In this episode, Ryan Goulart sits down with Spenser Segal, CEO of Actifi, to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming wealth management and what it means for the future of human-AI collaboration.
Drawing from decades of experience at the forefront of technology revolutions from the internet to SaaS to cloud computing Spenser shares why he believes the rise of agentic AI represents the biggest shift yet. He outlines a framework for “human-AI synergy” that helps professionals understand their evolving role as AI takes on more non-high-human-value-added tasks, freeing people to focus on deeper client relationships, values alignment, and purposeful decision-making.
From Magic Moments to Practical Applications
Spenser explains how AI is already being used as a “thought partner,” simulating perspectives from various roles to strengthen business cases and client communications. In financial services, common applications include AI note-takers and sophisticated direct indexing solutions tools that require human oversight but offer massive efficiency gains.
The Human-AI Pyramid
At the heart of Spenser’s approach is a pyramid model:
- Foundational Knowledge – Capturing existing expertise in workflows, SOPs, and systems.
- Codification – Building knowledge repositories AI can access.
- Agentic AI – Deploying digital “employees” for specific tasks.
- Tacit Knowledge – Human interpretation, empathy, and reading clients’ cues.
- Wisdom with Purpose – Helping people live in alignment with their values
Speed of Trust in Regulated Industries
In financial services and other regulated sectors, AI adoption will move “at the speed of trust.” Firms must maintain a “human in the loop” to ensure compliance, cultural alignment, and ethical integrity. Spenser predicts that smaller, nimble firms with AI-first mindsets may outpace larger competitors, similar to how Schwab and Fidelity emerged post–May Day 1975.
Democratizing High-Quality Advice
AI’s efficiencies could bring integrated, multi-disciplinary advice once reserved for the ultra-wealthy to a broader audience. Advisors will spend less time crunching numbers and more time guiding clients through values-based decisions, life planning, and legacy considerations.
Opportunities and Challenges Ahead
While the technology promises growth and democratization, challenges remain: fear of the unknown, lack of explainability, regulatory hurdles, and the loss of traditional “grunt work” training grounds. Spenser envisions more apprenticeship-style pathways to develop talent in this new environment.
A Career of Purpose
For aspiring and current advisors, the AI-enabled future offers the chance to focus on high-impact human interactions helping clients clarify their values, make aligned decisions, and live with purpose.
Spenser’s upcoming book, The AI-Enabled Future of Wealth Management: A Leader’s Guide, and free AI readiness assessment will provide leaders with practical steps to navigate and thrive in this evolving landscape.
Transcript
Ryan Goulart (00:02.348)
I have with me today the CEO of Actifi, Spenser Segal. Spenser, welcome back to Making the Ideal Real.
Spenser (00:09.463)
Thank you for having me, Ryan. It’s exciting to be here again.
Ryan Goulart (00:15.916)
We’re talking about a topic that I will imagine listeners thinking of right now. They’re like, finally, Think2peform found an expert that can talk about artificial intelligence. And then Spenser, I know that is where you are focusing a lot of your attention today. So before we jump into just specifics about what you’re seeing in AI, how did you find yourself into this lane?
of looking at AI. mean, you are a tech entrepreneur, so naturally you’re finding your way into these types of things. But yeah, what kind of piqued your interest and what are you seeing as trends for people?
Spenser (00:58.743)
Well, what piqued my interest is I’ve had a front row seat to the internet revolution, the SaaS revolution, the cloud computing revolution. It’s just been an evolution and artificial intelligence is sort of the, I think the biggest shift yet. So I’ve kind of thrown myself, you know, headfirst into the AI waters. In terms of trends, I think the hottest thing in 25 is agentic AI.
where instead of just chat bots, these agents do specific things and can be thought of a little bit like digital employees that have small scopes.
