Dave Nadig, Financial Futurist at VettaFi (yes, he does question that himself in his signature box) is very excited about the new programme for the VettaFi Exchange conference from 5th to 8th February 2023 in the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach.
The event is targeted at financial advisers who want to know more about ETFs but also about a whole lot more, given that its programme covers ethics, macro-economics and has a keynote speaker in Ian Bremmer, political scientist and author of a 2022 bestselling book, The Power of Crisis.
Nadig believes that the programme is equally appropriate for institutional investors or consultants. “What you will find is some of the most interesting conversations you will have all year,” he says, as speakers turn to China or understanding the future of finance.
Bremmer will seek to make sense of what Nadig calls the ‘global polycrisis’, stemming from issues in China, Ukraine and US politics.
“We want to make this about the advisers and what they want to see,” Nadig says. But the programme has been honed down. “Everyone wants to talk about everything and if we would let everyone be passionate we would have 500 sessions so we have had to trim it down to about 20 sessions give or take.
“In the context of an event like this we are trying to do things differently with less content and making sure that there is a reason why every person is on the stage.”
Nadig understands that advisers are thinking about the energy crisis, what’s going on in Ukraine plus feeling the need to understand the retirement planning laws.
“Our target is to get 1,000 active advisers in the room – people who are advising clients every day.”
Nadig’s passion for the financial adviser has been with him since 1982. “That’s because everything that is cool happens in the financial adviser markets first,” he says.
“When people try to think about cryptocurrencies as an asset class all the interesting stuff happened in the wealth management market,” he says. “It makes sense because it’s a combination of people with significant enough capital with desires not to screw up that pile of capital and that intersection is where stuff gets interesting – where you deal with ethics, tax, regulation, ESG – all in the centre of that Venn diagram.
“Advisers have become the place where innovation happens in financial services.”
Nadig knows that a lot of advisers are already committed to ETFs.
“We have been doing these ETF conferences since 2008 and more and more of the adviser community is already there using ETFs and being pretty smart, so you have the old pros who know the game and are sceptical and savvy but there are also younger millennial advisers who may have the intellectual capacity to understand but they may not know all the tools at their disposal.”
The content for the conference will see half related to the business of the financial adviser and the other half about investing.
While asking Nadig for his favourite child in the programme is unkind, he does admit to having one in this instance.
“We have two stages the Dream stage which is in the middle of the exhibit wall and the Stream stage which will be a bit smaller with content delivered silent disco style.”
This means that delegates can tune into that content wherever they are on the Fontainebleau campus and it will, in addition be streamed live to the Internet and free for anyone who registers.
