Ramesh Vaswani will take over as Carson Group CTO, which has been run by a technology council for the past year and a half.
Carson Group, the mega-RIA based in Omaha, Neb., has snagged a senior-level Envestnet executive to run its technology operations after it had been overseen by a “technology council” over the past couple of years.
Ramesh Vaswani had been the global group head of engineering, overseeing a team of more than 250 people and reporting directly to Envestnet CTO Robert Coppola. Now, he’ll be joining the $41 billion Carson Group to develop and executive technology strategy across its network of roughly 50 advisor offices and 150 partnered advisories through Carson Partners, its RIA channel, the firm announced Monday.
Vaswani is the second senior executive from Envestnet Carson has hired in the past two years. In April 2024, the firm hired former Envestnet chief strategy officer Dani Fava to take the same role at Carson Group, replacing now-CEO Burt White.
While Vaswani’s CTO role is not new, he will be the first sole leader of tech operations in about a year and a half. Carson’s first-ever CTO, Nimesh Patel, was hired in 2022 but left in the summer of 2023 for RIA Corient in a move that Carson described as a “mutual separation.” Since then, the firm’s technology capabilities have been run by a four-person “technology council.”
Now, Carson execs have decided they’d like a CTO leader to help give its advisors and advisor network access to the best wealth management technology and ensure recruiting competitiveness.
“Our mission is first and foremost to create ease and confidence for advisors, and we are building a tech stack and broader technology strategy with that mission at its core,” Fava said via email. “We want to be known as a curator and integrator of the best technology solutions to support our advisors and our technology strategy is designed to do just this.”
She added that Vaswani’s career has been focused on “aligning technology goals with business goals for financial institutions, and he has a proven track record of turning those ideas into reality.”
David Grau, founder and CEO of advisor consultancy Succession Resource Group, said Carson is a firm that seems to have managed leadership succession planning well, including last year when founder Ron Carson stepped down to be replaced by then-managing partner and chief strategy officer White.
Having smooth leadership exchanges is “so impactful to the culture and operations of the firm, and their ability to continue recruiting,” Grau said. “All of those roles require proactive succession planning, especially at a firm of Carson’s size.”
Vaswani is leaving an organization going through its own transformation. Envestnet, one of the industry’s largest technology providers, was taken private last year through an acquisition led by Bain Capital.
Vaswani had been with Envestnet for over nine years. As group head, he oversaw a team of developers, architects, and analysts focused on automation and efficiency projects, including the adoption of artificial intelligence.
In a statement, Vaswani said of the move to Carson: “I’m passionate about aligning business and technology to drive results and I see an incredible opportunity to integrate technology in a way that promotes growth and creates ease and confidence for our advisors.”
Former Carson CTO Patel has since moved on to the technology-focused custodian Altruist.
In February, tech-focused RIA Savvy Wealth, which recently topped $1 billion in AUM, hired its first CTO with Eric Hurkman, formerly of valuation software firm Carta.
Disclaimer
This article was first published by Alex Ortolani. The original article can be found here. All rights to the original content are held by wealthmanagement.com.
