Across the RIA industry, firms that once treated AI as a line item are realizing a one-time strategy has a short shelf life. What’s emerging in its place is something closer to a standing practice – a concept Mike Shannon, Co-Founder & CEO of Impruve, calls AI stewardship: an ongoing, embedded partnership that evolves as the tools do.
We asked both of them: what does that model look like in practice, what’s holding firms back, and why does momentum matter more than perfection right now.
Q: Where does the RIA industry actually stand on AI right now?
Matt: We’re at the stage now where everyone, no matter who you are, is saying: okay, AI’s here, we need to have a strategy. They just don’t even know where to start. Or worse, they think they could write a check and have it be done, and it’s really not gonna have an important effect. Shame on anyone who does it on a project basis, or just lays out a one-time strategy that you then have to go and figure out how to implement, because then there’ll be no effect in terms of employee adoption or any real ROI.
Q: Why aren’t the existing options (vendors, consultancies) enough?
Mike: The fundamental tension between the vendor map and especially the mid and upper market RIAs is: you walk in as a SaaS CEO and the question is, how do we establish and secure our moat? Well, to have a moat, you have to fundamentally have some degree of limitation on the client side. Whereas the RIAs want autonomy and flexibility to evolve with whatever the underlying frontier AI looks like. Those two things are at odds.
Q: Mike, how did you arrive at the concept of AI stewardship?
Mike: There are two things we say all the time at Impruve: be useful and meet reality. In being able to step back and come to some of the early Future Proof events, and just see how populated the vendor map was on one side, and then how, in some regards, kind of old school the consultancy side on the other was, we just concluded: the most useful thing to do at the moment is help firms wrap their minds around an AI strategy.
That led to seeing the angle of stewardship as this ongoing, evolving relationship that aligned pretty well to the ethos of an RIA. The whole notion of being a fiduciary is to be on the same side of the table, an RIA is not selling their own products. We could be a vendor-neutral party. AI stewardship is about being along for the ride, where you don’t have one AI strategy or solution that you stamp on today and then you’re set for life. You had CTOs a year ago having done all the due diligence and landing at “we’re going to sign with OpenAI.” Then six months, twelve months later, there’s a huge migration over to Claude, and who knows what six months from now looks like. You have to be along for the journey.
Q: Where do firms get stuck?
Matt: The thing that I always get – there are two things. One is the cost, and the skeptics say the cost doesn’t outweigh the efficiency gains. Or it’s the compliance hurdle: we have to make sure that everything is protected because of that. We don’t want to be a first mover, we want to be a fast follower. Both of those things are choices.
Mike: The learning comes from doing. That’s the empirical nature of it. And so that’s where I would fear for a firm that is saying they’re going to be a fast second. You don’t want to be like a late seventh. At that point, you’ve got all of these organizational muscles that have to get put in place. Get in motion with your organizational AI muscle, the change management that goes with it. Because then when the net new capability is unlocked, you can be quick to adapt to it. If you’re sitting back and you’ve got a whole ops team that’s hardly even AI fluent on their own personal use, six months, twelve months from now, I just don’t understand how you’ll catch up to the firms that have already been doing this work.
Q: What’s coming at Future Proof Festival this September?
Matt: I want to invite everyone – whether you’re on the technical side of an RIA, whether you’re an advisor, no matter what level you are – to participate in our survey. We’ll be conducting the research and doing a presentation at Future Proof Festival this year to unveil that research.
Mike: The State of AI in Wealth Management research – that’s gonna illuminate, I think, a lot of those jobs to be done that we’re talking about and net new capabilities. Thrilled for what’s to come.
What’s Next?
Participate in the research. The State of AI in Wealth Management Survey is now open and takes less than 10 minutes to complete. Regardless of firm size or where you are in your AI journey, your input shapes findings that benchmark where the industry actually stands and what’s ahead. Every verified respondent is automatically entered to win an all-expenses-paid trip to a Future Proof event. Responses must be submitted by August 21. Take the survey.
Join us in September. Future Proof Festival 2026 takes place September 14–17 in Huntington Beach, CA. The research findings will be presented live on the main stage, alongside the conversations, speakers, and community that make this the most important annual gathering for RIAs. Register now.
