Sam Kang: What Today’s Ultrawealthy Families Expect From Advisors
20 Jan 2026 · 38 min
In this Barron's Advisor podcast, host Steve Sandusky interviews Sam Kang, head of Charles Schwab’s invitation‑only family office platform. Kang explains the rapid growth of single‑family offices (SFOs) and multi‑family offices (MFOs), noting roughly 1,000 such offices worldwide and a ten‑year boom. He breaks the family‑office service model into three pillars—quantitative (financial planning, investment management, reporting), qualitative (family dynamics, philanthropy, governance, education, family constitutions) and administrative/lifestyle (bill‑pay, concierge services, digital vaults). The conversation covers the expanding investment universe for ultra‑high‑net‑worth (UHNW) families, including alternatives, crypto curiosity, tax‑advantaged strategies, and impact investing. Kang stresses the critical importance of wealth‑transfer planning, citing the classic “short‑sleeve” statistic (70% of wealth lost by the second generation, 13% by the third) and the massive $2‑3 trillion annual transfer pipeline. He describes Schwab’s open‑architecture technology platform, AI pilots, and security concerns, and outlines emerging pricing models that blend AUM fees with retainer‑based charges. For advisors aspiring to become MFOs, Kang advises segmentation at the $30 million net‑worth threshold, building internal talent, leveraging concierge teams, and focusing on referrals and centers of influence rather than heavy marketing. He highlights the future skill set for advisors: becoming a trusted, general‑expert first‑call resource across finance, health, travel, and more, while integrating AI responsibly. The episode concludes with Kang’s mantra that the most successful MFOs will put clients first, nurture multi‑generational relationships, and balance technology with trust.
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Managing ultra-high net worth families today requires far more than great investment performance. It requires the ability to simplify complexity, align generations, and become the trusted first call for every major decision a family faces. Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. My guest today is Sam Kang. Sam is head of Schwab Family Office, which is an exclusive invitation-only offering designed specifically to support single-family offices and multifamily offices serving ultra-high-net-worth families. In today's conversation, Sam and I explore what he calls the next frontier in family office services, which is moving beyond traditional investment management to balance quantitative expertise with qualitative capabilities like family dynamics, philanthropy, governance, and education. Sam explains how leading multifamily offices are evolving into true hubs for their clients, where they coordinate complex financial lives while also helping those families navigate intergenerational wealth transfer, values alignment, and long-term continuity. We also discuss how advisors can think about becoming what he called an aspirational multifamily office. We talk about the role of technology and AI in scaling complexity. We talk about evolving pricing models and why the most successful family offices of the future will be defined not by growth alone, but by trust, relationships, and relevance across generations. With that, here's my conversation with Charles Schwab's Sam Kang.
A single-family office is specifically for one family. There could be 3, 4, even 5 generations, but all focused on one family. A multi-family office is a registered RIA that focuses on supporting ultra-high net worth families but can support multiple families at once. Overall, there's roughly about anywhere from 5 to 6 about 1,000 family offices globally. There's been a tremendous growth, especially over the last 10 years.
Advisors might want to say, well, we are a, quote, multifamily office because we work with high net worth or ultra high net worth people. So how would you define that? Is it defined off of like a certain AUM? Is it defined off of a certain level of complexity? Both of those? And when do you cross the line from, oh, I'm a wealth manager or I'm a investment manager who happens to work with ultra-high net worth to I'm a multifamily office and I provide all these worldwide services for these guys.
So that's a great question. And so the way I describe it, there are MFOs that are specifically geared toward the space. So what I call more of the specialist services, they've built the capabilities that are required to support the complexity of the multifamily office. There are then other firms that have grown tremendously, but they are more generalist, right? They provide services for mass affluent, the high net worth, ultra high net worth, and they've been able to then segment the business and create capabilities and services specifically for that space. So there are firms that we support that have that more what we call a bifurcated segmented model. Then there are just advisors that have ultra high net worth clients they are aspirational MFOs, but they may have 10, 15 clients that are ultra-high net worth, but the majority of their book of business is not necessarily ultra-high net worth, but we still look to support those offerings. We're actually seeing tremendous growth in that space also, so we're working actually on a specific offering for those RIAs that have those specific needs also.
