Remy: For decades, high-end wealth management has been locked behind seven-figure minimums while personal robo advisors reduced investing to cold automated dashboards. Now a new wave of fintech is trying to close that gap, and fresh off years advising ultra-high-net-worth dynasties at UBS Private Wealth Management, has co-founded Marion, a platform designed to combine private wealth portfolio construction with real-world behavioral psychology. Well, joining us live on set here at the New York Stock Exchange is Mary and Pip's co-founder, president, and CIO, Kara Cook. Kara, great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us.
Kara Cooke: Thank you, Remy. It's great to be here.
Remy: So first and foremost, let's start out with the origin story for Mary and Pip. How did it come about, and what is the mission?
Kara Cooke: Yeah, so for me, I was experiencing this intense contrast where I was working in private wealth management, providing and seeing great financial advice and learning that that advice is so much more than just investment management, right? It's about understanding somebody's entire financial life, their goals, their competing priorities, and oftentimes the emotions behind their financial decision-making. And then using all of that information to create a clear path forward for our clients. And at the same time, my friends were starting to make real money for the first time, develop financially complex lives, and were so overwhelmed at the thought of making financial decisions. And so this was confusing for me, right? Like, I remember being 23 or 24. I'm so excited about the idea of opening a Roth IRA, trying to convince all my friends to open one, and as soon as I say the words retirement accounts, they look at me like they've just seen a ghost. And that was insightful because these are the same 20-something-year-old girls that are wearing SPF every day. They're tracking their sleep, they're tracking their workouts. So this is a generation that's bought into the idea of optimizing long-term health, but they're not thinking about their finances as an aspect of their overall well-being. And when I looked at the tools that were available to them, and you and I both know there's more financial information, products, and tools than ever before, those tools weren't resonating. And I think that when you're handing somebody who doesn't have financial expertise 100 different options of what to invest in, you're creating overwhelm, not clarity. And that applied at UBS. I mean, I was never sitting across from a client giving them 100 different investment options and telling them exactly what account to open. Opening the account for them, showing them which investments make sense for their situation, and really taking the decision-making burden out of the client experience. And so for us, the opportunity became, you know, hey, we've seen that financial products have been democratized, but financial guidance hasn't. And so how do we bring financial guidance to the masses?
Remy: And Kara, you brought up a lot of key points, and I think there's so much information out there, whether we're talking about headline news or how to invest, and even financial news can be overwhelming. So what are you doing at Miriam Pip to make this accessible for users?
Kara Cooke: Yeah, so I think one of the most important things that I learned at UBS is that personalized advice sticks so much better than generic advice, but personalized advice can be scalable. It still follows disciplined frameworks. There's principles behind how you prioritize financial decisions, how you assess risk, how you allocate capital, and we can take those frameworks and then personalize them to somebody's individual circumstances. And so that's what we're doing at Merriam Pip. We're using those frameworks, those kind of fundamental decisions, and then scaling that advice through technology. But the important part is we're using behavioral psychology to communicate those principles in a way that's very easy to understand and that encourages people to actually take action.
Remy: And Kara, finally, before I let you go, tell us about the Miriam PI launch and what is available.
Kara Cooke: Yeah, we are so excited. So our app is launching tomorrow, and this app is really for anybody who is starting to make real money, knows that they need to take another step in their financial life, but doesn't know where to begin, feels like they really need more guidance on clear steps, um, and so this app offers wealth management, offers investing and saving, behavioral guidance, budgeting, um, and then insights just help people develop a better relationship with money because so much of money management is understanding somebody's entire financial picture today and having clear steps of what they should be doing tomorrow.
Remy: Well, we all know that relationships are important, and having that good relationship with money is key. So thank you, Kara, so much for joining us today here at the New York Stock Exchange.
Kara Cooke: Thank you.
Remy: Thank you.
