The rise of the web essentially modified how monetary advisors study and advance their craft. Wanting ready for an trade ‘guru’ to periodically publish a guide each few years, the one methods to maintain up with the most recent methods to develop your observe or higher serve your purchasers have been to learn an trade commerce journal – and take up no matter slot in a two-page article unfold – or to go to a monetary advisor convention. On this context, going to a convention wasn’t nearly incomes CE… it was actually the first approach of Persevering with your Training as a monetary providers skilled.
However now, the web serves up an infinite number of CE credit for barely 1/tenth what most monetary advisors would spend on a single convention… elevating the query of what, precisely, the ROI is to pay $2,000 in registration charges, journey bills, and a number of nights of resort lodging, simply to see content material you could possibly have learn on-line, heard on a podcast, or watched on YouTube.
But the fact is that taking time to journey to a convention is not nearly a selected session itself… it is in regards to the topical immersion if you go to a “tax convention” or a “retirement convention” or a “advertising convention”. Or connecting with different advisors in related circumstances dealing with related challenges, from whom you may study. Or just the expertise of getting out of your workplace and having fun with an occasion the place you get to tax-deduct the journey to a stupendous location to take pleasure in whereas you study and join with others.
Nonetheless, the truth that “the content material is accessible on-line” means fashionable monetary advisor conferences cannot survive by merely having an inexpensive lineup of audio system and content material. As a substitute, just like how monetary advisors themselves are rising within the present setting, conferences are more and more specializing, placing collectively a full agenda and expertise to deal with a selected phase of advisors and the actual (information or observe administration) issues they face of their companies. Which will increase the relevancy – and thus the ROI – of the convention for advisors who’re a superb match.
As somebody who has been talking at 50–70 conferences a 12 months for 20 years myself, I’ve seen the great and dangerous of our wide selection of trade occasions, from the trade associations to the broker-dealers and insurance coverage firms and RIA custodians, the rise of vendor conferences and media-driven occasions, personal firm occasions, and extra. Consequently, I’m usually requested for my very own solutions of what, actually, are the trade’s ‘finest’ conferences to attend, and again in 2012, I began to craft my very own annual listing of ‘best-in-class’ high conferences for monetary advisors.
Having up to date our annual convention listing yearly since, I am excited now to current my latest listing of “High Monetary Advisor Conferences” for the upcoming 2026 12 months, from occasions on advisor know-how (and a brand new one focusing particularly to AI!) to conferences on creating and advertising your private model, studying enterprise improvement abilities, or growing next-generation expertise, to the highest occasions for many who nonetheless use conferences to up their technical recreation in areas like tax planning, property planning, and retirement planning. Plus just a few occasions which can be merely nice, well-rounded experiences for many who wish to benefit from the convention, the vacation spot, the periods they attend, and their fellow attendees.
As well as, we have additionally up to date our fashionable “Grasp Convention Listing” for all monetary advisor conferences we may discover for 2026, each for advisors searching for a wider vary of occasions to attend (if you wish to delve deeper into a selected topical space) and for distributors searching for extra conferences to exhibit at! (And as extra 2026 conferences are introduced within the coming months, we’ll proceed to replace the Grasp Convention Listing nicely into the approaching 12 months!).
So I hope you will discover this 12 months’s 2026 high conferences listing (and our up to date Grasp Convention Listing) to be useful as a information in planning your personal convention funds and schedule for subsequent 12 months, and be sure to make the most of the particular low cost codes that a number of conferences have provided to all of you as Nerd’s Eye View readers!