Ryan Goulart (01:42.862)
Yeah, and it’s a fascinating topic because there’s a lot of unknowns about AI. And then when someone sits in front of an AI chatbot, let’s just anchor on the biggest one, a little, chat GBT, and someone sits there and produces that moment of magic where they write in a chat, they ask a question, and the AI, the software produces something that is
Magical in many ways. How in that moment and as you’ve experienced things like that too, what are you seeing as part of like human behavior with artificial intelligence and how is it being applied in business?
Spenser (02:28.907)
Well, right now it’s being applied mostly as a thought partner to bounce ideas off of, to simulate different roles. Hey, how would, how would this come across to a CFO or a CEO or a CTO kind of acid testing.
your arguments, if you’re trying to make a business case for something, looking at from different angles. And AI is very effective in terms of presenting different views and angles. And you can get it to play a role. You’re the CTO of a fast growing fintech company. How do you answer this or how do you frame this up from your perspective?
Ryan Goulart (03:15.979)
Yeah, it’s and it’s fascinating too. I’ve seen it happen time and time again of looking at the various components of how something so, again, like it feels magical and then you learn a little bit more about it there’s all these different models that come behind it that you’re like, well, okay, like this is very interesting to learn about. But when you think about just like that human to human connection, you know, are you seeing
or have had conversations with individuals that are seeing that, yes, AI communication, AI emails are becoming more more prevalent. What do you think about the human side of this? What do you think about the role humans play in all of the AI revolution right now here in 2025?
Spenser (04:09.235)
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the big theories I have is this concept of human AI synergy. And I’ve kind of created a little bit of a mental model to help people frame up what their, what their role is. mean, at the end of the day, the non high human value added activities over time are going to be increasingly done by artificial intelligence.
which then enables the humans to go up the value chain. So I’ll give you just this quick framework. At the bottom tier, it’s, hey, we do what we do the way we do it. Whatever the firm’s knowledge is, is what it is. And however work gets done today, it gets done that way today, whether that’s word of mouth, whether that’s.
in people’s heads, whether that’s standard operating procedures that are written down, whether that’s workflow systems, whatever that is. Then you move up a level and you start to codify some of those insights in the form of a data lake or a knowledge management system that can be interfaced by an AI. Then you move up a layer above that, then that becomes the of agentic tier where now you have agents that
you can train to do non-high human value added activities. The level above that is where the humans really kick into gear in terms of tacit knowledge and understanding where the human is explaining something that was done, whether it was a client in the case of financial services or a customer in the case of under industries, but really being able to interpret and read the body language of the
the client or customer making sure that they’re really clicking and they get it. And then lastly is wisdom with purpose, which is where the uniquely human element getting people to live in alignment with their values and really ethics to understand how they can take their business or their service to the next level.
Ryan Goulart (06:28.16)
Yeah, it’s fascinating. And as I’m here listening to you talk through this, and one of the things that comes up, and I’ve seen a bunch of articles on this, it lends itself to what you just articulated, that tacit knowledge of that human consciousness of being able to connect with others. It really comes down to, and we’ll just use some of the articles that come out of what some of these investment banks are doing, and they’re not hiring as many.
junior associates there and they are using their own models to help with a lot of those entry level positions that would have been occupied by a human. you have this AGI, this AI there that is helping create some productivity for the business itself while also reducing head count, which is a different type of situation.
I’m framing up this question with that, that, that knowledge, anchoring on that knowledge intentionally, because I think it actually helps people learn. How do you start to move up the value chain as a skilled professional? How do I, how do I differentiate myself as I look towards a future where I might be, like you said, working alongside.
an agenic AI that is completing some tasks autonomously and I’m there to, you know, be me.
Spenser (07:58.197)
Well, to supervise, be the human in the loop, human in the loop, especially in regulated industries is not going away anytime soon. mean, at the end of the day, the technology is advancing very, very rapidly. But what I always say is that the AI will move at the speed of trust, certainly in financial services, which I’m an expert in, but also in a lot of regulated industries.
the owners of these firms are not gonna just trust some AI to go out and do whatever it does. They’re gonna want a human that is trained underneath them and understands the culture and the values of the company to be overseeing these things. But I do think the rise of digital employees is gonna be a reality. the economics of that.
make it very, very compelling where you can have one human supervising five, you know, agentic AIs doing the work of six people.
