How will artificial intelligence transform the most human parts of wealth management? In this episode, we explore where technology meets empathy, and what the future looks like for financial professionals and their clients as AI adoption accelerates across the industry. Our guest, Carrie Nelson, is the founder of Atlas Point and a veteran leader with experience at Ernst & Young, Experian, and Edward Jones. Carrie shares her journey from big-firm consulting to building a platform that empowers advisors to navigate a rapidly changing landscape, with a focus on the coming great wealth transfer and the next generation of clients. Together, we discuss why human connection is still essential—even as AI creates new efficiencies—and how Atlas Point blends behavioral science and smart tools to bridge the gap. For anyone interested in the future of finance, entrepreneurship, or the emotional side of money, this is a must-listen episode filled with real-world stories and actionable insights.
How will artificial intelligence transform the most human parts of wealth management? In this episode, we explore where technology meets empathy, and what the future looks like for financial professionals and their clients as AI adoption accelerates across the industry.
Our guest, Carrie Nelson, is the founder of Atlas Point and a veteran leader with experience at Ernst & Young, Experian, and Edward Jones. Carrie shares her journey from big-firm consulting to building a platform that empowers advisors to navigate a rapidly changing landscape, with a focus on the coming great wealth transfer and the next generation of clients.
Together, we discuss why human connection is still essential—even as AI creates new efficiencies—and how Atlas Point blends behavioral science and smart tools to bridge the gap. For anyone interested in the future of finance, entrepreneurship, or the emotional side of money, this is a must-listen episode filled with real-world stories and actionable insights.
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Marcia Dawood [00:00:02]:
Well, Carrie, welcome to the Angel Next Door podcast.
Carrie Nelson [00:00:05]:
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Marcia Dawood [00:00:07]:
I am excited to talk to you about some very interesting things around wealth management, the great wealth transfer, all kinds of fun things like that. So let's start out. Tell us a little bit about your background and then what led you to Atlas Point?
Carrie Nelson [00:00:21]:
So I started my career with Ernst and Young and we was focused on the lending side of the business. So mortgages, credit cards, auto finance, that type of thing. Left EY and went to Experian and learned a lot about data and analytics and how that's applied in on the lending side of the business. It's very transactional business. So right product, right time, right person, all of those things. And then when I returned to ey, I was a principal and at the time we were living in St. Louis, which is a wealth management hub. Ended up leading wealth asset management and financial services in St.
Carrie Nelson [00:01:02]:
Louis, wealth and asset management west of the Mississippi, at some global wealth management accounts and things of that nature. And that's when I realized, wow, this is a high touch relationship business. It's a bit more resistant to data and analytics. So pulling from that background, that was always very interesting to me. How can we really help the financial advisor and bring more insights to this industry so that you have a deeper human connection? And then I went to Edward Jones, who was one of my clients and that's where I got a real first front row seat on some of the big industry challenges around organic growth. This industry has been growing for some time through mergers and acquisition or following A lot of the firms are following market performance very closely and a firm's own ability to really attract and retain clients. That's what we think of when we say organic growth. That's been quite limited in the industry.
Carrie Nelson [00:02:06]:
In the wealth management industry, depending on which research you're looking at, you're looking at 2 to 5% organic growth, which is really low, certainly not double digit growth. And as more PE is getting involved in this industry, private equity is going to want to see return on their investment. So organic growth is going to be a really big deal as we move into the future here. So Atlas Point, I started Atlas Point really to help financial professionals and their firms drive growth differently. And a lot of that gets down to that, that human experience that's at the core of organic growth. That's how you would attract and retain clients and assets.
Marcia Dawood [00:02:50]:
So when you say growth within wealth management, explain a little bit more about
Carrie Nelson [00:02:54]:
what that means, what growth within wealth management means. So it means like growing clients and assets. There's a huge opportunity in wealth management right now because there's giant wealth transfer that's happening, big shift. And again, depending on which article you're reading, 84 trillion or 124 trillion by 2025 changing hands. And that as it changes hands, its first 40% of that will go to widowed women first, foreigners, heirs. And if we look at that population of women who will be in 80% will either change advisors due to death of a spouse or upon divorce. And the reason they're changing advisors is because they felt unheard, left out of the conversation. They've been maybe perhaps the quiet one in the conversation.
