This year’s FOX Wealth Advisor Forum focused on how advisor firms could effectively evolve in the midst of great change. As an industry, we are seeing massive transitions across client demographics, talent, the skills needed to deliver an optimal client experience, and unparalleled technological disruption. Many advisors are preparing to address change...now.

Identifying the trends and issues with an immediate impact on families of wealth is a large part of our mission at FOX. We’ll explore what’s on the minds of members, including the changing needs and demographics of owners, trends regarding asset allocation, the family office of the future, the shifting talent paradigm, and much more.

Women have become financial powerhouses exercising decision-making control over $11.2 trillion of investible assets. Women investors from inheritors and spouses to wealth creators and wealth owners are taking a more significant role in managing their families' investments in addition to their philanthropic endeavors. We are also in the midst of a significant demographic shift with dramatic growth of women wealth creators given the entrepreneurial nature of the rising generation. In fact, women are starting early stage technology and healthcare companies at the fastest pace in history.

Gone are the days of meeting a client for lunch, chatting about your offering, and closing the sale over dessert. Clients today look different from those of the past. They make networked purchasing decisions by committee, with diverse roles, interests, and backgrounds. With access to more information and a greater ability to share it, they demand value, access, and alignment from their counterparts. Sales is now a team sport, and to win you must build and manage selling squads that work in complete alignment – not just during client meetings, but before and after, as well.

In this highly interactive and engaging professional development session, we will focus on communication and interpersonal skills that can be utilized to raise our self-awareness around behaviors and personality. By exploring these key skills, we will gain an understanding of how to better connect and interact with colleagues and clients.

Major disruptions to the normal course of business are heading our way, and enterprise families will be uniquely challenged by unforeseen risks and opportunities. As trusted advisors to ultra-wealthy families and enterprises, our industry needs to understand how to have effective conversations to prepare clients for these looming disruptions. To address these challenges, FOX embarked on its 2019 Opportunities and Risk Study.

A major commercial crisis is coming, and it could cost nations and businesses $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenue by 2030 – equivalent to the combined GDP of Germany and Japan. The threat: chronic skilled talent shortages. According to Korn Ferry, it will impact growth for businesses and nations as soon as 2020. By 2030, there will be a global talent shortage of 85.2 million skilled workers, with the knowledge-intensive financial services industry one of the hardest hit.

It’s no surprise that the integrated wealth advisory industry focused on ultra-high net worth families is highly competitive. This session will take a smart look at the selection process from the perspective of families and advisors. The discussion will cover trends in advisor selection as well as key elements driving the search process. What are families doing to identify the right advisors and what are they seeking? How are successful advisors attracting clients?

The premise of thematic investing is seductively simple. Markets over the long-term are driven by earnings growth and thematic investing looks to identify long-term trends that are likely to drive disproportionate earnings growth in the future. Artificial intelligence, for example, isn’t just about the next revolution of computing. It will change everything from how we communicate, to how we commute. An aging population isn’t just going to inflate the health care industry. It will reshape everything from urbanization to unions.