Ryan Goulart (09:06.954)
Yeah, yeah. And it’s, it’s crazy to even think about. how do you, leadership itself is just very different and maybe it becomes more management, management of things and those situations. let’s stay with Vinit. go ahead.
Spenser (09:19.393)
Well, think the difference is, I was gonna say the difference is whether it’s a high human value added activity versus non-high human value added. So the non-high human value add, things like opening an account, no client is gonna give you credit because you opened an account correctly. No client is gonna give you credit because you prepared for, you put a meeting prep package together.
What they care about is, you the outcome. So there is a big difference between these client facing roles, customer facing roles versus the sort of more back office. And I do think one of the challenges that I predict will happen is a lot of these junior associates, they get their experience by doing a lot of this grunt work. Well, if they aren’t doing that grunt work, how are they going to get experience? So I do think
that there’s going to be positions that are like understudies, if you will. You have the person that’s managing these AIs, then you have sort of an understudy that, you know, is sort of an apprentice to that person that learns what are the exceptions, what are the edge cases that the human kicks into gear and having to learn those things. But I do think that’s going to be really challenging.
as a society where you get more into apprenticeship because the low-end work is gone. You’re not going to pay people to do stuff that an AI can do a hundred times faster at one one hundredth of the cost. And that’s just the reality of the landscape that we’re moving into.
Ryan Goulart (11:04.384)
Yeah, let’s stay with financial services for a second because that is fascinating to kind of think about how you said that AI is going to accelerate at the speed of trust. What are some things that you’re noticing within financial services here in the present day as firms start to acclimate to the presence of AI or with clients or advisors or back office? What are you noticing as far as trends in financial services?
Spenser (11:33.877)
Well, I think there’s quite a few different cross currents. Initially, people are just getting comfortable using AI as a tool to write a follow-up email, to proof their writing, to search more effectively. Just the stuff that a chat GPT or a Gemini that’s integrated into your Google Apps is doing.
It’s not, you know, the agentic AI is, is really nascent. think people are hearing about it. They’re talking about it, but they’re not really doing it very much. I think by the end of this year, six months from now, I think there’ll be a lot more examples of. FinServe using agents, but again, there’s this whole trust issue and regulatory compliance. It’s, it’s always going to be with a human in the loop.
the human is going to take full accountability and responsibility for anything that agent does. Because at the end of the day, when you’re in a regulated industry, the regulators don’t really care who does the work. They will hold the firm fully accountable to any, whether it’s an agent doing the work, whether it’s a human doing the work, whomever, they’re holding the firm accountable and liable for anything that’s inappropriately done from that standpoint.
Ryan Goulart (12:57.963)
Yeah, yeah, and it’s just, and those are like what you’re describing here of those human in the loops. Are those like new roles that firms will have to create or are they something that already is existing?
Spenser (13:12.929)
Sort of a combination of both. A lot of it is supervising and sort of signing off on what the agentic AI has produced, whether it’s a client meeting package, whether it’s a account opening workflow, making sure that those things are done correctly and compliantly. So that role, that supervisory role to make sure that there’s a set of eyes with a skilled.
human on this that’s really representing the firm’s point of view. So I think a lot of it is going to come down to leadership. What is the tone at the top and what is the attitude? I predict, I was just talking to a colleague today that there’s going to be three to five, maybe up to 10 firms that are, you know, sub
250 million dollar firms that will be billion dollar revenue firms, not AUM, but know, revenue. So there’ll be hundreds of billions of dollars who get this right, the sort of AI led. And the economics of doing that are gonna be very compelling, but there’s a lot of re-engineering work, the role clarity.
