Financial Planning reported on Oct. 23 that two speakers took opposing sides on whether smaller registered investment advisers need to own their data. The exchange took place on Oct. 22 at the company's ADVISE AI conference in Austin, Texas, and was moderated by Suzanne Siracuse of Suzanne Siracuse Consulting. Reporter Grace L. Williams described the event as the third annual ADVISE AI. According to the event listing, the conference ran Oct. 20 to 22 at the Hilton Austin. The session was billed as a debate over whether AI will elevate or erode the value of advice.
Financial Planning reported that Michael Kitces, whom the outlet described as the chief financial planning nerd of Kitces.com, argued that the push by large firms toward major data infrastructure has led many of those builds into overspending. Kitces's position was that licensing software would have come at a much lower price than constructing a big data warehouse. In his view, most firms will get their AI benefits from third-party vendors rather than from warehouses of their own.
Joel Bruckenstein, president of Technology Tools for Today (T3), took a more mixed position, according to Financial Planning. He said custom AI systems are cost-effective, but suited to the top 1 to 2 percent of firms rather than to everyone. He told small firms to clean up their data first, even when they are switching portfolio management software. Bruckenstein also cautioned that data ownership terms in software agreements could be murkier than they seem, and that leaving a vendor could carry exit fees running into the tens of thousands of dollars. Outsourced data warehousing is generally reasonable, he said, provided advisors understand the contract terms.
Kitces is Head of Planning Strategy at Focus Partners Wealth, which Kitces.com describes as overseeing approximately $50 billion in client assets. He is also a co-founder of the XY Planning Network and AdvicePay, according to the Kitces.com media page. A WealthTech Today podcast page from February 2025 describes Bruckenstein's business as a consultancy centered on advisor technology. Its main business is the T3 conference, and he co-produces the T3/Inside Information technology survey with Bob Veres. T3's website says its consulting services include reviewing custodial platforms and portfolio management software, a detail readers may want to weigh when considering his comments on vendor contracts.
The debate lands in a wider argument over how much technology smaller firms can absorb. Before the event, Financial Planning had previewed the session as a Kitces versus Bruckenstein matchup on the main stage. A day after the Financial Planning report, RIABiz reported Bruckenstein's view that Schwab's Claude AI offering was mainly designed for its large RIAs, and that a 20-seat enterprise minimum sidelines many small firms. Bruckenstein also suggested that the reported $5,000 yearly charge could be affordable for some small RIAs, depending on what they get in return.
The coverage reviewed for this article does not describe any follow-up to the debate itself. For advisors at smaller firms, the practical questions the session raised are the ones on the table now: what data they can export, what a contract says about ownership, and what it would cost to leave.