By Greg Bartalos

From Fulbright Scholar to CEO in a decade, Max Lane's career has advanced at max speed. It's only fitting that he runs Flourish, a New York City-based wealthtech platform.

After three years at UBS, Lane joined the personal investing start-up Openfolio in 2015, which was acquired by Stone Ridge Holdings Group two years later. There Lane was a founding member and co-head of product for Flourish when the unit launched Flourish Cash, which enables independent financial advisors to offer their clients interest-earning cash accounts. In 2021, MassMutual acquired Flourish, which remains a wholly owned subsidiary that operates independently from its parent. In 2022 Lane was named CEO of Flourish.

On the latest The Way Forward podcast, Lane discusses his brief but productive career journey, the evolution of wealth management, organic growth strategies, and the increasing demands of clients, particularly from millennials who expect comprehensive services and advanced technology.

Lane also describes the shift from holistic advice to holistic implementation, the continuing consolidation of numerous vendors into integrated platforms, and the rise of dynamic financial planning, which harnesses the power of data and AI for real-time monitoring and proactive engagement.

Below are highlights from our conversation, which have been edited for clarity (you can listen to the podcast and read the full transcript here):

Flourish's mission. "Flourish is a wealthtech platform that is trying to help advisors move from holistic advice into holistic implementation. What we try to do is deliver new innovative solutions to advisors so that they can help their clients execute more pieces of the financial plan, specifically focused on banking and insurance categories."

Clients are expecting more from advisors. "You're going to see clients be more demanding from their advisors. We already see that, right? The advisors of today do far more for their clients than the advisors did 20, 30 years ago. When they think about services and the touch points with their clients, I think that is going to continue to play out. That's driven by a more demanding client and the market forces around fee pressure."

Innovate or perish. "Think about the technology expectations of younger generations. When millennials are 40, 50, 60 years old, they're not going to wake up one day and say, 'I want worse technology. I want worse interfaces.' That just is not going to happen. Let's just underscore the entire conversation by saying good digital tools are going to be the cost of doing business. Those are going to be table stakes."

Why user experience is critically important. "Experience is a reflection of your brand. It's a reflection of trust. And I think that's why the experience is so important. When we have great experiences broadly, not just digital, we trust those companies and those services more. Millennial advisors are going to want the same thing. Think about advisor tool sets. They're going to want modern technology."

An underrated approach for spurring organic growth. "A big one we talk about at Flourish is gathering assets from the clients you already have , which by the way is an easier thing to achieve. The client already trusts you. You already have a relationship with them. By having the right tools and products and services, you can capture more of their wealth. That is another form of organic growth that we don't think is being talked about enough."

Write to Greg Bartalos at greg.bartalos@barrons.com

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June 10, 2025 16:29 ET (20:29 GMT)

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