Well, I love that phrase, aspirational MFO. So let's, let's go with that for a little bit. Let's talk about some of the services that if you want to be an MFO that you would need to provide. And as I was doing some of my research here to have this conversation, it looks like you guys are breaking it into 3 areas. One is, I think, quantitative, where you're talking about the investment piece, the tax piece, the risk piece. Then you've got qualitative, which is things like family dynamics, philanthropy. And then you've got administrative, which is more lifestyle than reporting. So A, A, is that accurate? And B, tell me a little bit about, start with the quantitative side, and I'm going to go into what are we seeing changing in terms of, hey, we can't just be an investment manager or think we're going to get alpha and call it a day. So let's start with A, do you break it up into those three categories?
Yeah, that's a great way to describe it. There's actually 10 domains is a typical way to look at it, really split into those three categories. So obviously from a quantitative standpoint, You have the financial planning, the investments, the financial reporting around that. But then you get also into more lifestyle, right? So it could be bill pay, it could be family dynamics and creating family constitutions. It could be philanthropy. Then you get into other— for the very ultra-high net worth, it might get into aviation. It could be healthcare concierge services, concierge services in general, where just specific access to, whether it be concerts or experiences. There's a wide variety. When you think about a single-family office and a multifamily office, every situation is very unique. And that is where the complexity comes in, where when an aspirational RA wants to move into that space, it is just beyond the traditional financial planning investments. You really need to think about the entire spectrum. Now, with that said, you don't have to try to build that all yourself. There are many firms that are insourcing many of those pieces, but also leveraging a lot of vendors and outsourcing a lot of those components. The most important thing is really being that center of that hub and spoke model where you're able to be that trusted advisor, not just a financial advisor, but that trusted advisor that connects you to all those pieces.
Generally speaking, I think it's fair to say that as you go higher up in the wealth chain, so to speak, that those folks want to get access to more sophisticated investments. Now, not everybody, but whether it's all different kinds of alternatives, digital assets, and all kinds of other stuff. So tell me a little bit about, A, are you seeing that? And B, how has that evolved to today? Because we have so many new investment alternatives and digital assets is just one of them. Collectibles is another one that I think is becoming popular. So what are you seeing on the investment side that folks that work in a multifamily office are trying to offer? And then also to your point, how much are they doing themselves versus are they maybe tapping into the resources of Schwab to get access to?
And there's, there's a wide variety of that, but you're absolutely correct. There are a lot of different avenues, a lot of different products and services that these ultra-high-net-worth families are looking for. In terms of crypto, there is interest. I wouldn't say there's huge adoption just yet, but there absolutely is curiosity. What we see more of is more tax-advantaged strategies. So it could be long-short. There is a lot of investments in alternative investments. The ultra-high-net-worth families, they They may be coming where they may be CEOs of firms, so they already have specific concentrated positions. Private equity or venture is another area where we see a lot of investment. So it is a wide spectrum, and this is where the RIA really needs to understand that. Now, many advisors are well suited and are able to provide all those capabilities, but we see a lot of advisors also use more of that OCIO type of structure where they're outsourcing a lot of those investment needs also.
Let's talk about the qualitative side. So these are things like the philanthropy, and in particular, I want to talk about the family dynamics because so often we see a family that's created tremendous wealth that by the second or third generation it's gone. And we've, we've all heard the old cliché around that. What role are financial advisors playing in terms of trying to facilitate the transfer of that wealth to the second and third generation, to make sure that the values of the first generation might transfer to the second and third, and to make sure that that second and third generation is prepared to handle all this wealth that they probably didn't earn themselves. And now all of a sudden they've got all this, or they got this big business that they're managing. So A, does Schwab help at all in helping those advisors prepare for that? And then B, Where does an advisor get trained to deal with that, or are they basically hiring or partnering with other outside professionals in those areas to deal with sort of those family dynamics?