What roles do the AIs play? What roles do the humans play? What kind of architecture? The importance of the platform. Again, AIs will be interfacing with the FinTech stack. How are those interfaces built? How are the client experiences and workflows built? A lot of that stuff is TBD. And I think that there’ll be a few hundred that sort of try and probably, like I said, five to 10 big winners.
I think the thing that is most akin to this period is May Day 75, where there was a deregulation of commissions and the birth of the discount brokerage industry. think these AI-enabled integrated advice firms are really starting to emerge, and there’ll be a race to the top. I think that from May Day 75 came Schwab and Fidelity.
Spenser (15:31.991)
really just bit players at that time, now look at them. I think we’ll look back a decade from now and see that there’s some small firms or relatively small firms that became very large firms delivering a more high quality integrated advice experience across multiple disciplines and really making it easy for the client and not just doing that for the ultra high net worth, the person with more than 10, 20 million.
but bringing that down a level or two where the economics didn’t make any sense in the past when you had all human labor that was involved in all these different disciplines and expertise. When the AIs are involved, the costs will come down and the margins will go up and the quality will also increase.
Ryan Goulart (16:23.531)
Yeah, it’s a, so like that democratization of like the family office and you know, like you’re, like you’re, like you’re sharing it’s, it’s the, and that’s slowly happening, but what you’re sharing here is that the use of technology and the AGI and, and genic, I need to get my words right. think part of the whole value can really accelerate that, democratization.
Spenser (16:30.43)
Exactly.
Spenser (16:44.865)
Shantekin.
Spenser (16:53.783)
Absolutely. And it will, and there will be some very big winners that come out of this that are, you know, set up to embrace it that are, and I think it’ll be the smaller, more nimble players that really have sort of an AI first mindset with, you know, the human in the loop and doing it at the speed of trust, getting all of those things to synchronize is not easy. And it’s, it’s very difficult for a larger firm to do that. I think, you know,
Ryan Goulart (16:55.358)
Okay.
Spenser (17:24.213)
mid-size or smaller firm will likely have an edge in terms of synchronizing all of those different pieces with the agents, with the humans, the org structure, the regulatory requirements, the compliance, data security, data privacy, making sure those are progressing in lockstep.
Ryan Goulart (17:44.543)
Yeah, I kind of on that point too, because it does raise like what of this future, like let’s say all of the good, all of the positive good, both economic, human, clients and client impact, it seems like it can go up substantially on all fronts. What are some challenges that you’ve seen to having that world
become realized? are you seeing as like, whether it’s adoption, regulation, what are those things that are kind of impeding the progress that’s happening in this space?
Spenser (18:23.14)
I think there’s a few things. First of all, the fear of the unknown.
you know, the lack of explainability of these models to say, hey, if you were in front of a judge, how do you explain that you generated this piece of advice that firms are not going to be comfortable until there’s greater explainability, auditability, you know, those sorts of things are going to be critical to more widespread adoption. And it will not go quickly until that happens.
to all the trustees.
Ryan Goulart (18:58.058)
Do you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And do you think then that like, and this might be getting a little further into technicalities, but I’ll ask the question itself. Are you seeing a world where, you know, like, like what chat GPT has where you can plug into their model to use it on your data? Are you seeing a world where the players that are going to win the day are the ones that.
adopt their own model for their own data? How are you seeing that?
Spenser (19:29.111)
Yes, it will be built on top of, mean there’s five or six major players, the Facebooks, the Googles, the Microsofts, the Open AIs, the Anthropics that are going to have the core models. These core models will be retrained with things like
rag retrieval augmented generation. They’ll be fine-tuned. They’ll have expert systems overlaid on them to rule sets and so forth. there’ll be a lot of the big ones will be kind of the base layer, but on top of that, they’ll build a lot of proprietary stuff that’s
very specific to their firms, their philosophy, and making sure that they constrain the output and add a layer of explainability and auditability based upon what their philosophy towards, if example of wealth management, wealth management or whatever other sector it might be.
