Artificial intelligence-powered offerings in wealth management regularly hammer home one benefit they provide in particular: saved time. “Advisors are saving 10-plus hours per week on average by leveraging AI to streamline their client meeting process,” said Startup Zeplyn CEO Era Jain. “That’s about 500-plus hours per year or 20 new clients they can service per year.” These time savings are primarily spent on business development and relationship building. Solo advisor Kelly Klingaman, founder of Kelly Klingaman Financial Planning, said she wanted to utilize an AI notetaker in her business so she could be more present during client meetings. Having tried out a few AI notetaking tools so far, Klingaman said Fathom is “affordable, easy to use and dynamic” — and it saves her between five and eight hours per week. For Gregory Furer, the founder and CEO of Beratung Advisors, one of the biggest game changers has been the integration of Holistiplan tax planning software. “With AI, we can now analyze a client’s tax return and generate insights in just three minutes — a process that used to take an hour and was prone to human error,” he said. From there, Furer said they create tax modeling for clients in 20 to 30 minutes, compared to the two to three hours it used to take. He said his firm is also leveraging AI within eMoney, its financial planning software, “to instantly calculate the amount of life insurance needed to maintain client-defined success rates and goals.” “This real-time decision support enhances the accuracy and speed of our recommendations,” he said. Like Klingaman, Furer has been utilizing AI for meeting notes; he uses Jump. “As the tool continues to learn our systems and language, it could eventually save five to 10 hours per week of high-value planner time, potentially becoming our most cost-effective AI tool.” Rob Schultz, senior partner and wealth manager at NWF Advisory said he also uses Jump for meeting summarization. “The quality of the notes was significantly better than I ever wrote down during a meeting and it allows me to focus solely on the client in front of me. It saves me time in the post-meeting review, probably 30 minutes per client interaction.” Samuel Flaten, co-founder of Narrow Road Financial Planning said he mainly uses ChatGPT, which he calls a “total game-changer.” In addition to the writing assistance, Flaten said he has also trained a custom GPT with “everything I know as a CFP” to workshop ideas, stress-test strategies and pull in creative alternatives he might not have considered. Across his average weekly schedule of 20 meetings, Schultz said his use of Jump AI frees up about 10 hours. Jain of Zeplyn recommends that firms optimize their scheduling by identifying advisors who successfully use AI to save time, establishing their best practices and training or coaching other advisors.
Investing.com’s AI researcher can condense months of detailed financial news into summaries, deliver SWOT analysis and run advanced stock screeners, all within seconds using exclusive access to vetted, real-time, data on global markets
Investing.co, a provider of financial news, tools and data to retail investors, has launched an AI-driven researcher called WarrenAI. WarrenAI promises to bridge the gap between Wall Street traders and retail player by combining the ease of ChatGPT with trusted premium market data and raw analytical power. The tool, claims Investing.com, is a personal, devoted financial researcher, with superhuman capacity and expertise, and which can answer just about any question with faster market reactions than a fleet of Wall Street analysts. The technology will launch in over 30 languages. While existing AI software such as ChatGPT source data from the entire web, WarrenAI has exclusive access to vetted, real-time, data on global markets. Investors get access to an array of over 1200 fundamental metrics spanning more than 72,000 companies, ETFs, mutual funds, closed-end funds and REITs, complete with a decade’s worth of historical data. In addition to condensing months of detailed financial news into summaries, WarrenAI can deliver SWOT analysis, provide the bearish and bullish cases for thousands of stocks, gather breaking Wall Street analyst outlooks, and run advanced stock screeners within seconds.
Startup Alpaca’s platform lets financial services firms and brokerages offer trading services especially U.S. stock market to their consumer user bases via an API
The U.S. stock market remains extremely attractive to investors around the world, simply because of its sheer size and liquidity. But it’s still quite difficult for investors in other parts of the globe to trade stocks on U.S. exchanges. Startup Alpaca has quietly capitalized on that opportunity by offering an API to financial services firms that lets them sell trading services to their consumer user bases. Alpaca claims it serves more than 5 million brokerage accounts, and has more than 200 financial clients in 40 countries. To build on that traction, Alpaca has raised $52 million in a Series C funding round to expand into more foreign markets, including the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. The startup just opened a new office in New York, and it plans to use the fresh cash to obtain more regulatory licenses in different regions, similar to those it already has in the U.S., Japan, and the Bahamas, its co-founder and CEO Yoshi Yokokawa told. Alpaca will also use the proceeds to develop new products, add non-U.S. products like European and Asian equities, and support 24/5 trading of U.S. stocks. “When new banks want to improve their products for their customers, they prefer to work with modern partners because their customers want modern solutions. So that is how we are currently winning the market share over them,” Yokokawa added.