Yeah, so there's a lot there. So what I would start off with is there is an old adage: short sleeves to short sleeves within 3 generations. What we've seen is by the end of the second generation, 70% of families, the wealth transfer does not succeed past that second generation. By the third generation, only 13% survive. By the fourth generation, it's only 3%. So there absolutely is a huge need to create a more holistic family plan. And especially now with $124 trillion changing hands over the next 2 to 3 decades, it's estimated that $2 to $3 trillion is going to be transferring within the next— every single year, $2 to $3 trillion. What we've seen is actually 45% does not just go directly to the second or third generation, it will go to the spouse. So what if it's a patriarch, it would go to the spouse. If it's a matriarch, and this is where an RIA really does need to focus on making sure you build those relationships with the entire family. Because we've also seen some stats where adult children of advisors more than 70% say they would fire their parents' advisor because they just don't have that relationship. This is why we're seeing such a demand. One, there's a huge growth opportunity where $17 trillion is managed within that ultra-high net worth space. But with that transfer of wealth, it's a huge retention risk for advisors also. So advisors are looking to us of how to solve for that. What we do is we work with other vendors where we can offer solutions that are out there. But what we see with many firms is they're building those family dynamics and the constitution offerings within their own multifamily office. Now, the aspiring advisors don't have that capability, so they're looking to more outsource. And so a new trend that we're seeing actually is multifamily offices that have built this they're looking at this in more of an à la carte way where they're now willing to share those services with other RIAs for a retainer fee. So that's a new trend that we're seeing. So I'm excited to see where that goes, where that need is absolutely there. And I do think that there's going to be a variety of ways that advisors are going to be able to find a solution.
I'm very interested in this transfer of what wealth from one generation to the next. And you mentioned the word family constitution. So tell me a little bit more about what exactly do you mean when you say that?
So just like how you would think of a constitution, it's really creating a mission and purpose of the family. It could be about sustainability. It could be from a charitable perspective. The most basic is making sure that whole family survives and really making sure the entire family understands the core values of the family and making sure that that is carried through into that second and third generation. So there is a lot of work that's being done there. A great way to get into that space is through that philanthropy conversation. Also, in my previous role with DAF Giving360, we did see a lot of that conversation start with the charitable planning side to really help define exactly that family values.
Yeah, and I've seen where advisors will facilitate a family meeting to basically have that conversation. So do you see at that level, at the multifamily office level, do you see many of the advisors themselves facilitating those conversations, or are they bringing in an outside expert who can come in and get the family, get the multiple generations of family together to hash out this constitution or hash out the family values? Can it go either way?
What we typically see as a best practice, it's not necessarily the advisor that's going to go deep into it. They will absolutely make sure to frame up the conversation and the need, but many of the best firms have built that specific role within that family office to have that conversation. For those firms that don't have the capabilities, we have partners that we can connect them with for those conversations. And we're looking into some other offerings where this is a growing need. So how do we make sure we develop that capability for a lot of advisors that are looking for that? So that's something that we're looking to in our roadmap. You also mentioned earlier on there is an education piece also, right? That, that is a huge component where it's not just about the family constitution or the family dynamics, it's just pure education. Education itself, the financial education. We hear a lot from advisors. They want more formalized training for their offices to support their families also.
I always like to talk about examples, and we have a pretty public example of a well-known family, Rupert Murdoch, who had a family transition where he had several of his children. They each had, I believe, about 25% of the company, and 2 or 3 of those children didn't necessarily share the same values as Rupert did. Whereas one of them did. And so he wanted the one who did share his values to basically get control of the company going forward. As we all know, it was a big public drawn-out deal. As an outside observer, is there any observation that you could make about that process, or maybe some best practices, maybe not specific to Murdoch, but just in general, looking at that as an example of one that didn't necessarily go well and had to go to the courts? What could you do differently? What could an advisor who's aware of that kind of situation, what could they do when they're dealing with a big family and maybe the second generation has different values than the first generation? How do we deal with that?
