Wealth Management on Caddi research: few RIAs have named AI leaders
WealthManagement.com's technology columnist covered The 2026 State of AI at Enterprise RIAs. Most large RIAs still have no one whose job is AI, and the firms that do hire for it at several times the rate of those that don't.
WealthManagement.com senior technology editor Davis Janowski wrote up new Caddi research on November 6, 2026. The study covers the 455 largest independent wealth management RIAs by SEC Form ADV assets, built from each firm's public job postings since late 2023 and the LinkedIn profiles of its current employees. No firm supplied data, and no firm is named in the report.
What the column reports
Few firms have given AI an owner. Only 42 of the 455 firms have someone whose title makes them an AI or innovation leader. Of those, 24 carry an AI-specific title, such as chief AI officer or head of AI enablement and automation. 17 of the 24 started in the role in 2026, and 12 sit at firms with more than $25 billion in assets.
An owner changes the hiring. 71.4% of firms with a clear AI leader have hired for an AI tool, against 11% of firms without one. Where a CTO, CIO or head of technology is in place but no AI lead, the figure is 32.7%. With neither, it drops to 8%.
Controls lag the hiring. 56.6% of the firms hiring for AI made no compliance-archiving or security hire alongside it.
“The firms getting somewhere with AI all did one thing first: they gave it an owner. Everything else, the data, the controls, the integrations, follows from that decision.”
Alejandro Castellano, co-founder and CEO of Caddi, in WealthManagement.com
The column also tells how the two met: Davis was a judge for the XYPN AdviceTech competition at XYPN LIVE in San Diego, where Caddi was one of six finalists.
Read the full column on WealthManagement.com
InvestmentNews covered another cut of the same research: large RIAs name ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude in job posts far more than advisor AI tools.
Caddi