Earlier this year, I wrote that firms building AI capability now will have a lead that is hard to close, and I shared our AI specialist's projection that a digital twin of me would cut my email time by 70%. Several months on, I owe readers an honest update: it hasn't happened yet. What AI has done for our practice is more interesting.
The biggest return so far isn't fewer hours. It's better to work on complicated tasks. One retired client holds significant assets in the company he worked for his entire career, with a tremendous amount of taxable gain. He is analytical, and he kept asking for a forecast of what divesting up to 80% of his stock over three years would look like.
Using our corporate Claude system, it took me about an hour of prompting to get there. On my own, it would have taken at least 15 hours and produced something less comprehensive, weaker on data, and less polished. AI didn't shrink time I was already spending. It made better work possible.
The email agent is a similar story. It responds in my voice and is at least 80% there, but candidly, I don't trust it yet, so I still review its drafts. Where it helps is repetition. A thoughtful answer to an investment question can take me 20 minutes. When another client asks something similar, the reply takes a minute or two.
I expect to reach 70% once I'm confident the answers reflect exactly what I would say, and complex matters will always get review. This is an experience-based business, and I don't want it to become an AI commodity business.
What has impressed me most is that the agent sometimes raises valid points I might not have thought of including. Sean, our in-house AI specialist, calls it a perfect recall: a reply might also wish a client well after a recent surgery, a detail I could easily forget.
We have since set up Destiny Intelligence as a separate entity to offer our process to other registered investment advisers (RIAs). We planned a six-month proof of concept and were optimistic. We likely won't work with other firms until early next year, because I want to be close to 100% satisfied before I put my name behind it.
Two hurdles explain the delay. The first is data. Like most RIAs, our biggest obstacle is connecting our systems, in our case Salesforce, Orion and eMoney. Each has added AI features, but the data must be cleaned first. The second is compliance, a heavier lift than I expected because AI is still so new in the advisory world.
We use the most protected version available, but nothing is 100% protected. We are also adding AI cybersecurity insurance, which I learned is not the same as a standard cyber policy. Every firm should ask its carrier about the difference.
Some dire warnings about AI reflect real concerns, though I believe they are further down the road. I am an advocate of Anthropic and OpenAI, but some calls for tight governance could also make it harder for lower-cost providers to compete. I would prefer self-governance, with AI companies overseeing one another, to heavy government involvement. The U.S. leads in AI, with China close behind, and we shouldn't surrender that lead. The debate was on full display at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles in September, when President Donald Trump phoned Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang onstage. The awareness of the downside is smart. Becoming uncompetitive is not.
AI also powers Destiny Access, our platform for qualified purchasers investing in direct deals and other alternative investments that belong in a well-built portfolio. Direct investments are notorious for reporting lags. Through AI feeds, we update deal valuations, though not client valuations because of the liability, as soon as information is available. When a company such as Crusoe completes a new raise, the platform reflects it on day one, and we still screen everything.
My digital twin sits on both the public and private sides of the site. The public agent answers general questions and escalates anything complex to me. The private agent handles holding-specific questions. Anyone who wants a person still gets one.
If I could tell myself one thing, it would be to start earlier. If you asked 100 advisors whether they use AI, I estimate 95 would say yes. Ask whether it delivers significant benefit, and I think that drops to five. We reached that group in about six months, largely because we hired a specialist rather than trying to do it alone. With clients now using AI to challenge financial advice, that gap will only matter more.
Thomas H. Ruggie, ChFC, CFP, is founder and CEO of Destiny Family Office, Destiny Wealth Partners and Ruggie Wealth Management.
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