Yeah, so that is actually not atypical, right? That is normal where the best way to approach that is to have that conversation. And frankly, that's where the missing piece is, is many families don't even have that conversation. They don't even talk about the finances, let alone the core beliefs and values. So the very start is making sure that you highlight that as a need as you're planning your overall estate. So I would just start there of making sure that you start with the conversation, have a process and framework to have those conversations. Now, we've seen various ways you can go where if the children have different beliefs, you can set aside separate money where they can do their own charitable efforts. Or if it doesn't politically align, for example, there's different ways of navigating that. But the first and foremost thing is having that conversation. So the best thing is not to try to change someone's mind. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, and to contrast that, we've got Warren Buffett. Worth even a lot more than Rupert Murdoch. And I think his plan, at least outward appearances, looks pretty successful where he gave each of his children some amount of money. And I think his phrase was something like, I gave them enough that they didn't have to worry about things, but not so much that they didn't have to do nothing, something like that. And then he set up foundations. Each of them have a boatload of money that they get to manage for foundations. But then he's given away almost all of his money to to charity. So that's a different way of doing it, and I would imagine he's obviously had lots of conversations through that. So that seems to be fairly successful. So obviously it can be done.
Yeah, it can be done. And many of those ultra, ultra high net worth families are signing—
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For a Giving Pledge, for example, what we're actually also seeing is it's leaking into the investment side also, where there is more and more interest on impact investing also, where it's not just for profit, it's also what beliefs are tied into those investments and what impact do you want to make for society. So We're actually hearing more and more of that coming from our larger families.
And then that third category under these 10 domains is more the administrative side. So tell me a little bit more about the record keeping, because in my conversations with advisors, one of the things they've said to me is that a great value that their clients find is someone to pull all this stuff together. Like the client has never had one overview of everything that they own, how it all fits together. How concentrated they are, if things are allocated appropriately. And so they're trying to pull all this together so they can get an overall holistic view. So what does Schwab do in that area? Do you help pulling everything together or does the advisor have to cobble it together themselves?
What we've created is an open architecture platform. So there are so many different technology pieces out there. And what we've seen is no technology is just staying within their lane, right? So It might be a CRM product that's now going into more of a digital vault. It might be a digital vault technology that's getting into now more workflow or estate planning. So what we've created is more the open architecture through APIs where the family office can create what is best suited for that family. There is a lot of technology out there, but within these families it is very complex where there's multiple generations and then multiple layers. There might be LLCs embedded into LLCs. There's estate planning associated with that. You might have part ownership of one LLC and a complete different allocation in another LLC. Tracking all that is very difficult. So there is great software that does that, but what we're seeing is a lot of these things are now getting combined where you have that digital vault where you not only have all of your financial information, but you have all of your healthcare information as an example. And it really is then one golden source of all the information for the family.
How do you price all this? That obviously is a big question, and of course that's going to be dependent on the different services that you offer, but what are the different approaches that you see advisors taking to how they price their multifamily office services?
Yeah, we've seen a big shift in trend there also where these multifamily offices typically used to charge in a very similar way as independent RIAs in an AUM-based fee model. What we're seeing more and more now over the last 10 years, in the latest survey that our partners at Family Wealth Alliance has done, 70% of multifamily offices now have some type of hybrid approach, meaning they offer a lot of these additional capabilities in more of a retainer fee model. It's a great way because the complexity continues to grow, the demand is ever increasing, so by creating more of that retainer fee, you can continue to add more services, but making sure that you are able to charge for those additional services. Where, let's say for the ultra-high net worth family, you might be charging 40 basis points for the investments and financial planning, but there might be the family dynamics piece or bill pay, and you can charge retainer fees. And overall, then you get into more like that 70, 80 basis points charge for the family so that it really helps with the overall margin and profitability of those MFOs.