Carrie Nelson [00:03:49]:
Most widows will turn to their oldest child and say where should I go for financial advice? And then challenge. There is 71% of theirs who are inheriting wealth will also change financial advisors because that connection between their parents advisor and the next generation has not happened. So there's this huge amount of wealth shift and movement that's happening. On top of that, the number of financial professionals, experienced financial professionals is shrinking. So we look at the number of financial advisors as a whole, maybe it looks stagnant, that's staying the same, but that's because of so many young people coming in. When you look at the seasoned advisors leaving, it is staggering, the number. And McKinsey recently had an article that by 2035 we will have a shortage of about 100,000 financial advisors. Huge.
Carrie Nelson [00:04:46]:
Right in this digital age where people are going to be more self directed and we'll have a lot of folks who are more self directed and leveraging technology and AI, but there's still going to be a need for that personalized steady hand human interaction and advice. And this is, we can keep rolling here, but this is why the role of the financial professional is going to change. And Atlas Point wants to be right in the heart of that newly defined role.
Marcia Dawood [00:05:17]:
Yeah. So tell us more about what it is specifically that Atlas Point can do.
Carrie Nelson [00:05:22]:
Yeah. So Atlas Point is helping educate financial advisors as they make this transition into this, the future of wealth management. We're bringing not only education on variety of topics which I can touch on, but we're also bringing insights and then helping them connect and engage with clients and prospects and using behavioral science to do that piece. So there's two sides to this organic growth challenge. There's addressing your clients and serving them the way they want to be served. And then there's also helping the financial advisor evolve into the future. And if we step back and think the role of the financial professional, while when we were young was more like stock picking and things like that. And then you move to current day and it's been with the support of fintech firms and things, it's been more about financial planning and goal setting and are you prepared for retirement and those types of things, it's really going to shift again.
Carrie Nelson [00:06:27]:
Even the next generations thinking about retirement entirely differently now, maybe not even using that word, their job and cash flow, all of that's going to be quite different with the next generation. But where the financial professional is really going to shine is one, from a relationship perspective and understanding underlying human fears and behaviors and holding us accountable when our emotions are getting in the way of our financial decisions. That's going to be huge. But they've got to be trained on that. And number two, really being the quarterback. So this is a different role. They've got to understand tax strategy, not just financial planning, but tax strategy and alternatives and more complex. Let me get you to the right estate planner.
Carrie Nelson [00:07:14]:
And the years you're playing that quarterback role is a bit of a shift in skillset and education than what we've seen the financial professional play in the past. And so Atlas Points really aligned with that whole agenda. Enabling the advisor but also equipping them with tools they can use with their client for a deeper connection.
Marcia Dawood [00:07:35]:
Yeah. Wow. So give us some examples of how they would use that.
Carrie Nelson [00:07:40]:
So for the financial professional, again, that's our target audience. Right. And I know this is a little different here, what we're getting on about. Rosie, I'll hit the emotional piece second and start with more of the technical tools. Like we actually have education around tax strategy and things of that nature to help them professionally make that transition and play the quarterback. Right. From a behavioral standpoint, we have worked with Washington University, a number of PhDs. We've got a bunch of different behavioral surveys and engagement tools that they can use with clients and prospects.
Carrie Nelson [00:08:23]:
We've even developed applications that are client facing. But we also develop applications for firms that are advisor facing. One of our most simple tools is a behavioral survey that they can use with clients to understand how the client thinks and feels about their money. So it takes less than five minutes. It's quite detailed and the report out is detailed for the client so they can learn about their financial strengths. But it also gives you a common language to talk to your spouse about underlying financial fears. We all have financial fears or financial blind spots and a lot of those are baked in early in childhood and being able to talk about them and have a common vocabulary can really help. But we also provide the financial advisor with tips on what to ask, say, do to really help.
