Ep #13: Using AI Efficiently in the Advisory World

Welcome to the Advisor Summit podcast, where.

We bring you conversations with the sharpest minds shaping the future of financial services. We're excited to welcome Ben Olson, founder of BIMA Automation. Ben began his career in wealth management, serving as an advisor at both Merrill lynch and an independent firm, giving him a deep firsthand understanding of the real world challenges advisors face every day. But it was his passion for solving those challenges that led to a bold pivot diving into the world of tech, learning to code, and eventually becoming an AI engineer. Now, with BMO Automation, Ben is using that unique combination of industry knowledge and technical expertise to help advisors streamline operations, limit inefficiencies, and embrace automations in a way that truly transforms their practices.

All right, Ben, welcome to the Advisor Summit podcast. We're so excited that you're here. Thank you for taking the time to just educate our listeners about AI. I think, like we were discussing before, it's kind of this. This overwhelming but also crazy cool concept that has really quickly taken off and grown into one of the key pieces of people's firms that can really help and just make them grow further in their analytics. So kind of talk to me, tell, you know, our listeners and our followers what you do, kind of what your journey was to starting BMO Automation and how that came about.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. Totally agree with you. AI is kind of changing everything a little bit right now. And, you know, I'm really excited to be in the weeds with advisors, helping them navigate it, figure out how to use it. But, yeah, to back up a little bit, I actually started my career as a financial advisor. I worked at an independent RIA here in Chicago, and then I went over to Merrill lynch, and when I was over there, I was, you know, kind of working on building my own book of business, but. But found myself, like, up late at night watching YouTube videos, teaching myself how to code, which is like, kind of a weird thing.

YouTube University, man, I love it. There's nothing you can't learn.

No, you can literally learn anything. I did a master's degree, which I'll get to in a second that I realized I probably could have done on YouTube, to be completely honest. But, yeah, so was an advisor, but found myself increasingly interested in technology, so kind of left that world, did a complete 180 pivot, started working at a fintech company here in Chicago, learned a lot about technology, writing code, working with data, all that stuff. And then during that time, I actually did a master's degree in Data science. So I learned a lot about kind of machine learning and all of the technology that's actually behind AI. And then right around when I finished my master's degree, OpenAI released this thing called ChatGPT and they were like, known as Chat GPT.

Just a casual thing, just a little.

A little thing that took some of the smartest people in the world, like a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to build. And they were basically like, well, here's the best AI model ever and anyone can build products on top of it. So I immediately realized that's what I need to do. So I started, started my company about a year ago, BMO Automation. And what we do is consulting and custom solutions. So we come into wealth management businesses, help them, you know, we, we really try to understand how they operate, how their team is structured, what technologies they're using, and really map out any and all opportunities for AI and automation to be applied to their business. Then we kind of help them think through what's actually going to drive the most roi and then we'll actually help them implement and manage those solutions on an ongoing basis. So yeah, that's the overview.

I think what's really cool too is you get so in the weeds with each firm that you help. It's not like you're just coming in and saying, hey, here's a one size fits all. I think that's what really sets your BMO Automations apart from other firms is that it's very customized. And I've even seen it personally just in some of the firms that track that Advisor works with is the more customization that you can create to make AI feel real and feel like it actually fits in their firm and it's not just something they slapped on is huge. So it's been, I've seen a lot that you've done and it's really cool to watch you grow and just be amazing about it.

So yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. And it's, you know, there are AI tools that aren't fully customizable. You can come just sign up for and you know, in a lot of situations we'll just like recommend a firm signs up for something if we think it's appropriate. But that's, that's what we love to do is build the custom solutions. And you know, AI is a foundational technology and you can build all sorts of things on top of it and it's not as, you know, hard or complex as you might think. So yeah, that's, that's what we love doing.

I think that's good to hear too because I think initially when I first came out it was again kind of this daunting thing that no one wanted to touch with a ten foot pole. And then as it kind of took traction and became more popular it was like, wow, this is actually really incredible, you know, and it really can do so much and even I was late to the game. So I feel like, you know, whether you're in this generation or the next one, it's, it's crazy. I started using Chat GPT maybe a month ago and it has changed so much. Changed so much. So it's really cool. But when you first started kind of your business in this industry specifically for, you know, RAS and financial advisors, what problem did you come in trying to solve? What did you see, see the need for that VIMO Automations is really here to solve.