Ryan Goulart (20:37.45)
Yeah. And I guess like to kind of, because it sounds so exciting to kind of think about how those, this, this piece of technology can be really a revolution and how clients get served. And, know, one of the things that, just to kind of like, what’s funny to me is like our, conversation has gone from future to present now, which is usually the other way around. And that’s exciting because it’s really fun to kind of play in, in that future. But as you kind of look at the present day, you know, what are some
adoptions that you’ve seen of AI in financial services work well? And what does it look like when it doesn’t work well for those that are in financial services and kind of thinking about like, yes, Spenser, I want to use AI, but I don’t know how, what can I do?
Spenser (21:21.847)
I think some of the simple examples are just like the note takers, the AI note takers and a lot of these companies that are in that business that are tuning it to financial services are doing a lot more. So it’s more prep for client meeting, conduct client meeting, follow up from client meeting, having those notes flow. And it works relatively well, but again, you need supervision. There will be things that are
mischaracterized. Maybe the person, the microphone wasn’t clear, the person said this, but it interpreted as that, you know, got a word or a phrase right, they’d have to go back to the recording. So there’s some things there that can be, you know, mistaken. The other thing in addition to note takers, just having simple
Direct indexing solutions as an example. These direct indexing solutions have become very sophisticated and they’re using a form of artificial intelligence to blend custom indexes, to work around heavily appreciated stock positions, to make it mirror what the S &P would look like. Those sorts of things, very, very sophisticated forms of AI with those two examples I think are the most.
prevalent today, the direct indexing and the note takers, but in the future, it’s, I mean, that’s just the beginning. It’s going to explode from
Ryan Goulart (22:57.533)
Yeah, and well, one of the things too, just like, again, going back to that future statement too, I mean, with those AI note takers and directing indexing in the present time, what’s the next step? It might not be all the way to like the agents and maybe it will be, I don’t know, but is that the next step? I’ll ask that question that way. That’s the next step.
Spenser (23:21.695)
Yeah, it’s the next step. It’s really taking the workflows, looking at the most common workflows, i.e. prep for client meeting, follow up from client meeting, onboard new client. All of those sorts of things will be increasingly leveraging AI to do the non-high human value added components of those. And the human will be more in a supervisory.
making sure that they’re being done accurately, compliantly in alignment with the client’s interests.
Ryan Goulart (24:00.297)
Yeah. And so, you know, and you know us, you know, Think To Perform. You were, for all those listening to the podcast, Spenser was our first client here in 2002. So proudly wears that badge. So like, you know us really, really well. As you kind of think about the material that Think To Perform subscribes to values, goals, behavior, leadership, philosophies, values.
Spenser (24:09.899)
Yeah, proudly, first class.
Spenser (24:17.877)
Yeah.
Ryan Goulart (24:30.107)
And for those that listen to this, they, they clearly value that too. What, how did all, how does all of that play a role in this AI world where things are happening, but there might be less humans. might be humans doing different tasks. How does all that play?
Spenser (24:49.471)
Yeah, I think, you know, it’s really the tip of the spear. It’s, it’s at the top of my pyramid, living a line, living in alignment with your values. the alignment model that I learned that many years ago from Think to Perform. think that’s increasingly what people will value from their advisors is helping them really make values aligned decisions, especially in the face of, you know,
a lot of emotion and really helping them live lives of purpose. And so that’s what I think these conversations are going to increasingly focus on between an advisor and a client is, you know, we’ve got done all the math, we’ve got the portfolio configured, we’ve done all the tax loss harvesting, we’ve done all these planning strategies, but you know, what
The client’s really worried about is, if something happens to me, how do I know my non-financial spouse will be fine? If I leave an estate with significant resources, how do I know that it will not screw up my grandchildren or the next generation? How do I make sure that it’s imbued with the values that I have?
and in alignment with the things that I really want to accomplish. know there’s a local, I won’t name his name, but a local billionaire that passed away. I mean, he would roll over in his grave if he saw what the terrible implications of him leaving his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, these vast trust funds where they didn’t need to work and…
so forth. there’s going to be a balance in terms of really making sure that those values are at the forefront and I think that’s the role that the people, the behavioral coaching that the people will really play and I think there’ll be an explosion in terms of the number of advisors needed picking on financial services. It’s going to be a wonderful career and a fulfilling career where you don’t have to do all the math to
Spenser (27:05.441)
calculate a rebalancing transactions, the AIs are doing all that. But what you do need to do is build a connection to a person and really help them understand what they want for themselves.
