The events company Future Proof has announced Future Proof Citywide, an outdoor investment management event coming to Miami Beach March 16-19 of next year.
More than 30 financial firms have signed on as Citywide launch partners, including Franklin Templeton, Carlyle Group, Grayscale Investments and J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Organizers expect more than 200 speakers and 2,500 people to attend the beachfront gathering, with most attendees being financial advisers, family offices, limited partnerships and wealth management executives.
The Miami event will be Future Proof’s second annual outdoor event, after its Future Proof Festival held in Huntington Beach, California, each of the past two years.
“We’re starting to change the identity of the wealth management industry — the optics of it, if you will,” Future Proof CEO Matt Middleton told Crain Currency. “It looks almost like a consumer event, like something you might attend with your friends or family on the weekends. And that was all intentional.”
Future Proof, which recently changed its company name from Advisor Circle, packs its outdoor events with food trucks, sponsored booths, live podcasting, content panels, roundtables, networking and activities such as salsa dancing, yoga and pickleball.
“This is the SXSW [South by Southwest] of finance,” said Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and co-creator of Future Proof.
Said Middleton: “We really try to get people stimulated both physically and mentally the entire time — and part of that is being outside. It just kind of changes your focus and attention a bit more than being in a closed-door ballroom.”
Middleton expects Future Proof’s proprietary networking platform Breakthru to facilitate more than 25,000 pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings for its Miami event. The company also debuted a smaller retreat in Colorado Springs last month for top wealth management firms.
“We have a lot of family offices that come to the festival, and they're coming there for a lot of the same reasons that large RIAs come for,” Middleton said. “They want to understand the different technologies out there, they want to have access to the asset managers, they want to understand how they build their firm.”