VP, Strategic Product Development
Orion
Brian Towner is Vice President of Strategic Product Development at Orion, bringing more than 15 years of experience across wealth management, advisor technology, onboarding, trading, relationship management, and product innovation. His career has been defined by helping advisors strengthen client relationships while leveraging technology to improve efficiency and outcomes.
At Orion, Brian helps shape product strategy and emerging technology initiatives, with a particular focus on practical applications of AI within advisor workflows. Drawing on experience at the intersection of advisor experience and technology, he works to ensure innovation enhances productivity while preserving the trust, transparency, and relationships that remain central to financial advice.
As AI takes on more of the technical work traditionally associated with financial advice, the bigger question may not be whether advisors become more efficient, but whether they become more or less essential.
What will clients actually value, and pay for, when investment management, financial planning, tax analysis and other sophisticated capabilities can increasingly be delivered through technology? Will AI put pressure on the traditional 1% AUM fee, or enable advisors to deliver a broader and more valuable client experience? Does human judgment, empathy and accountability become the new premium? And as firms race to adopt AI, will more technology actually lead to better client outcomes or simply more advice that feels less personal?
This provocative discussion will examine how AI is reshaping the advisor-client value proposition, the economics of advice and the competitive landscape and explore which advisors and firms will be best positioned to thrive as client expectations evolve.