Episode summary
How AI Platforms Can Earn Long-Term Trust
Summary
Brad Joudrie says the AI opportunity in wealth management is real, but long-term trust will come from platforms that are transparent about how they work. He argues firms should judge AI by workflow fit, traceability, auditability, and whether the outputs are repeatable and deterministic, not by how flashy the product looks. In his view, financial advisers will remain central, even as AI helps them work faster.
Joudrie also pushes back on the idea that compliance and speed must be in tension. He says Conquest Planning was built to make financial advice more accessible by removing trial and error from planning while preserving audit trails down to the tax-form level. Its system, SAM, can generate a first-pass plan automatically and then let advisers review, adjust, and document changes without losing visibility into the numbers behind the strategy.
He says Conquest is already seeing that model scale: the company serves over 70% of advisers in Canada, and its first client reportedly grew from 60,000 financial plans a year to 220,000 in year one on the platform. After launching in the UK and the US, Joudrie says the company is becoming more aggressive in the US while positioning Conquest as a geography-agnostic engine for advice businesses.
Key takeaways
- Brad Joudrie says AI platforms earn trust by being traceable, auditable, repeatable, and deterministic, not just fast.
- He argues compliance and speed can coexist if the workflow is built for auditability from the start.
- Joudrie says Conquest's SAM can auto-generate a first-pass financial plan, then let advisers review and edit it with full traceability.
- He says Conquest serves over 70% of advisers in Canada and is expanding more aggressively in the US.
- Joudrie cites Investors Group as an example, saying annual plan volume rose from 60,000 to 220,000 after moving onto Conquest's service.
Notable quotes
“what are you trying to accomplish from from a workflow perspective? How am I going to drive efficiency within my own business”
“people need to know where the answers came from. The answers need to be repeatable. The engine needs to be deterministic”
“compliance and speed are intention, right? So, you know, how do you respond to that? Because some some folks will argue yes, there's friction”
“We removed the trial and error from from our process or process building a financial plan through SAM”
“all of those changes are auditable, traceable, right down to the tax form level”
How the episode opens
What will separate the AI platforms that are earning long-term trust versus just the ones that are maybe moving fast? To break it all down, I'm joined by Brad Jowry, CEO of Conquest, planning to learn more. And yes, we are in New Orleans for this conversation. So Brad, thanks so much for joining me.
Appreciate the beignet. This is a really, really nice treat at 10. I, you know, got a sugar load for the day. — Oh, absolutely. Well, you have to frontload the day, right? You got to start strong. So, so we're going to start out with sugar straight to the brain. Yes.
So, but I got a couple questions for you while we uh talk a little bit about AI. But before we even get into that, you are the newly minted CEO of Conquest Planning and a couple months in now, what has that experience been like? What have you learned? And obviously, you're the former CRO, so you know the inner workings of Conquest, but talk to me about the journey a little bit.
Beignet done that right with the Conquest business. Be done that.
Yeah. No, it's been uh been a great transition. Um I've been really excited about the opportunity.
I've been with the business obviously since about 2018. So um we've built a a really great uh product. We've built a really great customer base.
We've really built a really great team. And uh it was just, you know, a a great opportunity for me to take my next step in into what we're trying to build and grow over here. Um, you know, there's been a lot of macro macroeconomic effects that have have taken place over the last uh couple couple months.
Yeah. Since I joined the CEO, I didn't expect to, you know, have to deal with with so many um macroeconomic effects, political uh the software ending like AI taking over fully.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- ai trust
- transparency
- auditability
- financial advisors
- ai efficiency
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Conquest Planning
Watch the episode
Watch “How AI Platforms Can Earn Long-Term Trust” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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