Carrie Nelson [00:09:18]:
Pull this person out of stress. Because talking about our personal money can be stressful. Pull this person out of stress and help to influence a better financial decision that's going to lead to a stronger, more positive financial outcome. And I. Examples. You want me to give examples of how that works? Okay. So for example, we had a financial advisor out on the west coast and she was working with a fellow who had inherited a really nice piece of property from his grandmother in California. And he could not afford to keep it.
Carrie Nelson [00:09:54]:
He could not afford the taxes, he could not afford the upkeep. And she had put all sorts of really logical rational plans in front of him on all the reasons why selling it might be a good idea. And he just couldn't hear it because he could remember the summers grandmas and all these things. Yeah. So she had him take Financial Virtues, which is one of our surveys. He was able top of the list. Endowment bias was one of his key blind spots. And for the advisor it said with an emotional bias like this, more and more information is not going to help him emotional.
Carrie Nelson [00:10:31]:
So ask an open ended question. So she asked, we gave the tip of ask what? What would he do if it was a lump sum of cash? And so she asked that question and he was like, oh, I've always wanted to live in Colorado and I wanted to do this and starts to just think through it all very differently. Ultimately decided to let go of the property and redirect his focus and energy. So that's an example. There's illusion of control. You might see this with that somebody who I'll give an example of a surgeon or someone who's just knows their content so well, you're in the operating room, they are the expert. And the idea of being able to apply that same level of expertise to your finances can be an illusion of control bias. And so an advisor being in the mix and understanding that can provide information to help that person move forward.
Carrie Nelson [00:11:26]:
So those are a couple of examples. I have a personal and very personal example with that one. When we were in the early days of developing one of those surveys, I used it with my own husband and advisor because for years I felt like my husband who's also in the industry. We like to eat our own cooking. It's kind of funny. I think doctors see other doctors, lawyers get other lawyers. But in the financial professional realm, a lot of financial advisors do not seek a financial advisor. They do it Themselves, which is really funny.
Carrie Nelson [00:12:05]:
Like, why not get a eat your own cooking? So we have a financial advisor. In part, it's almost like a financial therapist for our household, but also recognizing that even though we really understand this industry, we bring a lot of strengths to the table. We each have cognitive and emotional biases that get in the way, and that third party can help. And in those situations. The challenge with our relationship was that when we would go to see our financial advisor, I felt like my husband's agenda was getting on the table each time, because he'd send a bulleted list of these are the things we're going to cover. And then I was there. I very much understand what's going on. I've been in this industry my whole career, and I didn't feel like I was being heard or that my.
Carrie Nelson [00:12:54]:
My agenda was being getting on the table. So I created. That was part of the genesis of financial virtues, actually. If that was happening to me, who else is feeling unheard? Because we'd leave and I'd say, scott, it's my husband. Anything happens to you, I'm changing advisors because this guy is not listening to me. And I don't. It's not working. So we brought financial virtues to the table.
Carrie Nelson [00:13:19]:
And what we found was that all three of us have different underlying risk, the way we perceive risk. We had very different ways of talking about financial fears. There were different, like just every the way we think and feel about money. You had three people at the table, and all three of us had really different ideas. And so it gave us a common language. And to our financial advisor's credit, within two meetings, he had changed how he talks to me. Followed the prescription, if you will, asking certain questions, presenting certain data. My agenda got on the table.
Carrie Nelson [00:13:58]:
And then the most amazing thing happened. My husband's a distributor, and I prefer consolidating and having more of a holistic view. And that's like music to a financial advisor's ears. Right. So that was a way to start consolidating some assets and move forward from there. So it can be a game changer when the advisor is really using the same common language and can help a couple, and it helps the couple, too, to be able to use a common language around financial fears, things of that nature.
Marcia Dawood [00:14:31]:
I just think this is so interesting because money mindset, the emotional charge of money and the ways that people think about it. And in some cases, they might think about it and think, well, other people think this way. That isn't really true.
