The Future of Financial Advice ft. Penny Pennington | Fortune Daily

0:00Penny Pennington: One hundred trillion dollars is about to move between generations in the biggest wealth transfer in history. And a lot of that money is going to end up in the hands of women. Two thirds of American women already say that they are the chief financial officer of their family. However, the data shows they aren't the ones making the investment decisions for their households. So what does America's financial future really look like? Penny Pennington is the managing partner of Edward Jones, which is a Fortune 500 financial services company. It serves over 9 million clients across the country. And she says, our financial future starts with a lot of very blunt conversations around the dinner table.

0:48Penny Pennington: Penny, who's number 54 on this year's most powerful women list, joins me to talk about how the wealth transfer will change society and the pros and cons of using an AI agent to manage your money. From New York, I'm Ellie Austin and this is Fortune Daily.

1:08Penny Pennington: Penny, thank you so much for joining us. So I want to start with something that your own research has found. So Edward Jones's research with Morning Consult found that two-thirds of American women describe themselves as the family's chief financial officer. I have to say that didn't completely surprise me, but tell me what that job involves. Well, the job involves an entire family, sometimes multi-generational. The job is logistical, but it's also emotional. And I'm going to flip the script just a little bit and say we could transfer chief financial officer title to chief fulfillment officer because so often she is thinking about her parents and her children.

1:56She's often thinking about a job and a job for perhaps herself, her partner, and her kids. She's thinking about impending caregiving for her parents. And at the same time, perhaps thinking about paying for college for children or grandchildren. And the reason that I use the word fulfillment there is our deep conviction is that when people seek financial advice, they're seeking advice not just on the investments, not on the portfolio. They want their lives to be centered in that conversation. And she is going to center that conversation around, how do I ensure that I and the rest of my family are living a fulfilling life, that our money is aligned with our values, that we are going to have options and possibilities in our lives.

2:51And that should be why they are seeking advice.

2:54Penny Pennington: There's some really interesting data as well that shows that whilst women in the family are making a lot of the day-to-day financial decisions, it's often the men who are controlling a lot of the investment decisions. So explain that disconnect to me? And why is this day-to-day labor still in 2026 falling on women? Well, my conviction is that our industry has centered the account and the wealth and the investment product for many, many years. Those things are very important. And the performance of those products is critical. It's essential to having a good financial plan and financial outcome.

3:31However, centering the human is where the future of financial advice is moving. Especially with AI and the amount of information that is available to people, I can get answers to lots of questions about products, about accounts, about whether I should use a Roth IRA or a regular IRA. But what AI cannot do for me well is to help me consider the trade-offs that become emotional between things like helping pay for my parents' caregiving and paying for private school for my child, where there's a trade-off that becomes emotional and familial, that's where AI is not going to be very helpful to me.

4:17Penny Pennington: There's a phrase floating around on the internet right now called the eldest daughter economy. I myself am an eldest daughter, so it immediately piqued my interest. Explain to me what that is and why we're hearing about it in this moment. Yes. Well, we're hearing about it in this moment because of the great wealth transfer. The roughly$100 or$125 trillion of money that's transferring from the two generations that own it today, the silent generation and baby boomers, into the next three generations. Ellie, this is going to change society as this money moves. But that money moving is a familial phenomenon.

4:55And so what's happening is caregiving among those elder two generations and money moving and the values associated with it, the family is having a very real discussion about what does this all mean for us. And so the elder daughter phenomenon has to do with caregiving and often has to do with becoming the executor on an estate, for example, making decisions that extend across this family four more members of the family, and recognize that that elder daughter might have been playing that role for a long, long time. And now it's becoming more poignant and more pointed because it relates to life milestones and relates to the money.

5:46It can feel very, very dependent and a high sense of responsibility. And as the elder daughter myself, that's exactly why I count on my financial advisor to help me manage the psychology of this, to help me think through the types of conversations that I should have with my sister, who's a deeply emotional, empathic person and is helping our parents in ways that are unique to her. and I have ways that are unique to me in the way that I'm helping my family. But I'm counting on good advice to help me take a little bit of the emotion out of that and to give me good ideas about how to do it better.

6:29Penny Pennington: I have to say that as an eldest daughter who is of the generation that's poised to inherit some of this wealth, I do hope that in heterosexual couples, the men step up a bit and take some of the burden off the women for shouldering all of this in the family. I want to talk about AI and how it is impacting investing. Obviously, it's a topic we cannot escape right now. So we talked yesterday on this show about Robin Hood, the financial platform, and it's just an unveiled an AI agent that it says is going to give the everyday investor hedge fund style tools to help them trade and strategize. How is Edward Jones adapting to this sort of evolution in the investment landscape?