How do you avoid scope creep? Meaning, I'm a financial advisor, my client asked me for something. Oh, can you do this? Can you do that? Oh sure, I want to provide good service, so I'll go ahead and do that versus when does it bleed over to, I need to charge you extra for that? That might be an awkward conversation. So how do advisors approach just providing great service versus, okay, that's outside of the scope of what we previously agreed to, I need to charge you extra for that?
That's a great question. And the way we advise advisors is don't try to do everything just for growth's sake. Really understand what your knitting is and what you're good at and really create a persona of who your ideal client is. I think that is first and foremost of the most critical point because then you can create a box of exactly what you want to offer. Obviously, there's still going to be cases where there is going to be additional needs, additional unique cases that you need to supplement that, but that is a great great way to just start to make sure that you have a firm footing of what you're offering. Now, as you expand, I think a great way to think about that is that buy-build partner. And many of the firms that we see, they initially look to outsource some of those components, and if that offering is something that is adopted for all the other families, that's when they start either partnering or starting to build that internally also.
So, so let's go back to the aspirational MFO. So what advice would you give to that firm who says we have maybe 2 or 3 clients today that we could consider are of the size and complexity that they would need family office services? What advice would you give that firm that wants to go deeper into that? How do they find more? Of those clients, obviously that's a key thing. Like, how do, where do I find these people? How do I connect? And so on. So what's your advice there?
Yeah, so one, when you think about the aspiring advisor moving into the multifamily office space, the complexity skyrockets. We see that complexity skyrocket right around that $30 million net worth mark. And that's where you really need to think about more of a segmentation model. We see a lot of firms struggle where it is the same advisor that's tackling those relationships as well as the mass affluent. And more and more as you continue to grow, you would need to think about a different offering for those specific clients. So that is not an easy answer because obviously you don't want to disrupt your existing clients. You want to make sure you continue to protect because they're valuable clients, they're very important to those firms. So What we're seeing right now is many of those firms creating that longer-term roadmap of creating more of that segmented model. What we're doing on the Schwab side is we are creating a model to help support a lot of these RIAs. I mentioned earlier we're working on the ultra-high net worth space. We are going to be introducing what we're calling a concierge team to really help support a lot of these RIAs where if there are specific banking and lending needs, if they have a concentrated position or restricted stock. What we want to do is create a concierge team specifically for those ultra-high net worth families to help navigate our entire Schwab ecosystem to manage those families. So that is actually in progress right now.
And what are you finding are the most effective ways for these advisors to bring on and to find new ultra-high net worth clients? Obviously, word of mouth, referrals and so on, but What are some things that maybe are more effective today versus, say, 10 years ago?
So I hear different perspectives here. What we see just from a numbers perspective, 45% of new business is really referral-based. The next 30% or so are the centers of influence. So it could be the estate lawyer or it could be their tax accountant or so forth. And then A small piece actually is more from the marketing side, but we are seeing growth where a lot of these ultra-high-net-worth families, they're hearing more and more about these family office offerings, so they're now proactively reaching out. What we've seen with the very successful MFOs is they actually are spending less money marketing proportionally, and they're focused more on scale. They're building the right structure internally and providing a service, and that's generating more leads through that referral and centers of influence. And that's where we're seeing a lot of growth. So it's a little bit counterintuitive. Instead of just going through the marketing aspect, they're focusing internally, making sure they're building the talent, making sure they're building the scale to support those type of families. And we've seen a lot of success with those firms.
Well, I, I find that very interesting. Where you said maybe a little less on marketing, more on trying to beef up the internal services and provide great service so that we get more referrals. I do see some of these very large RIA firms, I'm talking the $50 billion, $100 billion firms that definitely work with ultra-high net worth people, they have very sophisticated marketing efforts. They have incredible websites, they're very targeted, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating these websites, and they're very clear on specific words that they use that are appealing to these ultra-high-net-worth people, and they've got sophisticated digital marketing strategies to target these people. So I suppose it's not either/or, it's, it's yes and.