Carrie Nelson [00:14:50]:
True. And that's one of the things that's part of the education for the advisor too. One of the places we start often is, look, we all have financial strengths. Everybody does. For most people, when you're talking about your own personal finances, there's a tendency to get a little stressed. It's more personal, you dig your heels in and you're less flexible to change. And so again, a reason for a third party or a financial professional who should not be in that stress state. Right.
Carrie Nelson [00:15:22]:
Needs to move in the direction of the client and help pull them out of stress and pull them back to overcome those blind spots and be able to make a really better financial decision. And that impacts outcomes and performance, period. There's great science around that.
Marcia Dawood [00:15:39]:
Yeah. And I think it could mean not only is there more harmony in the relationship of either the person and the financial advisor, or the person, their partner and financial advisor, all of that. But you're also now aligning more with your values, what you care about and your money. And I think if when you start to do that, that some of that stress, some of that emotional charge of it starts to dissipate because it's like more is out in the open. You're talking about the things that you'd like your money to do for you because at the end of the day, money is paper. Right. But it is a tool that we can use to help us get the things that we want. And that could be wealth in the way of time, in the way of your health, in the way of your relationships, all of those things.
Marcia Dawood [00:16:30]:
And of course, all the things that money can buy from a monetary standpoint. So. Yeah. So I think this is really interesting because I don't know, when I first met you and I heard about this, I thought, well, I don't hear a lot of other people talking about it. And with this great wealth transfer and how many women are going to be coming into wealth, they need to be heard and they need to feel not so stressed out and emotionally overwhelmed by what's happening. Right.
Carrie Nelson [00:17:01]:
Odly. Exactly. And there's a huge opportunity for everyone to learn. We have. There's an advisor, he. And this is a very common case, so I'll use a specific example, but I think it's very common. He had been working with this couple for 20 years. They're retired.
Carrie Nelson [00:17:21]:
The husband, a doctor, had managed all of the financial everything. Right. He, after the first meeting, the wife never even came to the meetings anymore.
Marcia Dawood [00:17:32]:
Right.
Carrie Nelson [00:17:33]:
Everything fast forward. And this husband had some illusion of control by him, like just recency, bias, all those things. He had moved to cash at one point because he got scared during the financial crisis in 2008. Moved probably too much to cash and against what the advisor was recommending. Fast forward now. There's health challenges for both he and his wife, but he had cancer. And like a number of other things, it was very clear to the advisor it's time to engage the wife. Pretty late in the game, given 20 years have gone by, reaches out, engages.
Carrie Nelson [00:18:13]:
The wife doesn't even want to come to the meeting. I. She's. I'm an ostrich when it comes to my money. I don't know enough to even know what questions to ask. I don't. I'm. I don't.
Carrie Nelson [00:18:23]:
I can't do this. This was one of the ways, using one of our simple tools that we. It's friendly. We've tested on fifth graders. Like, it's a way to introduce. It's not crazy language or anything like that. The. She was able to take that and said, oh, my goodness, I have financial strengths, I have confidence, and I have questions.
Carrie Nelson [00:18:43]:
So she comes to the meeting prepared with questions. Now they had a deep dive. She was like, oh, when I was a kid, this is how I felt. Suddenly the advisor realized I should have had her at these meetings for a very long time, including back when we were going through the financial crisis, because she has great intuition about money. She has great financial strengths. She's connecting the dot and. And she was just doing an amazing job of connecting a lot of different pieces that he had struggled with before. And then on top of that, this couple, they.
Carrie Nelson [00:19:18]:
Because they were experiencing health challenges and everything, and they were watching their savings dwindle, and they were scared. And they both kept saying they're scared, but they were scared for really different reasons. And so this gave them a vocabulary to have a better conversation with each other as well, and then put a plan in place to move forward. So that's how it can work. Everybody. It needs to be part of the conversation. Right. I have friends.