7:11Penny Pennington: Because there's an argument, hey, do I even need a human advisor anymore when I can get my AI agent to invest for me? Right. Well, AI is changing the landscape and will change the landscape in the ways that we work in so many ways. I trust technology and I trust AI and technology to give me what I expect of it. Um, instant answers to my questions at my fingertips on my terms and schedule, self-sufficiency, ideas to go to talk with my financial advisor about, the ability to compare and contrast different things, frankly, the ability to go and talk with my financial advisor with a little more information so I feel more equipped to ask better questions than my financial advisor.

8:01And we are finding this as I talk to our financial advisors. I'm asking, how many of your clients are coming in having consulted with name your AI platform? I'm hearing 30 to 40 percent. Am I hearing that people are asking their AI agent to usurp the conversation or relationship with their financial advisor? No, I am not. And the research tells us that only 3 % of Americans actually trust AI enough to take its advice fully and enact it in their financial lives. And so what we're seeing is, I think, is very healthy, actually. The public becoming more informed and interested about these financial topics, but using what they learned to have a better conversation with their financial advisor.

8:50This is exactly how we're using it. When I think about AI, I think about its three dimensions. I think about AI's ability to automate, AI's ability to augment, and in this case, really augment the efficiency and the effectiveness of the human financial advisor, and then additive. So I'll give you an example of additive. Years ago, it was very challenging to dynamically rebalance a portfolio at the speed that it should be. in order to match to a client's goals and risk tolerance. And therefore, that was done only for people with certain means, high net worth and ultra high net worth folks. With AI and its abilities today, we at Edward Jones are able to more dynamically balance and rebalance portfolios that are smaller portfolios.

9:45And so we can bring those kinds of efficient investment tools to folks middle class and those aspiring to be middle class.

9:55Penny Pennington: The company has conditional approval for a bank, and you are raising$1.4 billion in the largest partnership offering in firm history. This is a long way from that singular advisor in a storefront that so many people associate with Edward Jones. What's the trajectory that you have planned in the near term? Our quest is to serve more people, more families, more completely, and ensure that they are improving their financial fulfillment. Only 16 % of Americans today report that they feel financially fulfilled. We think that that's a paltry number. And so when we know that we need to center the human and the relationship and the financial advisory experience.

10:37What does that look like on a tangible level, centering the human? So on a tangible level, what it looks like is 9 million clients that we serve today across 20 ,000 financial advisors in every nook and cranny of the United States. And with each of them, we have a personal relationship. This is not a transactional relationship. It is not digital first. It is digital enabled, but it is human first. And so we're talking to multiple generations of millions of families every day, 100 ,000 conversations with our clients every single day. We want to center their needs in that conversation. And so the bank that, thank you for mentioning, is because our insight is that clients need to have advice that is about their full financial picture, their short-term spending and budgeting, their medium-term goals, their longer-term goals, like estate and legacy and retirement.

11:40And so we seek to be that home page for all of that investment advice. That's why we need the bank for those kinds of capabilities.

11:49Penny Pennington: Edward Jones settled a$34 million racial discrimination class action suit in 2021, Yet this year, six black advisors allege that they are still being paid less than their white peers at the company. What's changed since the settlement and why are black employees still raising these concerns? What Edward Jones stands for is for more people to find a place in our organization of a terrific career, a noble and terrific career helping more people and that we're serving more people more completely. Our quest is to ensure that we're that place of belonging where more people can see themselves in our company and advised by our company.

12:32Penny Pennington: So why are these concerns still being raised? I think that the concerns being raised are concerns that our society has today and that we all should take responsibility for ensuring that we are creating those places of belonging. You recently put the firm's name on a Formula One car, which I'm sure was pretty exciting for you. Explain that to a client who chose Edward Jones because they were in Main Street in their small town and they were drawn to the company because it wasn't flashy. How can they reconcile those two optical sides of Edward Jones right now? The McLaren partnership is very congruent with our brand and what we stand for because they stand for precision and they stand for excellence.

13:20And they stand for teamwork. The McLaren brand is the only racing brand that has both an F1 car and an Indy car. And so when you think about the generations that are interested in racing, and when you think about how F1 is becoming more female, younger, and more diverse, the conversation that we've been having today about how money is moving is exactly what McLaren is thinking about in terms of its fan base. So we're very excited about this relationship. We're also sponsoring sports and culture. We just finished sponsoring the retirement concert that Alan Jackson did in Nashville. So we're looking for those places that are multi-generational, that are tried and true in terms of the fan base that they have and that it's a growing fan base that then we can join our brand.