2025 Specialty Asset Management Outlook released by Bank of America says CRE investor confidence in the space is growing, signaled by rebalancing supply and demand, stabilizing valuations and increasing liquidity
Bank of America released a 2025 Specialty Asset Management (SAM) Outlook (PDF) on the market dynamics impacting commercial real estate (CRE), farmland, timberland and energy assets. The paper finds real assets play an increasingly important role in diversifying a portfolio as investors seek to position themselves for long-term wealth creation in a dynamic market. “Characteristics of real assets, such as generally being uncorrelated with traditional investments and serving as a hedge against inflation, are increasingly relevant in the current environment,” said Ken Shepard, SAM Executive at Bank of America Private Bank. “For well-informed, long-term investors, 2025 will be a good year to selectively build positions in certain real asset sectors.” The following themes are explored in the 2025 SAM Outlook:
- CRE demonstrates positive momentum: While CRE has weathered a range of challenges over the past few years, investor confidence in the space is growing, signaled by rebalancing supply and demand, stabilizing valuations and increasing liquidity.
- Farmland offers a pathway to stability and diversification: The 2025 crop year holds opportunity for knowledgeable investors as competitive pressures lessen and farmland values remain stable to slightly lower, allowing for more strategic maneuvering.
- Timberland bridges market uncertainties: Long-term investors with lower risk profiles in search of alternatives may find timberland an attractive investment, as biological growth is largely insulated from market cycles and geopolitical risk.
- Energy use increases globally: Myriad factors, including population growth, expanding manufacturing and rising living standards in emerging economies, have paved the way for increased energy usage. Looking ahead, the domestic energy supply will favor natural gas, renewables and other carbon-friendly sources.
Vanguard Introduces Fixed Income Model Portfolios for Financial Advisors
Vanguard is launching the firm’s first dynamic asset allocation fixed income model portfolios. Vanguard Fixed Income Risk Diversification and Vanguard Fixed Income Total Return join the firm’s lineup of model portfolios that provide financial advisors with access to broadly diversified, low-cost, and high-quality Vanguard-managed solutions. “Model portfolios empower financial advisors with streamlined investment manager research and ongoing portfolio construction and monitoring, so they can spend time on the things that really matter to their clients—like ensuring they’re meeting their investment goals,” said Brent Beardsley, Head of Advisor Solutions for Vanguard. Built to serve a variety of investment time horizons and risk profiles, Vanguard’s model portfolios support financial advisors’ portfolio construction needs so they can spend more time scaling their practice and deepening client relationships. Deeper client relationships lead to improved client loyalty and trust, according to Vanguard’s Advisor’s Alpha research, which can then assist with asset retention and referrals. Vanguard Fixed Income Risk Diversification and Vanguard Fixed Income Total Return model portfolios seek to outperform a market-capitalization-weighted benchmark—the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Index and Bloomberg U.S. Universal Index respectively—and allocations are recalibrated throughout the year to align with the Vanguard Capital Markets Model® (VCMM) 10-year forecasts. Vanguard’s Investment Strategy Group oversees the asset allocations for the models and Vanguard’s Fixed Income Group manages the fixed income funds included in each portfolio. The Vanguard Fixed Income Risk Diversification model portfolio features a weighted average expense ratio of 0.05% and is constructed for advisors and their clients in search of a highly diversified fixed income portfolio with exposure to global investment grade bonds intended to provide ballast against equity market volatility. Vanguard Fixed Income Total Return model portfolio is designed for advisors and clients seeking wealth accumulation and risk diversification from the fixed income sleeve of their portfolio. This model portfolio contains exposure to global investment grade and high yield bonds at a weighted average expense ratio of 0.08%.