Ryan Goulart (27:18.813)
Yeah, it’s a, I’m gonna go one more place. Cause I think you just set me up because a colleague and I were having this conversation right before this call, this podcast. And it was about the just financial services industry and the lack of talent, the lack of people coming into the industry right now and an aging, aging population of advisors thinking that, you know, in the next five to 10 years, I’m going to either have a liquidation event.
or retire and have it be a succession, both liquidation events, but all of those things that are going to happen within the next industry in the next five to 10 years. How does AI, and we’ll come back to your statement there, how does AI help make financial services more attractive for people who are looking to have an impact on people’s lives?
Spenser (28:15.383)
you
Yeah, well, like I said, I think it’ll take a lot of the non-high human value add, albeit very time consuming activities, you know, like calculating how to rebalance a portfolio or analyzing the tax loss harvesting opportunities. mean, that is just math and an AI will do it faster, cheaper, better than a human under most circumstances. So it’s going to really free people up to spend more time with their clients.
and to do more high human value add because again the task will be efficient. Now I do think there will be a reduction in these back office jobs. The non-client facing, non-high human value added jobs are going to disappear and they’ll, but there’ll be an increase in the client facing high human value added.
activities and again, I think think to perform is at the the apex of my pyramid. How do you help? people live
live in alignment with their values and seek wisdom with purpose and have purpose with their lives. That’s the holy grail. I think there’s going to be a lot of demand. I think people that are further down the ultra high net worth, like if the ultra high net worth is here and these folks are the only ones getting the integrated advice, I think that bar is going to drop and I think many more people will be served and therefore opening up a lot.
Spenser (29:52.681)
more advisor opportunities, but again, it’s not going to be the grunt work. It’s not going to be the rebalancing portfolio type work or coming up with some, you know, estate planning technique. It will be in the art of articulating how does this, how is this in alignment with your goals and values? How does this fit in with your broader life plan and having a discussion and saying, well,
It might be a great planning strategy and it might save you a bunch of taxes, but if it’s not in alignment with your values and it’s not in alignment with your goals, you might not want to do it. And that’s where people will play a very important role.
Ryan Goulart (30:40.552)
It’s just such a fun conversation to have and clearly Spenser knows his material. mean, you actually have a book coming out pretty soon, right?
Spenser (30:52.287)
Yeah, the book is going to be published hopefully this quarter. It’s called the AI enabled future of wealth management, a leader’s guide. So it’s going to, it’s really tailor made for leaders of medium to large size wealth management firms.
Ryan Goulart (31:09.198)
And you also have an assessment that accompanies it, right? So that of your pyramid.
Spenser (31:11.307)
Yes, I’m going, yeah, so say we’re releasing an AI readiness assessment. That’s for free. That’s something that’ll be a really valuable tool that I’m gonna give away to the community to help them really understand where is their readiness and how do I get ready? If I care about this, if I wanna bury my head in the sand and just keep doing what I’m doing, that’ll work for.
some people into their retirement, but it will certainly won’t work for the next generation of people coming up. So the next generation who really wants to embrace this needs to understand, how, where do I start? What about this pyramid? How do I climb up the pyramid steps to get to this wisdom with purpose? And I’m going to kind of lay that out as both part of the book and part of the assessment.
Ryan Goulart (32:06.184)
Awesome. Well, thank you again for coming on.
Spenser (32:09.185)
Yeah, my pleasure. Really, really great.