It's, yeah, it's yes and. And there's also different flavors of these firms, right? There are MFOs that are hundreds of billions of dollars, right? Obviously they've created a brand, they're going to focus on the marketing, But there are smaller MFOs, what we call more boutique firms, that are maybe more region-based, or they may be more focused on a specific area. Maybe it's executives of companies, or maybe it's doctors in their local area. People have found different slices of the entire market, so it takes a different approach in each one of those areas.
What are some other trends that you're seeing here? Not necessarily just MFO, but just the ultra-high-net-worth space in general. Clearly, it seems like there's a lot more wealthy people today than there were 5 years ago. So what else are you seeing?
So big picture-wise, based on the latest Cerulli report, since 2011, the number of ultra-high net worth families— that's defined as $20 million in investable assets, so roughly about $30 million net worth— the number of households has grown by over 700% since 2011. That's compared to the mass affluent. Where the number of households that have grown in that space has only been 84%. Now, obviously there's a variety of reasons for that. Technology has been— has released a lot of scale where there's a lot of wealth that's being created demographically. Close to 50% of the wealth are now with baby boomers, and there's been a lot of wealth that's been created in that space. But what we're seeing is, along with that, the independent RIA space has continued to grow also, right? Now we're roughly about 32-34% of overall wealth management is now with independent RIAs. But if you look at the ultra-high net worth space specifically, it is actually only 6.6% of the market. So there is a tremendous opportunity for independent RIAs to focus on the ultra-high net worth space. So I had mentioned this before, but there's roughly about $17 trillion within the ultra-high net worth space. About $6 trillion of that are currently with MFOs today. So there is a ton of opportunity for independent RIAs, and it's a better model for a lot of these families because one, they're sitting on the same side of the table. They're able to offer not just what is most suitable, but what is the the best client at the best price for these clients, but then they're able to offer a lot of these other additional capabilities that maybe a private bank or a wirehouse cannot offer just because of the structure.
At the level of wealth of someone who would be appropriate for a multifamily office, do you find that many of them want to diversify, meaning I don't want all of my money with one advisory firm, I'm gonna split it among 2 or 3 different advisors just because I don't want one person, I don't wanna be that concentrated with one person 'cause what happens if they go rogue? Do you see that or at that level are they like, hey, these are trustworthy firms so I'm gonna give 'em everything?
So again, variety of flavors there. We see the ultra, ultra high net worth where they will have one chief investment officer but they allocate and outsource a lot of investments, so they diversify in that way. There are other families that they're not necessarily picking multiple advisors, but they may diversify in terms of what they hold in equities versus alternative investments. There's other firms that are multi-custodian just from a risk perspective. So you see a lot of different flavors. For what we see typically within the the Schwab platform, many of our clients custody with Schwab because they do see it at the best price, the safety and security, and especially the service that they receive.
We've touched on technology a little bit, but I want to go a little deeper with that. So what are you seeing today as it relates to technology? Obviously we've got artificial intelligence. So tell me a little bit about what's going on in that area and how have things evolved over, say, the past 10 years to today and What do you see unfolding over the next 3 to 5 years in the tech area that is going to specifically help multifamily offices be more effective, be more productive, and be able to scale their businesses?
Yeah, I think one, many of the family offices are trying to adopt artificial intelligence. I would still say it's at the very early stages. Much of it is focused on building scale, creating better knowledge components, And we're doing that within Schwab also to help support these RAs just in terms of just the data and the insights that we're able to collect, sentiment scores as an example, to improve overall service, making sure that we provide the right answer at the first call. Those are really what I would consider the basics. There is now other ways that artificial intelligence is being incorporated. It could be as simple as note-taking, capturing information for the CRM products. We've seen actually very high-end multifamily offices in Silicon Valley. They've actually brought in an AI agent as part of the senior management team, as one example. So you'll see all sorts of ways, and I think it's gonna be very interesting to see. If I were to guess 3 to 5 years from now, there is going to be many more services for the ultra-high net worth side. People see the wealth that's being created and the value that is needed within that space. So we see a lot of entrants in terms of technology coming in. I do think that we're going to see a lot of combinations of these, and I think AI is going to make that far simpler where you don't have to be dependent on one software product. That you can tweak multiple systems and have the AI agent actually help you with more of a cohesive view, overall view.
