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BloombergTV: Inside SIFMA’s 2025 Annual Meeting with CEO Ken Bentsen

From SIFMA’s 2025 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, SIFMA President and CEO Kenneth E. Bentsen, Jr. joined Romaine Bostick and Katie Greifeld on Bloomberg’s “Bloomberg The Close” to discuss the intersection between public policy and finance and findings from the new Voice of Investor Satisfaction, Trust, and Advocacy (VISTA) Study, which surveyed over 2,000 investors across multiple generations.

“The top lines are strong trust for the industry — seven out of ten. Strong satisfaction for the industry — eight out of ten. For those that have a financial advisor, very strong satisfaction in the 90th percentile. But you are right — as you go down to the generations, Gen Zs, the focus is more on technology, digital technology, transparency.

Again, we see there are demands for financial advice — just doing it in a different way.”

 

Transcript

Edited for clarity

Romaine Bostick: Let’s kick off the show by going down to Washington. The main trade organization that represents our broker-dealers, asset managers — they are having their annual conference now. The President and CEO, Ken Bentsen, joins us now fresh off the stage from that conference. The question now is, what exactly are all of these people thinking right now when you are talking to these asset managers and broker-dealers, other members of SIFMA? Are they optimistic about where we are going?

Kenneth E. Bentsen Jr.: Thank you for having me. I think there is confidence from what we are hearing today from many of our panelists — economists, market strategists, among others. There is underlying confidence in the U.S. economy. Obviously, people are watching to see what the Fed will do, what will happen in the labor market. Compared to the rest of the world, I think there is still very strong support for the fundamentals of the U.S. economy.

Bostick: We talk about the fundamentals of the U.S. economy. How closely do you think that is still linked to the fundamentals we are seeing in financial markets? There has been some concern about a disconnect there given the record highs we have seen in the stock market, at a time when there are some concerns about economic stability.

Bentsen: A lot of economists will say the stock market is not the economy, and perhaps that is true. Looking at earnings growth, I think people seem to feel fairly confident the market has got room to run. We defer to the experts on that. Notwithstanding various geopolitical concerns, thinking about Fed policy going forward, trade policy going forward, there is a sense that, all things being equal, the U.S. economic engine is fairly strong.

Katie Greifeld: I would love to talk more about investors. You have spoken about what asset managers are saying right now. I know you just put out a new investor survey basically looking at how there is a generational divide right now when it comes to investors. You have the older cohort that cares more about personalized advice, and that is different from what young investors are prioritizing right now.

Bentsen: That’s right. We put out our VISTA study that we did with our partners at KPMG — a survey of 2,000 investors conducted in August and September. A couple of things came out. Certainly what you point out about the generational divide. The top lines are strong trust for the industry — seven out of ten. Strong satisfaction for the industry — eight out of ten. For those that have a financial advisor, very strong satisfaction in the 90th percentile. But you are right — as you go down to the generations, Gen Zs, the focus is more on technology, digital technology, transparency. Again, we see there are demands for financial advice — just doing it in a different way.

Greifeld: It is interesting to hear what you are saying and taking the results of this survey basically against the backdrop of having the rise of this self-directed investor who is not necessarily looking for advice from a formal financial advisor, who is not necessarily turning to products that asset managers can create, but instead they are doing things by themselves — basically going to brokerage platforms and making the trades for themselves. You also have the rise of prediction markets. I wonder how asset managers are thinking about that question today — how we appeal to the self-directed investor and work with them.

Bentsen: Of course, we have had self-directed markets for decades now. What we are seeing are more hybrid accounts, where there is an advisory component and a self-directed component. What the survey shows is firms will have to think about that in their offerings — that they can provide that hybrid approach. Most importantly, for younger generations, how you communicate, even providing advice, will be different than perhaps our parents did with regular interaction with a financial advisor. But what we do see is, across the board, there is demand for financial advice. We don’t think everything is going fully self-directed, but you need to be able to offer all of those platforms, which the industry largely does. But you have to go to where your clients are going to be.

Bostick: Has there been any sort of meaningful discussion — we have talked a lot on the show — about the democratization of access to alternative assets? The idea that a lot of these real assets, alternative assets that were confined to institutions and high-net-worth individuals, are coming down on that income spectrum now. There are some concerns about what changes might be needed on the regulatory side.

Bentsen: Absolutely. We know the Department of Labor oversees 401(k)s, looking to see how you can expand access to alternatives in defined contribution plans, like benefit plans already have. Chairman Atkins was talking about this — how can we look at where retail investors can have access to products that heretofore were the purview of institutional and high-net-worth individuals? In every case, at the same time, how do we ensure we maintain our investor protection rules that are so important to the U.S. market system — making sure that we address things like valuation, transparency, liquidity, which are things that we at SIFMA and others are working on to accommodate more individual exposure to alternative assets.

Bostick: Always great to catch up with you. Ken Bentsen is the President and CEO over at SIFMA, which is having its annual conference in Washington, D.C.

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