Yeah, so at first I didn't really know at first I just, I did know from working in the industry that I felt like wealth management businesses were potentially technologically lagging compared to like working at like a fast growing tech startup. You know, I saw technology applied in a lot of different ways so I knew that the industry kind of needed better technology and likely some help adopting this kind of software. So I kind of went into it just with that mentality. And then over time we've identified a lot of different problems and use cases for AI and I think there's tons of them and I'm sure we'll probably get into that a little bit deeper. But I think the theme, the overall theme is helping firms and helping advisors leverage AI in such a way that it's automating the kind of routine middle and back office tasks that they don't want to spend time on so that they actually have more time to spend building and managing relationships with their clients. Right. Because that's what this business is all about. But if you look at the studies and the data on where advisors spend their time, they don't actually spend a whole lot of time in front of their clients or as much as they would like to. So, so that's our goal is to, to give them more time back in their day to do just that.

I feel like for the teams as well. I'm always such an ally for financial firms teams because yes, the advisor is a key pivotal person in that firm naturally, but at the end of the day the team is also very supportive in those roles and really helps the advisor launch to the next level or you know, vice versa. It really holds the advisor back so I'm curious like how AI is helping kind of those support teams in those back functions. Is it like follow up emails for examples or is it kind of walk me through some of the main things that you use AI for in financial advisors offices.

Yeah, so there's a lot and I typically try to think about them and lay them out kind of throughout the client life cycle. So you know, there are things that you can use AI for starting all the way when somebody's a prospect. Right. So you know, enriching data about your prospects, knowing when to reach out to them in a timely manner. And then you get into client onboarding. There's all sorts of ways to leverage AI to make sure you're collecting documents from clients, parsing data from those documents, getting that data pushed out into external systems. Right. Like that's a pretty manual tedious process that AI is helping streamline a lot. Once the client's onboarded. There's all sorts of opportunities to leverage AI for client communications, whether that be triaging inbound emails and you know, categorizing client service requests, routing them to the right people, adding you know, notes and tasks into the CRM from emails, drafting email replies. You know, there's all sorts of use cases there. Meetings is, is the big one that everyone talks about a lot. I think that's the one where we're seeing the most amount of time savings. Right. Like there's all these AI for advisor note takers. So that's another one we help with, you know, meeting scheduling, meeting preparation, meeting, follow up. All of that can be, you know, either some steps can be fully automated or some steps are partially automated in some way through AI. So you know, I could keep going down the list, but I'd say those are one of the main ones.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I've been even thinking, you know, we've just started kind of adding AI into our systems and programs and like for us personally at track that Advisor, we are launching a resource center next week. And it is like all of the studies, all of the podcasts that we've done and it's called like Ask ep, ask Erica and we'll ask it questions like hey, what was the average case size last year compared to, you know, 2023 in the way it is able to communicate exactly what you know, any coach attracted advisor would say is really mind blowing in one regard, but also just really cool because it really allows people to sift through data and maybe they don't have the time or the patience or the capacity really to like Understand, hey, I need to go back through all of these studies. They can just ask it a simple question, get the answer, and move on. So, I mean, AA in itself just for sifting through data is insane to me, but it's so, so, so cool to watch. So that's, it's interesting. So what are some of, like, the biggest inefficiencies that you see when you come into a firm that you feel like AI can solve? Is it the times piece of it? Or what are some, like, if. If anyone listening could solve one thing with AI, what would you say would be the biggest help for them?

Yeah, it's, it's hard to say, like, one thing because honestly, like, every firm's different and every firm operates a little bit differently. So I always encourage firms to start with, like, where are your bottlenecks and pain points? And then, like, start there and that's what's going to drive the biggest impact for you. And that'll be different from firm to firm. But with that being said, yeah, I think a lot of the, you know, inefficiencies are in, you know, some of the things that I had just mentioned, like, you know, onboarding. Everybody knows in this industry that, like, onboarding is like a huge, lengthy, very manual, very tedious process. So I think there's lots of ways to plug AI into that process to, to really streamline it. And then, you know, I think also less about, like, inefficiency and time savings. But there's also a lot of other benefits of applying AI to certain parts of your business. Things like, you know, setting up tracking systems to make sure, you know, all clients are getting added to the calendar for their annual review and having, you know, AI identify ones that aren't and drafting, you know, emails to them or things like that. A lot of stuff like that leads to, you know, peace of mind that things aren't slipping through the cracks. You can also have AI do a lot of things like identify opportunities for proactive outreach. So, yeah, I'd say there's definitely a lot of big use cases for solving inefficiencies, but there's all sorts of other benefits as well.

Yeah, we talked a lot about, you know, advisors utilizing AI efficiently and potentially, like, outsourcing it for a company like you to come in and consult on that. But are there some common misconceptions that financials have about financial advisors have about AI and automation? Like, do you. Oftentimes they come to you and say, hey, this is what I think it is, and it's just Totally off base. Talk me kind of through that and how that goes.

