Mark Zaglas is back. Our most downloaded guest ever returns to go a level deeper on what's changed since last year's "Stagnation to Scale" episode — and a lot has changed. Encore Advisory Group has been acquired by Evidentia, Mark has launched his Big Six Insights series, and the industry is facing an inflection point where the pace of change has doubled but the margin for error has halved.

In this episode, we unpack the rise of the COTO (Chief Operating and Technology Officer) — a concept Mark has coined for advice businesses that can no longer treat operations and technology as separate functions. We dig into why so many firms are still running on rusted sales engines, why confidence is the barrier nobody talks about, and what it actually looks like to unrust your growth capability in 2026.

We also flip the script — Mark interviews Danni on what she's seeing with AI in advice practices, from foundation models to purpose-built agents, and why the firms winning right now are the ones mapping their processes first and applying AI to the right jobs second.

Plus: the client who showed up to a review with their own Claude-generated financial plan, why operations is like an escalator you never get off, and Mark's 5P growth engine audit you can do in 90 minutes this quarter.

If you enjoyed Stagnation to Scale, this one picks up exactly where we left off — and goes deeper.

Take our free Technology Health Check at finuragroup.com to see where your practice sits.

#finuragroup #technology #dannilegrande #encoregroup #financialadvice

Pete's latest Code & Capital sparked a big conversation — why are Advice Practices still tempted to rip out their CRM when the data says it rarely ends well? Danni brings the receipts from Finura's Technology Health Check: only 17% of Practices are actually planning to move, barely half use their CRM as a source of truth, and 80% don't even run an RFP when choosing new tech. We also dig into the real risks of Advisers building SOAs in ChatGPT, why clients are now using AI to check their Adviser's AI, and whether we're breeding a generation of professionals who can't think without a chatbot. Plus: Amdahl's Law, the $30 billion CRM switching industry, and why tidying up your shop beats chasing shiny new tools.#finuragroup #peterworn #dannilegrande #technology

In this episode of The WealthTech Insider, Danni Le Grande and Peter Worn unpack a deceptively simple question that opens a much bigger conversation: why do so many AI tools have human — and overwhelmingly female — names?

What starts as a light observation quickly turns into a deeper discussion about trust, subconscious design choices, and the risks of anthropomorphising technology in professional environments. From “Sophie the assistant” to “Colin from compliance”, Danni and Pete explore how naming AI shapes behaviour, lowers scepticism, and may lead us to over-trust systems that are still fallible — particularly in regulated industries like financial advice.

This isn’t a culture-war debate or an anti-AI rant. It’s a grounded conversation about awareness: how AI is being designed, why familiarity matters, and what professionals need to keep front-of-mind as human-like software becomes embedded in daily workflows.

#finuragroup #technology #ai #dannilegrande #peterworn