Woman-led AI firm lands Schwab listing to bring to automation, learning tools to affiliated RIAs

As the wealth management industry continues to embrace artificial intelligence solutions with open arms, a female-founded AI fintech and one of the biggest names in the business are joining forces.

CogniCor, the California-based provider of an AI-powered business automation and learning platform, has entered an agreement with Charles Schwab to have information about its suite of solutions shared with Schwab-affiliated RIAs via the Schwab Provider Listings program.

The first customer benefitting from the new collab is Sequoia Financial Group, an RIA in Akron, Ohio, with more than $10 billion in assets. It’s one of Schwab’s largest affiliates.

CogniCor co-founder and CEO Sindhu Joseph believes AI-enabled digital assistants can be leveraged to alleviate many of the issues associated with significant M&A growth within the industry. 

As M&A growth remains high, there is a greater need for scalable solutions that facilitate the efficient onboarding and education of new advisors, new account openings and helping clients transition existing accounts to an advisor's new firm.

Joseph said her firm’s listing by Schwab aims to answer the calls for these solutions from the nation's leading RIAs.

"Currently, advisors and employees are forced to spend around 40% of their time executing routine, manual tasks,” Joseph said. “This time should be devoted to serving clients and performing other value-generative activities. Using our business automation and learning platforms, RIAs can fuel further growth opportunities for their business and customers." 

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Sequoia is also helping CogniCor test “Meeting Assistant,” the firm's latest AI-enabled solution, on a large scale. The system works with advisors and the firm's current Salesforce-based CRM to automate pre- and post-meeting paperwork, create dynamic agendas and help track life events and milestones for customers in real time. 

"As we looked to improve our advisors' efficiency without any impact to the client experience, we identified the administrative processes around the client-advisor meeting as an area ripe for improvement," said Trevor Chuna, chief technology officer with Sequoia. "Working closely with CogniCor, we selected several areas in which we believe this technology can reduce the time spent on repetitive administrative activities. We are extremely pleased to roll these seamlessly integrated tools to our advisors in the coming months." 

Joseph added that she is excited for the opportunity to provide Sequoia advisors AI-backed tools to help them “focus on what matters most — the relationships with clients."

The announcement comes as more support of AI rolls in from across the industry. A survey of 200 financial services professionals conducted in May and shared this week by Broadridge Financial Solutions found artificial intelligence to be among the top investment priorities for financial services firms.

Nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents in the Broadridge survey identified AI and automation as their firm’s priority investment. Only data management tools polled higher with 27% of respondents ranking it the highest.

"In today's rapidly evolving world, an optimized workflow is crucial and good, clean data is key," Vijay Mayadas, president of capital markets at Broadridge, said in a statement. "And yet, firms are drowning in the complexity of managing and simplifying data without the technology and digital infrastructures in place to support its management, stifling transparency, agility and growth."

The research also found that finance pros are eager to get started. More than half of the respondents said their firms still have progress to make before they reach the advanced stages of their innovation and technology efforts.

Agreements like the one between CogniCor and Schwab may be able to help.

"We hear from clients and the survey findings highlight how firms are overwhelmed with the amount of data and limited in how to use it," said Mayadas. "By assessing one’s tech stack and partnering with trusted providers, firms have the opportunity to maximize the capability of their data and improve their workflow management."

Consulting firm Accenture also recently offered up research that bodes well for the future of AI in wealth management. Its “AI in Wealth Management” survey polled 500 financial advisors in the United States and Canada earlier this year to “fairly assess their familiarity of AI and what, if any, disconnects exist when it comes to using this technology.”

The response was enthusiastic as almost all of the surveyed advisors want AI solutions and are already using AI to some extent.

About 83% of advisors interviewed said they believe AI will have a direct, measurable and consistent impact on the client-advisor relationship in the next 18 months. That same percentage of advisors also said they believe AI can achieve a level of sophisticated advice and planning that will ultimately leave them competing with an algorithm for clients in the next 18 months.

But there are hurdles. Five out of 10 advisors in the Accenture survey feel like their firms are held back from acting on their AI vision because of outdated firm culture.