In this all‑star episode of The Connector Podcast, host Koen Vanderhoydonk brings together four industry voices—Effie, Olga, Urs, and himself—to discuss the practical rollout of generative AI in wealth management, as showcased at the Swiss WealthTech Live conference. Effie describes two live demos from SIX: an LLM‑powered trade‑surveillance tool that helps compliance analysts draft detailed alert reports, and a market‑data terminal that automates asset‑manager style research, delivering rapid, sourced insights and visualisations. Koen highlights the speed of production deployment—tests moved to live in a matter of weeks, with experienced users taking 60 seconds versus 10 seconds for novices—underscoring the importance of user education. Olga emphasizes the need to educate both clients and advisors, arguing that customer‑centricity must move beyond buzzwords and that the human element remains central. Urs expands on cultural transformation, seeing a huge opportunity for nimble, independent advisors to use AI assistants, co‑browsing, chat and self‑service tools to shift from KPI‑driven sales roles to mentorship and coaching, illustrated by a “Lego‑brick” ecosystem metaphor. The conversation then pivots to ESG, where Effie warns of an emerging “AI‑washing” era, drawing parallels between ESG’s data‑quality challenges and those facing generative AI, and noting that many firms have yet to define sustainable business models around AI. Urs adds that while current use cases focus on productivity gains, the future will be driven by platform ecosystems—especially in Asia—requiring open collaboration rather than competition. Olga closes by urging the wealth‑management industry to embed itself in broader technology and education ecosystems to maintain relevance. Throughout, the panel stresses rapid prototyping, human‑technology augmentation, cultural change, and the strategic shift toward ecosystem‑based financial planning.
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Welcome to The Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks, and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen Vanderhoydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
Welcome to another The Connector Podcast, and today it's an all-star podcast. I have with me Effie, I've got Olga, I got Urs, and obviously myself. Today we are at the Swiss Welltech Live event in Zurich. And Effie, what has been your impressions so far?
It's a beautiful sunny day outside. And in here, I have been impressed with the demos that Sixt shared with us in the early morning session. And they have actually been using ChatGPT or some LLM. And they showed us 2 very concrete cases. One is how they've integrated LLMs in their, what's it called, the trade surveillance tool.
Mm-hmm.
And how that is helping compliance people write a very concrete and well-documented report on whether an alert from the system is a false alert and why it is, or whether it is an alert that you need to look into. And the other 2 demos that were very impressive have to do with the SIX Market Data Terminal.
Mm-hmm.
That also uses these LLMs to do basically market research that all these asset managers do all day, slashing the time and the accuracy To, let's say, 1/10. And, you know, we're talking about tasks like, give me the top gainers of this week. And, you know, it produces graphs, it gives reliable sources of information. And I'm very excited because I have seen stuff working instead of just talking. About the possibilities.
And I had Roy Kirby in another podcast earlier, and he mentioned that this whole idea, it was brought to production in less than a few weeks. So they did tests and they validated, and then they brought it to production, which I think it's great from a company such as Sixt. And one of the things also in terms of the test, because the test was made that an experienced user was actually on the system, it took the person 60 seconds, and a not experienced person took only 10 seconds. Which brings me a little bit to the experience, and experience is about learning and education. I know, Olga, that's pretty much your forte, if I may say. So what is your take on, with your own experience, what you actually do as a day-to-day business and what you've seen here already at the conference?
Absolutely. So I'm so delighted to see more diversity at the conference. to also see at least customer experience being a topic to be addressed. I think we still have a little bit of a way to go to kind of come to terms that we might need to educate the customer first before he or she can engage with all these wonderful solutions. So it's almost like there is a whole path that people are on until they engage with wealth management, right? And what I observe today, and hopefully we will still observe throughout the day, is a lot more openness to discuss these subjects.
Mm-hmm.
Not necessarily the great solutions, right? How to do it. But I do feel encouraged because being in the industry for almost 20 years is the first time now, or one of the few times where at least you see these topics being discussed. Okay, customer centricity, hopefully more than a buzzword, right? While we all kind of become fashion victims of our great GPT applications.
Is it like bringing back the human in the equation of private banking, which traditionally it was 100% in the middle of everything? But then a lot of technology came. So how would you say that's right?
I, I personally think the industry had the human in the middle and center stage of private banking because you are talking about wealth management whose purpose of growing was through financial advisors. Then it pivoted to the other side of the equation, which is the technology is going to do it all. And I personally believe the golden truth lies in the middle, the human connection and competence enhanced with the efficiency of technology. And I think the GPT solution that Evi was mentioning is such a great example of it, right? It doesn't take anything away from the human. It just helps the analyst at Sixt to be more effective. In the same way, technology will make financial advisors and wealth managers in general more effective if they have the openness to endorse it.