Yeah, I think there's a few misconceptions. I think the first and like, biggest one is that, and this is something I'm like always talking about and preaching and I think people are finally starting to realize this, but is that a lot of people think that there's like no place for it in wealth management because it's a relationship oriented business. And I think, you know, going back to what I was saying earlier, when you use AI the right way, it's not about putting it in between you and your client and making your client feel like they work with a robot, which is what I think a lot of people think it might be. Yeah, it's about, you know, having something working for you in the background and freeing up time for you so that you can actually have more time to deliver more of that human element. So yeah, AI is not something that makes you as an advisor feel less human. It's actually something that gives you way more time and way more insights to deliver more of that, you know, high touch, personalized experience.

Yeah. I even think about just the human, like humanity side of things. When you're so burnt out on doing the mundane background tasks when you get to that client, it's oftentimes like, man, I just want to get through this moment meeting, you know what I mean? Versus.

That's a good point.

Yeah. If you're taking out the human element of being burnt out or being, you know, really touched out with that, it's like, cool, I can come in here and focus on this because this is going to take the most effort of my day and the most mindset of my day and time. So I think it's huge. I think it's amazing what firms are doing with it and what you guys specifically are. But also it's, it's daunting. I will always say that. I'm always. It's daunting until you know it. Right. I mean, I read it takes 20 hours to, to become an expert at something which I felt was grossly under, like utilized there. I think it takes more than 20 hours. But all the studies show and I'm like, AI is one of those things that you really can be an expert at it if you commit the time to it, you know, and it doesn't have to be this dawning thing at all.

So yeah, I, I always encourage people to just like keep like chat GBT or something like that open and use it throughout the day. Right. Like we all like compare it to like Google. Like when Google came out nobody knew how to Google anything. But now we know how to like type something into Google very precisely to get the exact answer we want that you want. AI models are the same way. Like if you're just like, hey, help me do xyz. Yeah, it may not be that good, but if you get really good instructions it'll start to be that much more powerful. And that just comes with repetition.

Yeah, I mean I just think it's the evolving of you know, technology is just continuous. You know, I think about my kids now, they're like, well just text, you know, your, my friend's mom if they can come over. And I'm like, I would have never thought to text somebody. You know that was like when we were growing up, you know, that just wasn't a thing. And now it's like every day there's new automations. And I really am a firm believer you can either embrace it and be uncomfortable for a little bit, but get that, you know, next level and step up and go further or you can shy away from it, but you're going to be left behind. You know, comfort is the absolute enemy of progression. And so it's like be uncomfortable and be okay with that. So and having a resource like you to come to and be like, hey, what should I do with this? Is this the best plan of action or do you have a different suggestion? I think is also really helpful. So how do you see like AI transforming the financial industry and say like the next three to five years? You know, I mean it's still relatively new in my mind, maybe not but for others. But I still feel like AI is a relatively new concept. So in the next three to five years, how do you see it really transforming the industry?

Yeah, so I think it obviously like as we've been saying, it enables advisors to be so much more efficient and allocate their time towards new things. So I think what that looks like in like three to five years is advisors can serve many more clients than they can can right now with the same amount of workload. And so what I think that looks like from a holistic perspective is I think it really expands the access of a financial advisor or wealth management services to a whole new set of people that might not typically meet like the minimums of a firm today. Right. Like a lot of wealth management businesses don't work with clients who have under X amount of assets because they feel that the amount of time they need to spend servicing that client is not worth, you know, the revenue that they're going to get from them. But when the amount of time needed to serve that client drastically decreases, they can then expand their books, work with so many more clients, and also lower those thresholds and enable, you know, advisory to some of those maybe younger or smaller accounts that will grow over time. So that's kind of, I think the, the big theme and, and kind of the, I guess, macro outcome of what the efficiency gains will cause.

I think that's huge too because I do think that is a really untapped market is those that maybe aren't qualified enough because of the time perspective, but they still need help as well, you know. And as fiduciaries, I do feel like, yes, like you are still a CEO and a business manager, but there is an untapped market that really needs help. And like that is what we do, is we help people. And it's, it's a really interesting, interesting platform to be, be on. So what's next for BMO automation? Anything fun, exciting projects or innovations in the pipeline?

