New years are customarily accompanied by resolutions — andUnited Capital's Joe Duran recently gave financial experts threeyears' worth. “We are in one of the most disruptive times forbusiness in the world that we have ever seen,” Duran, CEO of UnitedCapital, told financial professions, advising them in his quietlypassionate way that if they failed in the next three years toembrace the digital disruption ahead, they'll be done for.

“If we think that three years from now we can keep operating thesame way, I'm here to tell you that you won't be growing if youdo,” he said.

“The greatest thing about disruption is that the old ways ofworking no longer work, which means there are massive opportunitiesfor new ways of working — and your competition is as lost as youare.”

Financial professionals, he proclaimed, have a huge opportunityto grab market share “if you can figure out how to do thingsdifferently.”

He suggested that to still be relevant in three years' time,advisors will not only have to change how they interact withmembers, but also how they deliver and charge for their services,while also ensuring they're delivering a myriad of options.

The merging of technology and people, Duran maintained, “isgoing to be how you win.”

While everyone is feverishly focused on the millennials as thetech-savvy generation, Duran went against the grain in arguing thatit's actually Gen Xers — or “the bridge generation,” as he calledthem — who will indicate what will be successful in thetech/business realm.

Gen Xers' children teach them how to use today's devices(iPhones and iPads) as well as social platforms like Facebook andInstagram, but when Gen Xers adopt a new technology and a “new wayof operating, they automatically teach their parents,” Duransaid.

While millennials will continue to be the “early adopters,” theyare not the generation “who will predict what's successful. Uber,Amazon, Facebook; they were only successful when my wife startedusing them, and we all started to consume them, not when mydaughters started to use them,” he argued.

The technologies “that make money and last are the ones that we[Gen Xers] adopt,” he added, stating that the primary goal for GenXers who have kids in high school or college and parents who arejust beginning to leave the workforce can be summed up in one word:convenience.

“The way that we interact with the world will change simplybecause of the convenience alone,” Duran said.

Lessons From Silicon Valley

Relating what he has learned during one of his frequent visitsto Google, Amazon and Facebook, Duran recalled the past “broadcast”age of information that relied on television to deliver the news.Next was the “age of information,” in which Gen Xers grew up withaccess to information “whenever and however they wanted it” withthe internet allowing for such access and consumption.

Today, he continued, we've entered the “great age ofparticipation, where news is created and shared by us.”

The mindset “has shifted in every single industry — Starbucks,Nike or at any bank — and what everyone is doing is empoweringconsumers to participate in the experience.”

Duran encouraged financial professionals to understand how theirtarget markets consume information, noting that while their biggestcompetitive advantage is their geography — the convenience andlocation to their members — that will cease to become a competitiveadvantage over the next few years.

Instead, a credit union's presence needs to be “omnipresent,everywhere,” with members wanting 24-hour access to your services.Duran said that the notion of telling members “'I'll take your callbetween 9 and 4 pm,'” or expecting them to come into a physicaloffices are “antiquated” ideas.

“If you're not on your clients' cell phone, if you're not one oftheir top five visited sites and the No. 1 financial site theyvisit, you will be irrelevant,” Duran stated. “Crossing the globaldivide is the secret between failure and success, and it isinescapable. It will be true first for your clients who are 40 or50 and it ultimately will be true for your clients who are 70 or80. If you are not resident and native on their phone or on theiriPad, you will not be relevant.”

Citing a recent op-ed by famed theoretical physicist StephenHawking, who wrote that “we are at the most dangerous moment in thedevelopment of humanity” because “artificial intelligence will wipeout jobs like we've never seen — changing the way every singleindustry operates,” Duran pointed out that the human touch willalways be needed.

“Why can't we just do everything by machine?” he asked. “It'svery simple — the complexity and the cost of being wrong are toohigh when it comes to money.”

Advisors' role is to provide “perspective, empathy and thendiscipline,” he argued, not to pick investments or beat themarkets. Duran said that by contrast, members come to advisors fortwo reasons: to give perspective that is accurate and reflectstheir world when they have big choices to make, and to “talk themoff the ledge when they're going to do something stupid.”

They also want advisors to “give discipline to the way they makechoices,” which he said will never change because “we want someoneto blame. The truth is, we don't want to go it alone. We want to beable to call someone and scream at them if it doesn't work. That'sa huge asset. It's not going away.”

Duran also challenged advisors to reassess their investmentstrategies. “If you're going to be competitive, your investingworld has to be different,” providing multiple strategies. “Youhave to be able to give the husband one thing and the wife anotherif that's what's needed,” he said, adding that advisors are “goingto have to have a stable of investment solutions.”