Carrie Nelson [00:19:47]:
I have. I'm sure you do, too. Like, friends who are. Like, my husband handles that. Do I really even need. I trust him. But we all need to be part of the conversation.
Marcia Dawood [00:19:58]:
Yeah. I think I've written this book, Unapologetic wealth, that comes out in March, and I'm just baffled at the money stories that people were telling me as I was writing the book. And women who were very accomplished, very successful, but they did have. And I like the way you put it, they had an ostrich mentality. They were Burying their head in the sand about what was really going on with their finances. They were either leaving it to the husband, and in some cases they were doing that because it was, they were looking at it like a chore. Well, this is something else that I would have to do. And yes, I could do it, but I'm just gonna let my husband do it.
Marcia Dawood [00:20:37]:
I have to do all these other things with the kids, whatever the story is. But then there's also. Or I'm gonna leave it to my financial planner and I'm just not gonna, I'm just not really gonna look at it more than maybe once a year. And as long as everything like seems okay for the next couple months, I think it'll be fine. But in a lot of cases, they're not really thinking about this long term strategy of what's needed 10 years, 5 years from now, 10 years from now and a little bit farther out. And then how about all the way out, like with legacy planning and things like that? I think in a lot of cases people are like, oh, I don't want to think about that. I'd have to think through scenarios about if I died or my spouse died or whatever. I get it, I went through it.
Marcia Dawood [00:21:15]:
It's not at first the most fun thing to do, but. But then once you do it and you start to have the conversations and I think the more you're talking about it, it really does help to make all of the conversations better and it helps you to come up with a better plan.
Carrie Nelson [00:21:32]:
100%. Those are all excellent points. Especially on the time horizon and planning. We don't want to think that far out. There's been a real shift in mentality, especially with the younger generation. That planning horizon is getting very short. And Covid has also accelerated how people are thinking about money in the planning horizon. It has really shortened.
Carrie Nelson [00:21:58]:
So when we think about boomers, where you have pensions and retirement plans, that's automatic. You're thinking longer term. If we skip now to Gen Z or younger that next generation, the planning horizon is so it's less than five years, in some cases one year out. It's so immediate. And that's going to change how we plan as well. And the reason Covid impacted it was like, no, I want to enjoy this vacation today. So I'm hearing new terms, especially from younger generations, about micro retirements and things like that. And like, what in the world is that? But they're really thinking about that planning horizon very differently.
Carrie Nelson [00:22:40]:
And that's going to be. It's going to Be interesting to see how it plays out.
Marcia Dawood [00:22:45]:
I know I think about my step kids, they're in their 20s and, and they do think like that. So I'm my husband and I always encouraging them. Let's think about what you want to let your life to be like 5, 10, 15 years from now. Because time goes faster than you think. Right?
Carrie Nelson [00:23:02]:
Faster than you think. And so financial advisors are seeing this especially with their Gen X clients who have these 20 year old or younger, younger adults, children and they're saying, hey Gen X, you may need to plan differently than we have as well. Like really taking that into consideration. So there's a lot of movement on that front.
Marcia Dawood [00:23:26]:
So you talked earlier about, you just touched on it for a minute. So let's go back and dive in a little more about AI and like this human connection. So I do believe that the human connection is just so incredibly important. But what are you seeing as far as the use of AI and then how can we make it so there is more human connection?
Carrie Nelson [00:23:45]:
Yeah. So I think on one hand, oh, there's so much to say on this topic. So when we were, when I was starting Atlas Point, it was interesting. A lot of my EY colleagues and consulting colleagues, everybody was like rushing to go focus on AI. That is going to be the future. In fact there are some more. One woman I partner with very closely now, we have very different views on this. At one point in time she's like, there's not even going to be human advisors.