Yeah, so you know, it's hard to say what's next for us because we have strategically positioned our business to kind of be platform, tool and use case agnostic. And so we're kind of just following along. And as the technology and the AI landscape changes, that's inevitably going to change, you know, our approach to helping businesses leverage it. So it is kind of hard to say like, like what the future really looks like for us. We definitely have goals to be the strategic partner for, you know, a certain number of firms of, of all shapes and sizes. But we're, we're staying really flexible in our approach because the landscape is changing so rapidly. That being said, I think there is kind of a problem that has been identified with how AI is being applied to this industry. And that's lack of access to data. Right. AI is only as good as the data has access to. And as we all know, wealth tech is incredibly fragmented. The kids map is like so small you can't even read it or so big that you can't even read what's on it anymore. And most firms are working with like 10 to 15 different technologies. So in order to, to truly unlock the power of AI, it's important for firms to start kind of centralizing their data and getting it all into one place and then deploying AI over the top of that. So that's a space we've been kind of moving into, is helping firms own their data, getting it out of their tools and into a centralized repository. Still Using those tools, but having this central hub, this central source of truth that has information from all of their systems so that you can build the most impactful AI tooling on top of that.

Why do you think it is so fragmented? Has no one come up with a solution that really solves all of these problems? Because I hear that all the time and I feel like that even attracted advisor. Everyone's like, I just don't want a single. I don't want one more platform I have to log into in the morning. I'm already coming in, opening my 10 different platforms, trying to figure out my 10 different places. Why is it so fragmented, especially in comparison to other industries?

Yeah. So I think tech fragmentation is kind of a universal problem. I do think it is. Especially so in our industry. I think everybody's dying for the all in one solution. Like why do I have to jump from a CRM to financial planning tool to a portfolio analytics tool to my scheduling software? Right. And I think the reason is because it's much easier to innovate when you're like a small startup building like a little point solution. Right, sure. And I think like we're seeing a great example of this right now. Like all these like AI for financial advisor meeting note takers are popping up. Right. Like there's like 15 new companies that are doing that and so that's crowding the space with new tech solutions. But at the same time you have companies like Wealthbox or even Calendly are now building note taking into their products.

Yes.

So I think it's fragmented because big companies can't innovate as quick as little ones. So a bunch of little ones pop up, solving little point use cases, and then ultimately that kind of gets absorbed into the big ones. But I will say I do think AI will be what solves that fragmentation over time.

Interesting.

I think, you know, I envision a future where five, ten years from now, whatever that is, there's one interface. Whether that is an interface, whether that's an agent, like whatever it is, there's one entry point into your technology and AI and smart technology is just doing everything in the background for you.

Yeah. Makes sense. Kind of like meta for social media. You know what I mean? Like, yes, all these kind of different pieces, but there's really one launch point within that.

Yeah. And so I think that's where we'll get to eventually. So, you know, I think the, the tech fragmentation has been an issue for a very long time and it just comes from that natural cycle of innovation. But I do Think like AI will be the, the what, what kind of.

Solves that really, that you put in, put all your red chips on AI, putting all your chips on red with AI. But I don't blame you. I mean it's, I think it's so going to get true innovator, you know, it's of kind capturing that next piece of the level of what's going to happen. So, last question. Where are you tracking personally this year? We are big Trek theme fans and just, you know, mountains and adventures. So if, whether you're doing something cool with your life or whether it's just honestly being more low key and more peaceful. So where are you tracking this year?

Yeah, so that's a great question. I hate to, to make this more, I hate to make this about my business, but like I'm spending so much of my time working on my company, so it's like pretty much defining my whole life right now. So I'm really excited to continue growing our team and working with really smart people. I got a lot of conferences I'm going to and speaking at this year, so just really excited to continue to meet other really smart folks in the industry, continue building out a team and continue, you know, building a lot of new relationships. This entrepreneurial journey has been very fun and very exciting and you know, I. One thing I love about it is, you know, the people, the people I get to meet and the opportunities I get to be introduced to people. So that's something I'm really excited for. Trying to think of like a more, a more personal answer because I feel.

Like, oh, I love it. I feel like it's the entrepreneurial mind, you know what I mean? Like it's really, it is your life, you know, you don't have necessarily the time to go run a half marathon or a marathon or whatever. So it's like really. And I think I also want to touch on what's really special is the people in this industry. I agree with you. It's just, and it's what we were talking about before, it's such a small world because you get to meet so many really cool key players. And within that it's like the abundance mindset as well, where it's like we all can help each other. It's never like a competition. In my mind. It's like, hey, you do something very different than I do. Let's like work together to make it great for the people that we serve. So I think it's awesome. You don't need to get any more personal with it. I love it. I love that you love your company. If people want to get in touch with you for your services, what's the best way, best route to do? Do that.

Yeah, absolutely. So our website is just BMO automation.com B E E M O automation.com. people can fill out like a form there or book a call with me there. I'm also like, pretty big on LinkedIn. Ben Olson, BMO Automation so I'm always posting things about like tips and tricks for advisors to use AI information about things we're building for other firms. So if anyone wants to to give me a follow there and shoot me a message, I read them all.

Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks, Ben, for your time. We appreciate you. We'll chat soon.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.