Ep. 336: Building the Private Bank for the Independent Advisor with Max Lane, Flourish

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This episode features a deep dive into the evolution of the independent RIA tech stack and the emergence of “private banking” services for the fiduciary space. Max Lane — CEO of Flourish. Max is a strategic leader at the helm of a platform dedicated to expanding the financial capabilities of independent RIAs. Under his leadership, Flourish has grown from a cash management solution into a comprehensive suite covering high-yield savings, specialized lending, and insurance solutions.

Six Things Worth Writing Down

1. The Private Bank for Independents — Independent RIAs often lose access to big-bank infrastructure when they leave wirehouses; the new frontier is building a “private bank” ecosystem specifically for fiduciary advisors.
2. The Cash Knowledge Gap — Advisors consistently underestimate client cash holdings, often guessing 7%, while the reality is closer to 30%. This “hidden” cash represents a massive planning and asset-capture opportunity.
3. Holistic Implementation vs. Holistic Advice — Many advisors provide holistic plans but fail at implementation. True success requires executing on the “banking” side of the balance sheet, including deposits and lending.
4. Cash as a Portfolio Feeder — Modern cash management tools act as a “billion-dollar RIA” by connecting to outside bank accounts and eventually funneling those held-away assets into fee-earning portfolios.
5. The Enterprise Integration Bar — Large firms like Focus, Carson, and Mariner require “enterprise-ready” tech, meaning deep SSO, complex permissioning, and data models that map to large, multi-office organizations.
6. Removing Behavioral Friction — Technology must solve the practice management problem; if a tool isn’t integrated into the daily dashboard (Orion, Black Diamond, etc.), advisors won’t use it to initiate client conversations.

In Their Own Words

“To fully serve clients, advisors must pair holistic advice with true holistic implementation.” — Max Lane

“We want to position independent advisors on an even playing field so clients don’t have to choose between a great advisor and a great mortgage rate at a wirehouse.” — Max Lane

“We’ve essentially created a billion-dollar RIA for our partners simply by pulling held-away assets into their orbit.” — Max Lane

What We Cover in This Episode

Here at Ezra Group, we’re experts on everything wealthtech, including CRM, portfolio management, trading, rebalancing, performance reporting, just to name a few. When we start working with an RIA or broker dealer, the first thing we do is a  comprehensive tech stack assessment. This provides a top to bottom view of all systems and processes, and it’s a critical part of the firm’s growth plan, since the tech stack is the foundation for building towards the future.

So if you’d like to see your tech stack converted from a liability into an asset you need to run not walk to our website, EzraGroup.com, and click on the golden Contact Us button at the top of the homepage, the experienced team at Ezra Group will conduct a detailed tech stack assessment for you, delivering targeted recommendations that will optimize your existing software platforms. Or we can run an RFP process and help you select and then implement a new solution to help take your firm to the next level. You can schedule a free consultation by going to EzraGroup.com.

A few quick housekeeping tasks before we continue.

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Now let’s kick this thing off!

Quick Summary

In this episode, Craig Iskowitz sits down with Max Lane, CEO of Flourish, to explore how independent RIAs are finally gaining access to “private bank” capabilities. Max breaks down why advisors are consistently missing 20%+ of their clients’ net worth by ignoring cash and how the right implementation tools can bridge the gap between a financial plan and a client’s actual balance sheet. From the technical requirements of enterprise-level integrations to the behavioral nudges that turn held-away cash into managed assets, Lane shares how Flourish is leveling the playing field for independent firms.

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Podcast Transcript

Craig: All right, all right. I’m excited to introduce our next guest. It is none other than Max Lane, CEO of Flourish. Max, buddy, good to see you.

Max: Good to see you, Craig. Thanks for having me back.

Craig: It’s good to see you back. It’s good to see you on Zoom. I’ve seen you on the road. I’ve seen you in conferences. I haven’t seen you walk the streets of Manhattan, but I know you’re there.

Max: I’m here every day. I’m here almost every day when I’m not seeing you at conferences.

Craig: I’m in Manhattan a fair amount, but I don’t run into you. I’ll have to start going a little bit more down your area.

Max: Please do. We’d love to have you. What are you guys in?

Craig: You guys are in Midtown? 33rd and Park.

Max: Kips Bay, if you want to be specific.

Craig: That’s Midtown-ish relatively. Above 32nd Street, I think it’s Midtown. Even sometimes above Houston Street could be considered Midtown, depending on who you talk to.

Max: That’s right.

Craig: We’re here to talk about, we’re not here to talk about Manhattan. Earlier, we were talking about comparative religion. I don’t know how we got on that topic because we’re recording this during the week. It’s important for Catholics and Jews and other Christians that it’s a week that Passover starts. It’s Palm Sunday this week, but this recording is going to get dropped a couple of weeks from now. We’re not going to talk about any of that because it won’t be as important. That’s how we got in that conversation. We’re talking WealthTech. It’s a whole different podcast. If you can kick us off and give us a thirty-second elevator pitch for Flourish.

The Holistic Implementation Gap

Max: Sure, will do. Our elevator pitch of advisors would be that to fully serve clients, compete, grow, and win in this new world of wealth management, advisors must pair holistic advice with true holistic implementation. The majority of advisors today who say they’re doing holistic planning, what that means is they’re creating comprehensive financial plans that touch every part of their client’s financial life. When it comes to the execution of those plans, they are still largely leaving huge parts of the client’s financial plan unexecuted, unimplemented. Think deposits, lending, insurance, tax, trust, and estate. While there’s been a rise of new solutions in those categories, it is not yet ubiquitous within the advisory space. That’s where Flourish comes in is we want to help in that journey in evolving from holistic advice into true holistic implementation. The way we do that, we’re a WealthTech platform that’s exclusively serving independent RIAs, focused in the cash lending and insurance categories. You can think of these as the banking and insurance categories. Helping them have advisor-centric solutions to help their clients get a great cash account, secure great rates, and a great experience on loans, and be able to bring in annuities into their practice. Today, we’re working with 1,200 RIAs. They represent $2.6 trillion in assets. Outside of the breadth of firms we work with, we’re proud to work with some of the most influential firms in the country, Focus, Carson, Mariner. We’re happy to talk more about that today.

Craig: I hope you are, because I’m going to bring it up. Get ready. The first question is, you touched on it a bit, you guys started out as cash management a while back and did well, got acquired by MassMutual, so you made some waves, and you’ve expanded into, as you mentioned, lending and insurance and mortgage lending. Besides the holistic nature of it, which we understand, is there another strategic thread running through all this, what’s making these, what’s driving you on these specific decisions to expand in these specific areas?

Max: I think the way to think about our roadmap and our product strategy is in some ways, we think we’re creating something akin to the private bank for independent advisors. If you think about where many of the advisors, who are now RIAs, where they came from, many of them passed through a wire house or another advisor distribution network associated with a bank, where they had access to a more holistic suite of products and services to serve every one of their clients’ financial needs. One of the tradeoffs, when advisors go independent, they get a lot of benefits as far as autonomy, control, choosing their own tech stack, their way of running their business. They’ve lost the big financial institution that gives them the platform of products and services to serve their clients. One of the last remaining gaps in the independent advisor tech stack is in this private banking category, which we define as banking products, both deposits and lending, some insurance products, tax trusts and estate. You’re seeing that in the broader WealthTech space that we’re not the only ones with this observation. We’re zeroed in on that deposit lending and insurance category to try to piece together the private bank for independence, give them the tools to compete with the Morgan Stanleys, the Merrills, so that whether it’s an advisor thinking about going independent or it’s an end client thinking about which advisor they work with, we want to be in a position that advisors can choose the model that’s best for them without giving up the products and services they need, and end clients can choose the best advisor for them without having to say, do I need to choose the best advisor or do I need to choose the best mortgage rate I can get from a big wire house? We want to take that away, position independent advisors on an even playing field to help them compete and win and do right by their clients.

The Behavioral Challenge of Cash

Craig: Max, I’m going to blow a little smoke for you here. I have been beating the drum on holistic advice for 20 years here because I think it’s a huge opportunity that’s sitting on the table for advisors to be more of a life, a financial life coach, and people have complex wealth and financial issues. Even if they don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have to be at ultra high net worth to have complicated financial questions that you need an advisor to answer. As you mentioned, deposits, lending, insurance, you guys have annuities, everyone’s got a mortgage, everyone’s got car loans, they may have personal loans, have educational loans, there could be other, there could be business loans, commercial loans. I run my business on QuickBooks, they’ll always be pitched to me for a loan. I click here for a no companion loan, but they don’t require any down payment or any collateral. They’ll just give you a loan for 12 or 15%. It’s so easy, push the button. Should I do it? I don’t know. I would love to be able have an advisor who I can answer those questions to. I think having a service like yours can be beneficial. I’ve never heard it’s called a private bank or independent advisor. I like that positioning.