Yeah. And I think the general consensus is that AI is not going to put advisors out of business. We went through that with the robo phase 10, 15 years ago. And at the end of the day, it's a relationship business.
It is.
And that's where I want to go, which is from your standpoint, what are the human skills and attributes and capabilities that a high-level advisor needs to continue to cultivate so that they can be even more valuable to their multifamily office clients 10 years from now, knowing where AI is going to be 10 years from now or anticipating what do they need to be working on now so that they can make sure they're still relevant?
So instead of just trying to become a specialist in what I call more of the verticals or the capabilities, Where we see the most successful advisors is really becoming more that trusted advisor and being a general expert, meaning they understand the full landscape and then they can bring in the experts where the way the advisor then positions themselves for those ultra-high net worth families, they become the very first call. So no matter what situation, it doesn't have to be financially related. It could be healthcare issue, it could be travel. No matter what, a lot of the most successful multifamily offices, they've become that very first call.
Yeah. And along with that, you said a moment ago that some firms now are bringing in like an AI agent to be one of the seats at the table there when you're making big business decisions. And I think where that can also go is you can actually create a custom GPT and basically wall off the data so that it's not going to say OpenAI or Google or whatever. So, you know, we don't have any privacy issues. You could then upload like all of a— now maybe not many people that want to do this yet, but theoretically, you could upload all of a client's information and then you could prompt the AI, ask it a bunch of different questions about the client situation, And when we talk about bringing the other experts into the conversation, one of those experts, like you say, might be this client's personal agent that's been trained specifically on that client's information that can bring out some stuff that the human advisor might not be able to figure out. But again, to your point, the advisor has to know a lot about this to know what questions to ask. To know whether the information it's getting back from the AI is hallucination, it's on drugs or whatever, or whether this is, oh, that's a novel idea, I hadn't thought of that before, let's go down and see.
Absolutely, so a couple things there. Security is going to be a big deal. Privacy is a big deal. So another big component of one of the domains is the risk management piece. So cybersecurity is going to be critical. Many of these families are going to be leaning on advisors for support there also. So with AI, to tie that back in, there are a lot of firms that really need to be careful of really making sure that all of that information is secure. So I do think that— and Schwab is doing this actually where we're building our own internal LLM so that we can make sure we're protecting the information, but then gaining the insights necessary to better support our clients. And I think the advisors are going to be doing the same.
Yeah. And I'd imagine, and maybe this is what you're saying, is you can create a custom GPT for each of your clients who are the advisors and see what can AI tell us about how we can do a better job serving our existing clients.
And to me, that would be an extension of what we can offer to have a digital AI agent along with a service professional also at the same time.
Well, Sam, as we wrap up here, I just got one final question here. So I'm going to start a sentence and I want you to finish it for me. So the sentence that I'm starting with is, the most successful multifamily offices of the future will be the firms that blank.
That put their clients first. I do think the most successful multifamily offices, it is not just gonna be about growth. They are going to really build those relationships with those family offices and think about that second, third generation and really build the overall capabilities to support those families. If it is just about growth and expansion, I do think that you will lose a relationship. So we've talked a lot about technology. At the end of the day, especially with these families, those relationship is critical. That trust is critical. So to me, putting that client first and understanding the client is the most critical way for success for multifamily offices.
Excellent. All right, Sam, appreciate it. What's the best way for folks to connect with you if they want to learn more about you or what your offerings are?
People can connect directly with me. My email address is sam.king@schwab.com, or we're also available through the schwab.com website.
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