14:20Thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure speaking to you. Pleasure. Thank you.

14:26Penny Pennington: It's been months in the making, but today Paramount Skydance finally closed. It's$110 billion takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery. creating one single enormous and sprawling entity. The deal merges two legacy Hollywood powerhouses. As the BBC put it, franchises such as Harry Potter and Game of Thrones will now be united into one entertainment juggernaut known as Skydance. Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, CBS Studios, DC Studios, Skydance Animation and Sports are now all under David Ellison's control. And the former Mattel CEO, Enon Kreitz, will join Skydance as co-CEO to manage the day-to-day and the merger.

15:20Penny Pennington: Ellison will focus on creative direction and overall strategy. They promised$6 billion in cost savings. And Paramount says a large share of this will come from, quote, non-labor sources. And that's because of the belief that combining technology resources for these two studios will actually amount to cost savings. But cuts of this scale are expected to hit jobs across Hollywood. This morning, the stock moved from the Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange with a new ticker, SKYD. So what does all of this mean for consumers? In the short term, expect streaming prices to potentially rise as platforms are bundled together and sold at a higher price point.

16:11Penny Pennington: But at the same time, we may have a more regular cadence of film releases because as part of the merger, Skydance must commit to release around 30 movies per year. We'll bring you more on this story over the coming weeks as it develops. sweet green is fighting against the slop bowl news editor kat jorno spoke to the co-founder about how the restaurant is clawing back after cyclists for a summer yum yum hi everyone i'm katarina joina or kat i'm a news editor here at fortune and last week i interviewed sweet green's co-founder and chief concept officer nicholas jamit jamit grew up with his twin brother and other brother in La Carvel, a very famous New York City restaurant.

16:59His parents were the owners, and they ran the business every day. So for a five-year-old kid like Jammet, if he wanted to go see his parents, he had to go to the restaurant. And this restaurant, you need to understand, was a favorite haunt of the Kennedys. Having that experience, he wanted to go into hospitality. So he meets his co-founders of Sweetgreen while he's at school in D.C., and they decide to open sweetgreen. A week before they opened their first store, there was a salad thief among us, and they stole his laptop. This is 2007, so pre-cloud storage, nothing was written down on paper, and they had a complete chaotic moment of, what do we do?

17:35But they also kind of go through the adversity of this, right? They realize, well, we need to have multiple copies and backups of everything. I joked with him at some point about having them frozen in paper like in the bear and just kept in the background of the freezer. But he said, not like this. We've improved technology, thankfully, in the last two decades since it opened. And he realizes, you know what? Every single thing that comes through his way, they have to deal with it together as founders, together as the chief concept officer at Sweetgreen now. And it's come up a lot this year, if you think about it.

18:06Sweetgreen has not been doing that well business-wise. And so he wanted to turn it around in the last two years through the Sweet Growth Transformation Plan and really pull it together. and seemed to be working by having increased customers coming, by increasing collabs, by increasing different menu items, up until the summer when, if you recall, a certain cycle sport outbreak happened. Let us break this down. I had to, guys. I'm sorry. He had to go around telling people, A, we're more than just a salad restaurant. B, we don't buy iceberg lettuce and we don't buy lettuce from Mexico. And C, you don't have to associate us as just your office lunch spot.

18:44You can go here for more than just that. So he worked on a number of collabs. He worked with Alice Water. He worked with Molly Baz most recently. And he really instituted the onset of raps at Sweetgreen. All of this culminated into a very viral video that occurred this past summer with Tim Donahue. He is a marketing professional here in New York City and in Hoboken. And he took a video of himself eating Sweetgreen for 25 days. He called it a 25-day sweet green challenge and really showed the world that you can eat sweet green for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It only came about because his co-workers at the office kept making fun of him for eating sloppy, greasy pizza and burgers all the time.

19:27So once that video came out, it went viral, and Nick reached out and they said, hey, let's collab. Let's make a sweet green challenge. And that's what now is going on. There is an ongoing 30-day Sweetgreen Challenge where 30 recipients across the country are getting a credit to eat sweetgreen for 30 days and see if they can do it. So never waste a crisis for any future CEOs looking to open their own restaurant. If you want to read this full article, you can go online to fortune.com.

19:57Penny Pennington: That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin. please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a comment letting us know what you thought of today's episode and what you want us to talk about in future episodes. We'll see you next time.