One platform to rule them all?

At the recent Schwab IMPACT conference in Denver, Colorado, Advyzon presented a bold proposition to finance professionals: the industry’s sprawling, multi-vendor technology stacks have become inefficient and unsustainable, and a unified, AI-powered alternative is ready to supplant them. 

Kevin Hughes, president of financial planning at Advyzon, described his firm’s advisor technology ecosystem as one built from the ground up on a single data layer and a unified user experience. “When I came here, it was truly a dream job to rebuild financial planning within an all-in-one platform,” he said. “Everything is siloed today. Everybody’s tying pieces together, best of breed. Does it work together seamlessly? No. Is it all different screens? Yes.” 

For most registered investment advisers, the technology stack still requires juggling CRM, portfolio accounting, rebalancing, billing and planning tools—each with different data fields, interfaces and support structures. “In most advisors’ tech stacks, that’s five different screens you’ve got to learn,” Hughes said. “If I have a problem, I have to remember five phone numbers to call.” Consolidating that complexity into a single system, he argued, also enhances cybersecurity. “Having your data in one place instead of seven is also a significant cyber advantage.” 

A persistent pain point Hughes is targeting is the longstanding disconnect between planning and execution. “Going seamlessly from the financial plan to what I need to implement has been a barrier,” he said. “It still is to this day.” His team is developing functionality that allows advisors to move directly from planning into investment implementation— “exactly what I need to buy, all embedded in the same experience”—and then straight into billing and rebalancing without leaving the platform. 

Artificial intelligence is accelerating that work. Advyzon is preparing to roll out statement ingestion across its ecosystem, enabling advisors to upload tax returns, pay stubs and financial documents that will be parsed and distributed across planning, reporting and CRM. “Not only do we ingest all that data and have it stored in a central place where you can data-mine it, we feed it to all our core components instantly,”  Hughes said. “And at the same time, we’re mitigating data entry errors as well.” 

He also urged advisors to evaluate technology vendors’ AI models with greater scrutiny. “The biggest risk… is having a good understanding of the AI engine,” he said. “Is it private? Is it public?” 

Even with the advantages of consolidation, Hughes acknowledged advisors’ reluctance to overhaul existing systems. “Change management is always hard,” he said. But the cost—in time, security exposure and inefficiency—of maintaining multiple vendors is rising. 

As advisory firms look toward 2026, Hughes believes unified systems will offer the scale and simplicity practices need. “Advisors are facing more complexity, not less,” he said. “If your technology can’t keep up, your capacity and your client experience suffer.” 

He added: “If you’re interested in an all-in-one platform, we’d love to talk to you. And if you want to see what I’m doing for financial planning in that all-in-one platform, give me a ring!”