Vise launches Vise Intelligence AI service to empower financial advisors to deliver more personalized services

Despite the eagerness of various industries to embrace generative AI, it is strange that we have heard very little about the fintech industry, especially in terms of financial advisors.

However, Vise is now breaking this trend. The New York-based fintech company, founded by two (then) 16-year-old entrepreneurs, was once a unicorn. However, in the past few years, it has suffered a series of negative news reports, with a 35% decrease in assets under management in a matter of months, the departure of its largest client in Manhattan's West Side, and the loss of over 100 employees through natural attrition and layoffs.

Now, Vise is preparing a major comeback and is launching its new AI service, Vise Intelligence, with even greater focus. Vise Intelligence is a conversational AI model designed to support human financial advisors by preparing reports, answering questions, and providing the latest information on investment portfolios.

Samir Vasavada, one of Vise's CEOs, stated in a video call interview with VentureBeat, "By leveraging artificial intelligence to support financial advisors and help them work better, we will bring better investment results to all clients who use their services and enable [financial advisors] to serve more people."

For example, a financial advisor who has subscribed to Vise Intelligence can prompt the assistant with the phrase "Ava Harris called with concerns about energy company investments," referring to a client's call. Vise can then provide the financial advisor with information about that specific client's investment portfolio, suggest adjustments based on the client's preferences, and draft an email introducing the changes the advisor will make in their investment strategy.

In this way, human advisors and their clients retain control, while Vise Intelligence acts as a useful assistant, gathering information and providing advice on how to use that information.

The Collision of AI and Fintech

Vasavada co-founded Vise with Runik Mehrotra in 2016. Mehrotra is still the company's Chief Investment Officer (CIO). A year before the generative AI boom began, Google researchers published the paper "Attention Is All You Need" on arxiv, which laid the foundation for Vise Intelligence and most other leading AI models, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, which adopt the Transformer model architecture.

Prior to this, the company claimed in an early funding announcement to offer "highly personalized portfolios, fully automated investment management processes, and deep insights for every investment decision."

Regarding the specific AI technology used by Vise Intelligence, Vasavada did not provide details. However, in a Medium article he published today, the CEO wrote, "Vise Intelligence is powered by our carefully tuned state-of-the-art language model."

RIABiz previously reported that Vise plans to "integrate new AI models like ChatGPT where applicable." Mehrotra stated that they will "develop features that sit on top of these pre-trained models... We won't always keep developing internally... The technology we build will be on top of these AI company models," so it is likely that GPT plays a role in driving certain aspects of the technology.

However, Vasavada did emphasize that Vise Intelligence aims to extract information about each specific client from the investment portfolios of financial advisor clients, ranging from "high net worth to low net worth, small individual companies managing funds for teachers and firefighters, 20 to 30 advisors managing billions of dollars for boutique firms' executives, and enterprise wealth management companies managing trillions of assets for various clients." Therefore, it can provide tailored insights for different clients, allowing their human advisors to discuss their financial situation with them.

Utilizing Market Data and Client Personal Goals

Vasavada also pointed out that Vise Intelligence is trained based on "tens of thousands of data points from different companies in the market, fundamental data of companies, and extensive market trends," and combines each client's information with market data for secure inference.

"It's historical information and forward-looking information," explained Vasavada, including clients' previous investment positions, trades, gains and losses, as well as their financial goals, risk tolerance, retirement dates, and other financial milestones such as children going to college or purchasing a home.

All these factors, combined with the guidance of financial advisors, tell Vise Intelligence which strategies and investment opportunities the advisors want to follow to achieve their clients' goals.

"It can be seen as input from the market, clients, and advisors," Vasavada said.

Vise did not specify how it protects client data, but Vasavada stated that the data is "very secure and protected."

Ultimately, the company believes that "wealth management is undergoing a transformation," and Vasavada stated that in this transformation, "technology and investment management will no longer be separate." Vise aims to be the preferred partner for financial advisors seeking to provide services to more clients in a personalized manner.

For Vise's financial advisor clients, the ideal scenario is "going from managing 100 clients to being able to manage 150 clients, and spending all your time doing what you love, which is managing and building client relationships," the CEO told VentureBeat.

Of course, such expansion also benefits Vise, as the company gains a share of revenue from its services and client portfolio performance.