7:00am-7:50am

Ed Coambs

Couples & Money: A Financial Planner's Guide to Navigating Love, Conflict, and Wealth
Money is one of the leading causes of stress in relationships—and when couples disagree, their financial advisor often becomes the unofficial referee. In this insightful and interactive session, you’ll learn how to help couples defuse financial tension, communicate more effectively, and find common ground. We’ll dive into real-world strategies for bridging differences in money values, habits, and communication styles—especially among high-net-worth partners. Walk away with tools to navigate emotional dynamics around wealth and elevate your role as a trusted advisor in your clients’ most important relationship.

1 hour CFP, 1 hour NC INS

8:00am-9:00am

Ben Olsen
Beemo Automation

AI & Automation for Financial Advisors: Streamline Your Practice Without Sacrificing Personal Touch
AI is no longer a future concept—it’s a present-day advantage for advisors who embrace it. In this session, Ben Olsen, founder of Beemo Automation, will walk through real-world use cases and a practical framework—Apply, Buy, or Build—to help you integrate AI into your firm’s workflows. Whether you're just exploring or ready to automate at scale, you'll leave with clarity on how to move forward without sacrificing compliance or client experience.

1 hour CFP

9:20am-10:00am

Andrew Sabourin
Lake Norman Wealth Counsel

Better Together: Avoiding Common Estate Planning Errors with Legal Insight
Estate planning isn’t just about documents—it’s about protecting legacies and avoiding costly missteps. In this practical and eye-opening session, you’ll explore both foundational and advanced tools of estate planning, from must-have documents to powerful trust strategies and tax-saving techniques. We’ll also uncover the most common (and avoidable) mistakes financial planners make—and how stronger collaboration with estate attorneys can lead to better outcomes for your clients and your practice.

1 hour CFP

10:20am-11:10am

Mitch Long
KazSource Insurance

Jennifer Szakaly
Caregiving Corner

Aging Clients: Risk Management w/ Life Insurance & Long-Term Care Insurance
This session will look at the use of life insurance and long-term care insurance as a tool for risk mitigation. You'll hear from the insurance side, as well as the aging industry side, about how these tools can be effective for your clients. Real client stories will be discussed, and you won't want to miss the Q & A!

1 hour CFP, 1 hour NC INS

11:20am-12:10pm

Ryan Ponsford
Equity Wealth Strategies

Integrating Housing Wealth into Retirement Planning, an Advisor's Perspective
If you consider yourself a comprehensive planner, this session is a must. For most clients, home equity is one of their largest assets, yet it's often left out of the planning conversation. You’ll gain insight into one of the most misunderstood and underutilized tools in retirement planning today, the modern reverse mortgage line of credit, and how it can be applied thoughtfully and strategically to meet a variety of client goals.

1 hour CFP, 1 hour NC INS

1:00pm-1:50pm

Lauren Martinelli
Vanguard

Advisor Alpha at 25: Coaching Minds, Creating Value
This presentation offers the Vanguard Advisor's Alpha® take on behavioral coaching. Attendees will learn about the root causes of why investors need coaching and what to do about it. They will also learn why behavioral coaching is important not only to their clients but also to their practice. By adopting the Vanguard Advisor's Alpha framework, advisors can build deeper relationships with their clients and improve investor and practice outcomes.

1 hour CFP

1:50pm-2:40pm

Adam Van Deusen 
Kitces

Helping Nervous Clients Understand and Financially Plan for the (True) State of the Social Security System
Given frequent news headlines on the (un)sustainability of the Social Security system, many working-age financial advisory clients might harbor doubts about receiving their full (or any of their) estimated Social Security benefits. In this session, we dive deep into data from the Social Security Board Of Trustees’ Annual Report to clear up common misconceptions about the actual health of the Social Security system, review a range of policy options being considered to shore up Social Security for the rest of the century, and discuss how financial advisors can analyze the impact of these policies for both working-age, near-retirement, and already-retired clients, and ways to adapt financial planning assumptions to model the scenarios, providing clients with a more accurate picture of how they might (or might not) be affected.

1 hour CFP, 1 hour NC INS

2:50pm-3:45pm

Walter Todd
Greenwood Capital

Navigating the Fog of (a Trade) War
In this session, we will discuss the economic and market landscape, including fiscal and monetary policy, in the midst of a rapidly evolving macro backdrop. In addition, we examine how circumstances could change in 2026 and how this could impact financial markets and asset classes. (Given the rapidly changing circumstances, this session may be tweaked as we get closer to the date).

1 hour CFP, 1 hour NC INS