Max: Thank you. I couldn’t agree more. I think one of the things just to build on what you’re saying, one of the things that is shifting, but we’re not all the way there yet, is advisors have an opportunity to appreciate from an end-client perspective these different categories, whether it be banking, lending, insurance, investments. From an end-client perspective, it’s all just my money. It all matters to me. Yet we’ve zeroed in as investments are the most important thing, and we’re only going to focus there. Your average consumer, your average advisory client cares about a lot of different things. They want it all optimized. At times, there’s this mismatch between client expectation and ability to add value and more for your clients and being laser-focused on the portfolio. The portfolio matters, but to your point, a mortgage is a highly consequential financial decision. Not to mention how personal and emotional it can be if it’s associated with your primary residence. I want my trusted advisor to be walking with me through that process helping me navigate the different options to make sure I get to the best outcome for me.

Craig: I couldn’t have said it better myself. I think that there’s so many other issues when it comes to credit, when it comes to budgeting, when it comes to other areas that advisors are leaving money on the table. They could charge for that. I think people would pay to have one trusted source for all these things. It’s important to know if you don’t realize that a client has significant credit card debt or other loans or other lending issues or money in some other area that you can’t get access to because you’re not giving advice on that. You’re leaving money on the table. You’re leaving a wall out here.

Max: Totally. 100%.

Craig: Let’s talk about some of your research. Some research you cited said only 5% of advisors consistently discuss cash holdings with clients, even though 95% acknowledges their responsibility. Clearly, it is not a technology problem, their systems show them the data’s there. It’s a behavioral problem. What are you doing to nudge advisors to have that discussion with clients?

Max: This builds on what we’re talking about. I think a couple of things we’re doing, starting without the technology, because I agree, first and foremost, I think it’s a behavioral, it’s practice management problem more than it’s a technology problem, is education. Education and not education that the cash is out there necessarily, though we do find in our data that advisors consistently underestimate how much cash is out there. From our survey data, advisors thought that clients held an average of 7% of their net worth in cash. It is 30% from what we see in actual. The gap is much larger. We reframe that around education on the upside for the advisors, first and foremost. As you said, Craig, you’re leaving money on the table. Adding client value, that is important. That is the promise of wealth management is why you get into the business, but from a commercial standpoint, you should not want your clients holding hundreds of thousands of dollars away from you, and certainly you don’t want that if you don’t know about it. Understanding that there’s an opportunity to pull that money into your orbit, and in the case of Flourish Cash, as zeroing in on one of our products, it’s a good business decision to do that, because what we find in our data is that with Flourish Cash, we take money from the banks. A client had hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting at Citibank, they pulled into Flourish Cash. That creates a planning opportunity, and over time, a big portion of that money makes its way into the custodians.

Max: On an aggregate basis, we have contributed over $900 million in flows into the fee-earning portfolios. We’ve created a billion-dollar RIA back into our RIAs simply by connecting them to their clients’ bank accounts and their clients’ cash positions. That is a good business decision to pull assets into your orbit. Educating them on the opportunity is step one of this is a good decision for you. Second is picking up what I said earlier, highlighting to them that your end clients want this. They are paying you 1% of their AUM. They want holistic advice. They want it all integrated under one advice umbrella because what you do over on this side can impact what you do on this side. They want everything tied together, integrated, thought about holistically beyond the portfolio. All of it matters from a client standpoint. Third, which is where we come in, which technology can help with this, is how can you remove friction? Anytime you’re asking anybody to do something new, do something a little different than they typically do, you want to make that as easy as possible. That’s where having modern, elegant technology, streamlined integrations, reliable data supporting, all matters. If you make it too hard, you’re going to make that change management all the more difficult for the advisors.

Enterprise Growth and Integration

Craig: Indeed. We don’t want it to add friction to advisors’ operational workflows. We’ve got enough. Earlier, you mentioned some of the large enterprise partnerships that you have closed. Focus Financial, Carson Group, Mariner. Those are gigantic firms. Can we talk about how those advisors are using Flourish? Why do those large firms pick you guys? Why do they see that? Besides the obvious reason why we mentioned, what was the reason why they wanted to build your technology into their platforms?

