Eight Hours to Five Minutes: GenTrust CIO Jim Besaw on AI for Financial Advisors

Welcome to AI Trust But Verify, the podcast where Alec Crawford, founder and CEO of Verapath, talks with leaders in financial services and technology about putting AI to work safely, securely and responsibly. Each episode looks past the hype to how firms are actually using AI, and how they make sure they can trust the results.

This week, Alec is joined by Jim Besaw, Chief Investment Officer of GenTrust, a multifamily office serving ultra-high-net-worth clients. Jim has been one of the earliest adopters of AI in wealth management. GenTrust started with a spreadsheet that broke at 40 clients and went on to build its own AI-driven investment and risk systems. Jim explains how AI can turn an eight-hour prospect proposal into five minutes of work, why accuracy depends on deterministic answers rather than probabilistic guesses, and how VIRA, the new AI platform for advisors, brings it all together.

Top 5 Takeaways:

1. Eight hours to five minutes. Reviewing a prospect's statements, finding a comparable plan, redacting it and building a branded proposal used to take a full day. With AI connected to all of a firm's systems, it takes minutes.
2. Use closed-form answers wherever you can. LLMs are probabilistic, and in wealth management a wrong number is a real problem. The best systems use deterministic calculations wherever possible and save AI for the tasks that need it.
3. A chatbot isn't enough. Advisors ask questions because they're looking at something: a report, a plan, a tax return. AI has to see the same information the advisor sees to give useful answers.
4. Stress-test against the worries that keep clients up at night. Running portfolios against cyber attacks, geopolitical escalation or 8% interest rates gives clients a worst-case number they can live with, and builds confidence in their advisor.
5. AI is the great equalizer. Bigger firms don't automatically have better technology. Nimble, secure AI tools let independent RIAs serve more clients better and compete with the largest aggregators.

Links:

Verapath: https://verapath.com

GenTrust: https://gentrustwm.com

Verapath and GenTrust Launch VIRA (press release): https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/verapath-and-gentrust-launch-vira-an-ai-native-wealth-management-platform-for-rias-302881229.html

SEC Regulation S-P amendments (data breach notification): https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024-58

Craig Iskowitz, Ezra Group: https://ezragroup.com/craig-iskowitz/

Disclosure: Jim Besaw is Chief Investment Officer of GenTrust, LLC and an owner and board member of AIRIA Technology, an affiliate of GenTrust. AIRIA holds an ownership interest in VIRA and serves on VIRA's board. As a result, Mr. Besaw has an indirect financial interest in VIRA, which presents a conflict of interest. He shares perspectives informed by his investment and advisory experience. This discussion is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Product capabilities and tax, borrowing, portfolio, and financial-planning examples are illustrative, may not reflect currently available functionality, and require validation of underlying data, review by appropriately qualified professionals, and human approval of AI-generated outputs.

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