Praemium flags major AI investment ahead
Praemium has said it is open to investing in artificial intelligence (AI) “in a big way” as it believes it can transform the business.
At the platform’s annual general meeting (AGM) held on 20 November, the firm expanded on how it is transforming the business with a focus on high-net-worth (HNW) individuals and private wealth clients in a three-year strategy.
In the HNW segment, there is an investable market of $3.2 trillion and over 1 million HNW investors, Praemium stated, which it views as a significant opportunity.
Praemium is seeking to be the leading platform for HNW advice which will consist of dominating the non-custodial market, being the platform of choice for sophisticated custodial and being a leader in the back-office broker space.
Having already discussed how the strategy to achieve this will focus on service excellence and being solution-focused, chief executive Anthony Wamsteker used the AGM meeting to expand on how technology will facilitate this.
One way of improving the business model, he said, is by utilising opportunities presented by AI and its use alongside data science is already accelerating across the business.
Wamsteker, said: “Generative AI is going to change financial services generally and platforms specifically over the next few years. Our philosophy is ‘fire bullets, then cannons’ to borrow a management philosophy from [business management expert] Jim Collins.
“We are excited about our experiments to date and have the capacity to move in a big way when satisfied that the opportunity and timing are right.”
Praemium’s existing use of AI includes:
- Piloting the use of AI in their service area to better understand customer sentiment, enhance quality and reduce support agent training times to better support advisers.
- Setting guardrails and building foundations for ethical and secure use of AI.
- Using pair programmers to integrate AI to enhance development processes and deliver new features at a faster pace.
- Expanding the use of Microsoft AI products to enhance productivity and decision-making.
- Integrating behavioural data with our AI engine to generate predictive notification which are triggered when AI detects activity patterns that suggest a client may be considering leaving the platform.
In October, ASIC shared a report of how AFSLs were using AI in their businesses. Overall, licensees’ use of AI is “quite cautious” currently but is increasing rapidly, as 61 per cent of licensees said they want to increase their usage of AI in the next 12 months.
Usage is currently centred around well-known and established techniques, but it has observed an increase in complex techniques such as deep learning and generative AI (GenAI).
Elsewhere, chair Barry Lewin stated the firm is considering inorganic opportunities, having completed its acquisition of OneVue from Iress in April 2024.
“We have continued to review a range of inorganic opportunities and we have an energised senior leadership team with the skills and track record to assess these. We will, however, continue to remain disciplined when considering these opportunities.”
AUTHOR
Laura Dew
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