As new AI tools take the stage in wealth management, they are being named, emerging from the "innovation labs" of banks, fintech and other organisations. We talk to Indosuez Gestion and Indosuez Wealth Management for a French angle on what is happening.

With wealth and asset managers using all manner of AI-driven tools to help with tasks from risk management to stock selection, these artificial intelligence entities are getting their own names. A whole new series of “personas” are taking the stage.

At Indosuez Gestion and Indosuez Wealth Management, the French groups within Credit Agricole, these tools are becoming part of managers’ daily routines.

WealthBriefing recently caught up with Delphine Di Pizio-Tiger, CEO of Indosuez Gestion and global head of asset management for Indosuez Wealth Management, to discuss how the rollout of its AI programme in 2019 has panned out. The idea was to industrialise tasks and save managers’ time.

"For the past five years, AI and technology have been top priorities for Indosuez Gestion, and they continue to be," Di Pizio-Tiger said. “Adapting to the new environment is essential."

Credit Agricole has set up Le Village by CA, an innovation hub that hosts startups, spawning things such as the AI tools that, in some cases, end up on managers’ computers. Indosuez Wealth Management has developed its own hub since 2020; the “innovation lab.”

The investment management business unit has decided to dedicate new tools to three pillars: portfolio management; reporting, and compliance.

In portfolio management, the point of using such AI tools is to raise performance so the organisation has been working with startups to achieve this.

“AI for Alpha” is the name of the startup and the name of a “risk on risk off” portfolio management tool; “Yseop” is the tool regarding reporting. There is not – at least yet – a specific name for the firm’s regulatory AI tool.

The way that firms such as Indosuez WM and Indosuez Gestion deploy AI sheds light on how the use cases for artificial intelligence have proliferated. One term used a great deal is “co-pilot”. As explained in an article on this news service back in 2023 by F-Prime Capital, AI has enabled these co-pilots to emerge and handle routine tasks such as reviewing legal documents, opening accounts, preparing client presentations, adjusting asset allocation, requesting query service, addressing ad hoc questions, and other activities beyond their core role of advising clients, which currently takes up 36 per cent of advisors’ time. The average advisor spends more than two hours “behind the scenes” for every hour they spend with clients.

There is work to be done. Recent SimCorp research among 200 senior leaders at asset managers and asset owners, showed that 75 per cent of them said they were “somewhat prepared” for AI. There is still a great deal of experimentation with deciding what are the most suitable and credible use cases.

Running portfolios
Di Pizio-Tiger gave an example of how AI is used in portfolio management. 

“Each month, a portfolio management committee takes place including all heads of DPM (discretionary portfolio management) teams around the world and they use the [AI] tools to optimise the allocation. At the end the process is a mix of fundamental and quantitative [approaches]. We don’t follow this tool 100 per cent,” she said.  

The AI tool cannot be a flawless forecaster, for instance being able to see the US tariffs, or other moves. “We want, however, to have a tool that has good analysis in all kinds of environment,” she continued. Di Pizio-Tiger, in talking about specific actions, noted that when bank stocks became very volatile recently, the firm decided to sell put options on banks. “That is the kind of thing we can do.”

Indosuez Gestion has decided to have its bespoke reporting capability because it needs to generate thousands of customised and tailored reports. A new tech system for these reports came out of the group’s Innovation Lab.

The AI system generates a report and automates comments, explaining the rationale of a portfolio manager for a specific client, and setting out what needs to be done.

Regulation tool
Via Le Village by CA, Indosuez Gestion and Indosuez WM implemented a screening tool related to regulators, starting with CSSF in Luxembourg. This screens the regulator website each day, looking for changes and developments and suggests what the firm might need to do to adapt. With this tool, it is now “impossible to miss something.”

“CSSF is very happy with it,” Di Pizio-Tiger added.