What Matters Most in Wealth Management

Texas McCombs and Wealthtender collaborate on tool that measures financial advisor value

The Langston Wealth Management Center at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business has announced a strategic partnership with Wealthtender, the nation’s leading independent find-an-adviser directory featuring online reviews of financial advisers. The collaboration will leverage McCombs’ Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) capstone program to develop the wealth management industry’s first platform to assess the quality of adviser-client relationships and the value advisers deliver beyond portfolio management.

This new tool will address a critical gap for wealth management industry professionals, according to Ramesh Rao, professor of finance and founding director of the Langston Wealth Management Center. “The primary value proposition for financial advisers has shifted from generating investment returns to delivering holistic financial planning services,” he said. “Yet until now, no standardized approach has emerged for assessing adviser relationship performance.”

Rao said the growing emphasis on soft skills — dubbed “relationship alpha” — demands that advisers and firms actively measure how clients perceive their experience and track their satisfaction. This collaboration will apply advanced analytics, including natural language processing and machine learning, to client feedback data, creating a proprietary scoring methodology that quantifies adviser-client relationship quality across multiple dimensions.

Students in the MSBA capstone project, launching in Spring 2026, will analyze thousands of client reviews collected through Wealthtender’s platform — data that became available only after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2021 repealed its rules prohibiting financial advisers from soliciting testimonials and publishing online reviews. Student teams will develop sophisticated data infrastructure, create multidimensional scoring algorithms, establish benchmarking frameworks, and design interactive dashboards and reporting tools suitable for industrywide adoption.

Brian Thorp, BBA ’95, founder and CEO of Wealthtender, said collaborating with Rao, the center, and the MSBA program is a “full-circle moment” in his career. “Since launching the first find-an-adviser directory to feature online reviews, we’ve helped hundreds of financial advisers, and wealth management firms collect feedback from thousands of their clients nationwide,” he said. Wealthtender’s May 2025 Voice of the Client Study confirmed that nearly 90% of client reviews focus on relationship quality, planning advice, and emotional factors — not investment performance.

Wealthtender runs an independent U.S. directory that helps consumers find financial advisers, drawing over 50,000 monthly visitors. It was the first to publish adviser reviews after the 2021 SEC rule change and now lists more than 700 advisers and firms. The company also supports The AGC, a community of 180-plus advisers, and has received several industry recognitions.

“By partnering with the Langston Wealth Management Center, we can transform this qualitative feedback into actionable insights that financial advisers and leaders of wealth management firms can use to foster continuous improvement and deliver an exceptional client experience,” Thorp said.

The project creates multiple potential value streams for the wealth management industry, including new analytics services for advisers and firms, and relevant inputs for industry recognition programs. Beyond the capstone program, the collaboration offers opportunities for ongoing research and commercial development.

Student participants will gain hands-on experience with data management and engineering, advanced analytics and machine learning, business intelligence and visualization, and strategic business analysis. The project provides deep exposure to financial services industry challenges while developing commercial analytics solutions.

“We believe relationship alpha represents the emerging competitive advantage in wealth management, as measuring the quality of adviser-client relationships becomes paramount,” Rao said. “This partnership positions McCombs at the forefront of this transformation, while providing our students with invaluable real-world experience developing commercial analytics solutions that will shape the future of the industry.”

McCombs Dean Lillian Mills said the project speaks to the school’s core values. “This innovative collaboration puts data to work for the greatest good — creating a more people-centered wealth management industry,” she said.

Story by Judie Kinonen