Please don't make me download your conference app

For some years now, nearly every wealth management industry conference has featured a dedicated mobile app.

Attendees are encouraged to download the app, upload a picture and profile, and use the program to customize their agenda, schedule meetings with other attendees, participate in polls, view curated social media posts and ask questions to panelists.

And in eight years, I’ve never downloaded a single one.

I fully support the goal of using the apps to replace printed agendas and brochures with speaker information and cutting down on paper waste. I’m also sure the apps do everything that conferences promise and more, but I’m still never going to download them.

To start, my phone already has a ton of apps I never use. It has not one but two different apps for requesting songs on digital jukeboxes. I haven’t touched the NYC Covid Safe app in at least a year, I’ve used Splitwise a grand total of three times since I got it in December 2021, and I didn’t remember an app called The Guest even existed until writing this sentence.

Some mobile housekeeping is near the top of my digital to-do list, and adding another app I’m only going to use for two days before deleting again isn’t an appealing prospect. I’d rather just pull up the conference website on my phone to view the agenda.

At least some in the industry agree with me. For example, Jeremiah Baba Pagano, a securities attorney for financial advisors, said on Twitter that he only downloads conference apps if they're needed to track to track continuing education credits. Kashif Ahmed, the president of American Private Wealth, said he never downloads apps.

“These apps can screw up your phone,” Ahmed said. “They can slow it down or conflict with other [programs]. I just say ‘no.’”

They can also be just plain annoying. Financial advisors hear enough pitches from companies looking for their business without adding their profile to an app that includes the ability to reach out directly to a mobile device.

“The people I’m going to network with, I’m going to network with, I’m going to seek them out. I don’t need 1 million people pinging me,” Ahmed said. “Especially the wholesalers, oh my god, it’s like a locust swarm as soon as my information gets out there.”  

But there are also some data privacy and security concerns that people should take seriously, especially highly regulated people like financial advisors who may download conference apps on the same phone they use for work. It’s doubtful many financial advisors are doing the same due diligence into who produces conference apps and what safeguards are in place that they do with other pieces of their technology stack.

“They’re clunky, and it could be the nephew of one of the conference organizers who made it, and I don’t know what security protections they’re going have,” Ahmed said.

It's also increasingly difficult to access conference information without the app, and some conferences require downloading it to register. Advisors should wonder why any event requires them to install a piece of software onto their device just to attend. Exactly what information is it gathering, and who does it benefit?

Conference apps are no different than anything else an advisor puts onto their phone, said Steven Ryder, chief strategy officer of cybersecurity company Visory. Even if advisors are only going to use an app for a day or two, they should comb through the alerts, disclaimers and permissions before installing it.

It’s important to remember that most apps are free for a reason, he added.

“Generally it is not the app itself that is risky from a data breach perspective, rather it is the company providing the application — they gather as much information as possible about anyone using the app and then they have a security incident,” Ryder wrote in an email. “As always, read the requirements and limit access to information on your mobile device, especially access to your location and your contacts, to best protect yourself and your clients.”

To be fair, plenty of apps that people use every day pose more cybersecurity risk than a conference app. Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn are already pretty invasive, and downloading one more piece of software to improve the conference experience likely isn’t very harmful by comparison, Ryder said.

Joel Bruckenstein, producer of the Technology Tools for Today conference, said his team vetted his 2023 conference app and others and is confident that it was developed by a well-respected firm and is secure. The T3 2023 app was developed by Accurate Image Marketing Inc., according to the Apple app store. Orion Advisor Solutions uses a company called Cvent for its app and posts its security credentials publicly on its website.

The apps appear to be popular with advisors. Orion said its Ascent 2023 app was downloaded 1,439 times by 1,600 attendees, and 67% of attendees logged into the app.

Andrew Factor, a financial advisor with Clearview Financial Partners, said he downloads the apps and singled out Morningstar’s conference for providing a particularly useful one.

“Push notifications for events and sessions that are coming up, live feed of twitter hashtags, all the documents/downloads from sessions, scan info to vendors. Huge help,” he wrote in a Twitter message.  

So conference apps aren’t likely to go away any time soon, even if some people will never be converted.

Just please keeping making that agenda available on your website for us.