Max: We’re very humbled and proud to work with these enterprise RIAs. Every enterprise deal is a little different. As far as how they chose us, I’d say two typical general patterns of how we end up having these enterprise partnerships. Number one is more of a bottoms-up phenomenon. In the case of Focus and Mariner, these are quite large enterprises, advisory teams and offices all over the country. They’re also quite acquisitive, so they’re adding new teams and smaller RIAs all the time. In both the case of Focus and Mariner, the genesis of the formal partnership was that we were already working with a subset of the advisors. They had the proof point because organically, these advisors found Flourish to be additive to their practice. They were getting real results. Clients were happy with it. It’s then easy at the top of the house to say, this is already working for a percentage of my advisors.

Max: I’d love to formalize this and be able to roll this out more holistically throughout my organization. In the case of Focus and Mariner, it was that bottoms-up phenomenon. In the case of a firm like Carson, Carson’s a very thoughtful, progressive, forward-thinking firm. They were already convinced on the need of having a great cash management solution for their end clients and for their advisors. When they came to us, they were out looking for almost an RFP. Who’s the best of breed here that we can work with because we know we need a solution here? Flourish showed up well. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve invested heavily in the experience, not only in the end client experience, but the advisor experience. A lot of that is down to the enterprise readiness, things like integrations, things like roles and permissioning, things like mapping the data model of a wealth management firm inside your system. I’m getting a little nerdy here, but you know how important that is when you’re serving a very large firm that needs to map its organization to the technology and make sure it has good controls there. We showed up well in that experience with Carson, and we were fortunate to win the business.

Craig: One area where enterprise is very important is the wealth management ecosystem of vendors and partners. You guys are everywhere. You mentioned integrations. I see you in the custodial platforms like Envestnet, TradePMR, CAIS, Cetera, Black Diamond, eMoney, Zocks, Holistiplan, NaviPlan, Advyzon. Do you have a favorite or are they all your favorite?

Max: They’re all our favorite. They are.

Craig: When you’re thinking about the ecosystem, how do you decide which partners to prioritize for deep integrations? Is it driven by advisor demand or do you look for partners that align with your WealthTech Integration Score?

Max: It’s both. We try to be very responsive to advisors. Our first integration was with Orion. It was because the very first advisors who used Flourish were all Orion users and said, I love the product, but it’s going to be so much better if I can see this data inside my Orion dashboard. We prioritize things like SSO and data feeds into all the major players. Beyond that, we look at the WealthTech Integration Score to see who’s making it easy for us to build. We want to be where the advisors are. If an advisor is spending their whole day in Advyzon or eMoney, we want to make sure the Flourish data is right there, updated and ready to use in their planning or reporting. It’s about being part of the workflow. We don’t want Flourish to be another tab they have to remember to check. We want it to be part of the fabric of how they serve their clients.

Craig: That makes total sense. I want to touch on the human element. You guys have a high-touch approach with your RIA partners. How do you maintain that as you scale to over 1,200 firms?

Max: It’s a challenge, but it’s core to who we are. We have a dedicated team that works with our RIAs. When a firm joins Flourish, they’re not just getting a login. They’re getting a partner. We help them with marketing, with client communications, with training their staff. We want to make sure they’re successful. As we grow, we’re investing in more people and better internal tools to make sure we don’t lose that personal connection. We want to be the firm that advisors love to work with.

Looking Ahead

Craig: It shows. I hear great things from advisors about your team. Before we wrap up, what’s next? What are you most excited about for the rest of this year?

Max: I’m excited about the continued expansion of our private bank offering. We’ve got some exciting things in the works for lending and insurance that we’ll be announcing soon. I’m also excited about the growth of the RIA space in general. It’s an exciting time to be in WealthTech. We’re proud to be part of it.

Craig: Well, Max, it’s been a pleasure. I always enjoy our conversations. We’ll have to do that Manhattan walk soon.

Max: I look forward to it.

Craig: All these PE guys are, they’re money coming out their ears.

Max: Let’s buy another billion dollar firm. That’s right.

Craig: Max, great talking to you, man. Thanks for being here.

Max: Thanks, Craig. Appreciate it.

Which AI Productivity Tools Are Right for Your Firm?  Ask Ezra Group!

Integrate smarter tools. Streamline workflows.
Boost advisor confidence.

Talk to an Expert →