A Walt Disney-inspired tech stack: Show Me Your Stack

Welcome to “Show Me Your Stack,” a series from Financial Planning in which we interview those who deliver financial advice to learn what tools they rely on to make it happen. Rising client expectations are driving the need for more powerful tech tools, and we’re digging deep to find out why advisors prefer certain solutions.

Though Andrew J. Evans’ office is located less than a 90-minute drive from Walt Disney World, he carries Walt Disney’s ethos wherever he goes. For Evans, the CEO of Rossby Financial, an enterprise RIA in Melbourne, Florida, that means building a tech stack that’s never finished, always being improved or “plussed,” as Disney may have put it. 

Evans, who is also the founder of fractional consulting firm ROffice, has been active in the wealth management industry for around two decades, having previously worked at Raymond James, Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Waddell & Reed and TAG Advisors. Evans founded Rossby Financial in 2023. 

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“In my early 40s, I was looking at the landscape and said, ‘I don’t think there’s a whole lot of opportunity for someone like myself to stay inside of a hybrid model the way that they work now. It’s time to move on. Technology is advancing. Nothing is advancing here. Let’s go see what we could do. Let’s go stake our opportunities elsewhere,'” he said.

Today, Rossby Financial has 17 licensed advisors, four additional employees, about $370 million in assets under management and about $520 million in assets under advisement.

Evans is a self-described “big fan” of Disney — the man, the park and the brand. (His favorite Disney films include “Brave,” “Aladdin” and “The Little Mermaid.”) 

He’s such a fan that his operating philosophy is inspired by Walt Disney’s approach to keeping Disneyland fresh and strong: “Something that I can keep developing, keep plussing and adding to — it’s alive. It will be a live, breathing thing that will need changes,” as Disney put it in a 1956 interview.

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That same spirit of flexibility has shaped Evans’ vision for Rossby’s tech stack.

“What can you always do to make it better?” he said of his approach.

Evans is also inspired by modern Disney executives, citing Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger’s take on innovation: “You can’t allow tradition to get in the way of innovation. There’s a need to respect the past, but it’s a mistake to revere your past.”

Evans said it’s important to him to stay flexible when it comes to the tools that help differentiate his firm.

“You can’t revere something,” he said, because that would lead to stagnation. “My attitude towards technology is that what’s good today will not be good tomorrow. You have to find ways to immediately ‘plus the park,’ or always be improving your technology. So you have to build a foundation that is open to being modular.”

Scroll down the slideshow to see what Evans feels are some of the most important pieces of Rossby Financial’s tech stack: