Data mining and artificial intelligence are two major trends shaping the industry, according to Mark Evans, president and CEO of Conquest Planning.

As for data collection, Evans said his firm's system is built with an open API that allows it to bring in data and push it into other systems, such as a CRM, so that strategies within the plan can be executed.

On AI, he said the firm is using it to make the planning process simpler, easier to understand and customer-friendly. Instead of creating a thick report covering a client's financial plan that they will ignore or not understand, Conquest uses AI to break the plan down into “bite-sized chunks” to help clients understand the impact of their decisions.