future, keys to building a profitable, sustainable, and impactful business. And I'm excited to be partnering with wealthmanagement.com on this.
This series will focus on what firms need to embrace to ensure their growth and success for the future. And you'll hear from industry leaders and advisors on what's working for them. I have a great lineup of guests in store, and today I'm speaking to Neil Turner.
Neil is the co-founder, chief revenue, and strategy officer of is an advisor-first, technology-enabled wealth management firm supporting elite advisors and their clients through NewEdge Advisors and NewEdge Wealth. Ranked number three on Barron's 2025 top RA's list, number eight on Forbes' 2025 top RA list, NewEdge oversees more than 88 billion in clients client assets. Wow, that's a huge number.
I didn't even realize that. Welcome, Neil. Wonderful to see you, and thanks for being my guest today.
All right, thank you. Appreciate it. — Yeah, absolutely. So, um I always like to start off with the same question on all of these podcasts, and that's how did you end up working within the financial planning, wealth management industry? More often than not, it's by accident. What's your story?
Yeah, it definitely is by accident. Um I was actually co-founder of a technology company travel. Um so, if you use your American Express for travel, um there's a company called I Seats behind it, and I was running it in uh New York City with a good friend of mine, Kenneth Purcell.
And uh we had a star employee by the name of Alex Goss, whose uh Uh, father was a really successful financial advisor at AG Edwards. Um, eventually Alex went back down to uh, join his dad's practice and um, one day he called me up and said, "Hey, look, we're not as happy with Wells Fargo as we were with AG Edwards after the acquisition.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- advisor growth
- net new assets
- advisor recruitment
- business development teams
- ai and data ownership
Companies and tickers mentioned
- NewEdge Advisors
- NewEdge Capital Group
- iSeatz.com
- AdverCar.com
- JPMorgan
Watch the episode
Watch “Building Growth Through People, Technology and Advisor Support with Neil Turner” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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