Carrie Nelson [00:24:14]:
We're going extreme. It's all going to be self directed and AI and this and that. We went the other direction and said no, there's going to be an even greater need for human connection. And I think what we're finding is that the answer's somewhere in the middle. Right. There is going to be a greater need for that human emotional connection that's real, that's not AI. But in order to support the growing needs in the number of underserved clients and clients who have more complex needs, the financial professional is not going to need to be enabled and augment some of that role with AI and technology. That's the only way they'll be able to serve this giant growing gap between a shrinking number of advisors and a growing number of clients who have more needs.
Carrie Nelson [00:24:59]:
So I think there's just huge opportunity where we're seeing AI being used right now in the industry. It's heavily regulated industry and I would already say governance around AI is like a big tricky. Everybody's trying to figure it out right AI is clearly being used for note taking and that's creating a ton of efficiency for the advisor. That's just the beginning. And you can see already how those note taking apps are starting to get into more meeting prep. Again, a lot of heavy focus on creating more efficiency, giving the advisor more time in the day. Where we want to focus is making those interactions with the client more impactful. And that's a different way to think about using AI.
Carrie Nelson [00:25:45]:
So how do we create the business, the strategic business plans for the advisors, leveraging AI and a number of different things like that. I think that there's so much compliance and risk around all of this too sensitive data, the amount of work as a wealth tech firm that we have to go through to make sure PII is protected and all of those things. And now we're in this world where you can drop anything into AI and oh my goodness, it's out there. Right. And I think a lot of firms haven't fully gotten their arms around what are all the AI tools that their employees are using and how are they using it and how are they monitoring it. And that's one of the big risks for privacy, for intellectual property, for all of those things. And that we haven't figured that part out yet. But it's moving so quickly.
Carrie Nelson [00:26:40]:
It's completely changed Atlas Point and how we are developing products and it changed our team makeup on a small scale. We're a smaller business, but with the way we can develop now, it changed the makeup of our my team. And I think large businesses will have to go through the same thing that we did. We're like, look, we don't need as many developers full time the way we were because we now can do more on demand and what we are. And so I brought the team down and now I'm adding people back. And part of that is because we're going to do more bespoke work, because we can now we just got freed up and we can do more bespoke consulting type application build that we couldn't do before. And so we're adding more talent, but it's a different kind of talent from here. And that's from a small business perspective, small fintech perspective.
Carrie Nelson [00:27:36]:
You can imagine that a large business would be going through the same type of thing.
Marcia Dawood [00:27:42]:
Yeah, it's interesting because as much as you could think that, oh, if you use technology and you had like robo advisors or how to call them, that everybody could just plug and play. But it's not that simple. Everybody, especially as you get older and you get more assets or you have different assets or things change and there's a divorce or death or you lose a job or medical whatever. Every. There's complexity. And that complexity is not something that is easily.
Carrie Nelson [00:28:11]:
It is understand or manipulated.
Marcia Dawood [00:28:13]:
Right.
Carrie Nelson [00:28:13]:
And whether you're the client and you're having to cobble that together as your needs become more complex. Again, why a human becomes important to be the quarterback or you're the financial advisor. And these firms have been investing in efficiency and growth. They know M and A is too costly to grow. They know you can't just follow market performance. So there have been investments made, but the investments that are being made are in a bunch of tools. And it's very fragmented. And that leaves the financial advisor having to cobble it all together, just as the client's having to cobble it all together.
Carrie Nelson [00:28:48]:
So we want to be part of that more cohesive solution to make it simple and starts with the human in the middle and then providing the appropriate financial education for both parties.
Marcia Dawood [00:29:03]:
Yeah. It's such an interesting topic. So for people that either are financial advisors out there or they're working with a financial advisor, and they'd like their financial advisor to be using some of Atlas Point's tools. How do they find out about it?
Carrie Nelson [00:29:17]:
Yeah, so called TheAtlasPoint.com, have their financial advisor look us up, reach out to us. We work with a number of independent broker dealers already, and so their firm may already have approval and have access to these tools, but that would be the best thing to do. Yeah.
Marcia Dawood [00:29:38]:
Excellent. Well, Carrie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing all this great information with us.
Carrie Nelson [00:29:44]:
Thank you for having me. This is great.