No, I totally agree. And you see it here. We brought out the magazine around WealthTech and one of the articles is around How do you augment the relationship, or how do you augment the private banker to have a better conversation empowered by technology? It's not replacing, but it's augmentation.
And if you allow me to add one thing to that, I believe that that is where also part of the biggest hurdle will be, because many advisors in the industry are very traditional. They've been in the industry for a very long time, and It probably requires as much education and change management on the advisors as it does to educate the clients to actually engage with it. So I think those players who actually master to do both, take the advisors on board with these new developments and inspire their clients, will emerge on the winning side.
And I think that brings me to Urs, because that's your cup of tea, right?
That's the perfect handover from Olga. This exactly was the panel We listened from the private bankers. There I see a big challenge, the cultural transformation to get them along. We heard it from a panelist. It's very difficult. So I see a huge opportunity now for smaller, focused, independent wealth advisors to basically use these tools, use them as an assistant, and grow with them and start automating, you know, bring in the context, even context information. Can easily be sourced. And that's where I believe we'll move from wealth advisors, which are literally salespeople because of the KPIs— we see that— to become real, uh, mentors and coach. And the other example which I really loved by, um, uh, the one lady in the panel was, yes, the Lego bricks. You not just choose, but you basically build your own financial ecosystem for your personal use, and you will be coached by the experts. And if you need an expert, a deep dive, you need a solution, maybe insurance, maybe financial planning, you bring it in, you go together, and then all these tools like co-browsing, chat, self-service, hybrid services, they can all start playing. I think there's a huge opportunity, especially for the faster, nimble organizations.
But that's the rise of financial planning, which is somehow underlying already there for a while, but never been really on the foreground.
It's the foundation for it, yes, to implement then the proper solutions. Because what's the end goal? The customer wants financial freedom, right? I mean, he wants to have this feeling, my finances are under control. I can achieve what I want in my life, or maybe even move to philanthropy and other purposes, depending on your financial resources.
Which brings you in the ESG space as well, sustainability. What's your take on sustainability?
I mean, I thought it was very interesting hearing about ESG today and being reminded about ESG washing, because I feel that we are actually in an era of AI washing. We've gone through the blockchain washing era. The AI washing era is here. To stay. And since a lot of countries are looking into regulation, I think this will persist with us. And I think the problems that we have with ESG, which start with data problems mainly, and then, you know, there's the mindset, the culture, but it's really starting with the data problem. I think we have— we will have similar problems in AI because we're talking about what is the data that you are going to mine or use to create new business models. And let's be clear also that even those that have use cases of generative AI, they still haven't figured out what the business model is. Yes, we're talking about productivity gains, but those are not products and services that you're going to sell to your customer. Maybe in some cases, but it's not new business models. So I would say that there's a lot of parallels between the ESG challenges and AI around data, where it sits, quality of data, preparing your data management. to take advantage of these trends, whether they're investing or creating new products and services.
But that's an interesting take that no business models have been formed. Is there any feedback from the others?
I would agree with Efi. That's true. I mean, we heard the typical saying is always from these panelists coming from banks, it's productivity efficiency gain. And yes, they mentioned that you can actually use these GPT technologies, LLMs, for bringing the information together, for instance, from your research universe, etc., etc. But yeah, there is not really a change in business models. I think we're still early stage, but there will be massive changes coming. I'm 100% sure we're in a time or era where ecosystems take over, especially in Asia. There is not even a discussion. Platforms are basically a given. But if you want to succeed, it's an ecosystem approach. And here we still discuss about who is collaborating with whom and who is maybe doing competition. It's not this openness which we always talk about as opinion leaders.
Well, we're almost at the end of our All-Star podcast. So maybe, Olga, I'll leave you the last word on ecosystems? Any feedback on that or insights on that?
That the industry has to come together and that it needs to have the openness to start to embrace other disciplines than the prestigious wealth management approach, right? Because as Urs, I think, described it very well, in a world of technology where every skilled person can almost become a wealth advisor because the tools are available technologically to do so, where is your differentiator, right? So there's an absolute need for the industry to start to collaborate with technology, with educators, with the so-called retail segment, which beforehand potentially was not something you desperately wanted to look at. And that to me actually means that wealth management needs to embed itself into this ecosystem rather than building a bubble on its own. And I feel super encouraged that we see starting points of this here today.
Excellent. On that bombshell, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you also to the audience, and, uh, Stay tuned. Thank you very much.
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