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Vin Campagnoli and Bella Allaire

Technology > Artificial Intelligence

Why Raymond James Hasn’t Banned ChatGPT

By John Manganaro

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To say that the emergence of large language model technologies — and specifically the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in late 2022 — has divided opinions in the financial advisor industry would be an understatement.

On one side, some observers warn that ChatGPT’s unreliability creates considerable legal and reputational risks for any business that uses it for consequential text generation. One the other, some firms Morgan Stanley are developing and rolling out conversational AI capabilities to their advisors. Fintech firms like Orion Advisor Technology are rapidly releasing tools for their advisor clients, for marketing and other functions.

In the middle stands an ambivalent-if-intrigued majority, and counted among them is the technology leadership team at Raymond James. To be sure, the firm is closely monitoring the technology’s development, and it’s even allowing its independent advisor force to use it in their local operations. Even so, there is currently no plan in place to integrate ChatGPT at the corporate level or to actively promote its use.

This was the explanation shared with ThinkAdvisor by Vin Campagnoli and Bella Allaire in an interview during the firm’s 2023 Elevate Conference in Orlando, Florida, which is bringing together several thousand independent representatives this week.

Campagnoli, Raymond James’ chief information officer, and Allaire, executive vice president of technology and operations, told ThinkAdvisor that their real focus was on expanding and improving the suite of applications and support tools leveraged by Raymond James’ Private Client Group, which included nearly 8,700 advisors as of Dec. 31, roughly 5,070 of whom are independent advisors and about 3,630 of whom are employees.

According to Campagnoli and Allaire, who have been working together on advisor tech for decades across multiple major firms, it is important for leaders in their position to maintain a level-headed perspective about any new technology, even if it does have tremendous potential promise for the future.

This does not mean the pair and their technology team are putting their heads in the sand with respect to ChatGPT, LLMs or any other emerging tech. Rather, as recounted in the Q&A interview below, the executive leadership at Raymond James feels this is a moment for attentive monitoring — and to allow independent advisors to experiment with use cases that make sense for their particular approach to serving clients and running their businesses.

THINKADVISOR: Can you please start by giving us a broad overview of the technology work going on within Raymond James?

VIN CAMPAGNOLI: There is a lot of exciting stuff going on. One thing that is recent that we are really proud of is a revamped mobile application called Client Access. This is a client-facing application that supports the work of our advisors.

The feedback has been really strong already, even though we just rolled it out at the start of April. It has a clean new look and feel that are really resonating with the end clients.

We’re also really excited about the “Opportunities” feature in the advisor’s application. It’s a capability we are going to be enhancing over time, but in this newly released original version, it is an easy-to-use tool that looks across 15 different client service areas and [prepares] changes and actions for advisors to bring up with their clients at the next meeting.

Maybe the client is hitting a certain important retirement age, or they have a missing beneficiary or a bond they hold is maturing. It’s an intelligent resource that doesn’t require an advisor to go look for this information. It’s delivered to them automatically.

So far, the feedback has been incredible, and the adoption rate for this relatively new feature has just hit the roof. Almost 90% of the advisors in Private Client Group are using it actively, which is incredible given that it was introduced just a few months ago.

BELLA ALLAIRE: The advisor’s portfolio management system has also been improved with new rebalancing capabilities. We formerly had a third party doing only rebalancing support for our discretionary advisors, but we now have an in-house solution that is available for both discretionary and non-discretionary advisors.

That’s been popular, and it’s saving advisors a lot of time and effort. Before, the non-discretionary advisors had to do a lot of manual work to make client trades. They were making individual calls and making specific changes. Now that the system is set up to facilitate easier transactions, it should be extremely beneficial.

The next big goal is revamping the website.

Can you speak about the emphasis we have heard throughout the Elevate Conference about using technology to help the firm hit its ambitious $2 trillion AUA target by 2030? It must put a little bit of pressure on your shoulders, but it also underscores how important your job is. How do you manage those expectations and ensure you are spending your budget wisely to hit those goals?

CAMPAGNOLI: It’s a great question. First of all, I would say yes, it does put pressure on us, but that’s a good thing. The relationship that Bella and I have with all of our executive business leadership team is something that we are proud of, and it’s great that they have such confidence in us.

Our guiding principle in all of this is that we can’t just pursue new tech for the sake of new tech. It all has to be about technology for the sake of business.

Where the rubber hits the road for us is in collaborating with our advisors. We have 18 advisors on an advisory technology council whom we meet with monthly. These meetings are complemented by two in-person gatherings per year to go into even more depth.

We go through what we are working on and ensure that the technology decisions and solutions are truly meeting their needs. That is a critical point of connection. We make sure we aren’t wasting any time on technology that doesn’t generate something positive for our business, either at the advisor level or at the overall strategic level.

We know we can succeed because there are still many opportunities to free up time and resources for our advisors by putting better technology in their hands. It’s creating things like the Opportunities feature I mentioned and the ability to streamline portfolio management and rebalancing.

But yes, it’s a big goal. I sit in on all those strategy meetings, and it’s exciting how much technology is talked about.

ALLAIRE: One difference for Vin and [me] is that we have been working together for many years — more years than I would like to admit.

One of the most important things for us is to see people develop and to build that strong team. We’ve built up a wonderful technology team in the organization. They understand the business deeply, and we ensure that they understand what advisors do and why.

If new hires are coming from the outside and they don’t understand the advisor business, we send them out into the field and they spend time learning what the solutions have to do. That’s such a key point in our success.

Our philosophy is that the developers have to know the business as well as the business people themselves, or even better, actually. They have to understand both the needs and the operations.

CAMPAGNOLI: It also helps that our team really cares and that they derive true motivation from their work. They can see that their work on technology has a big impact on the real clients and their families.

The lead developer who was behind the Opportunities feature is a great example. The excitement that she derived from seeing that project through its conclusion is really something special to see.

How do you, as the technology leadership team within Raymond James, think about the broader tech landscape developing outside of the industry? What do you make of ChatGPT and OpenAI, for example? Do they have an impact on your thinking about how you do your work?

ALLAIRE: Of course they do. How could they not? These things are really in all our faces today, and we have to pay attention to that.

CAMPAGNOLI: That’s right. As we have said, we don’t just chase the newest technology because it is new, but we can’t have our heads in the sand on emerging technologies, either.

ChatGPT, from our point of view, is still an open question. We have seen some firms ban it outright, but we haven’t done that. We have advisors playing with it right now within their firms, and we are watching and researching to see if there is any real business value we can derive at the enterprise level. That’s still an open question.

We do use natural language processing capabilities already, I would add, so we aren’t shunning artificial intelligence by any means. We play around with and test all of this stuff, but it’s all closely connected with the question of what we are trying to solve from a business perspective.

ALLAIRE: The technology behind our digital command center and the monitoring of issues with our applications utilizes AI, too, as does our cybersecurity approach. It’s driven by monitoring what is the normal status and flagging when spikes or rapid changes happen.

When normal goes away, it is the AI that is driving us to be alerted before a human is going to call us and say there’s a problem.

On a more personal note, can you tell us more about your long-standing professional relationship? It must be helpful as your chart your course.

CAMPAGNOLI: I’ll answer first, if that’s OK. It is extremely helpful. At this point in our collaboration, we know how each other thinks. When we are looking for talent or making an operational decision, we don’t surprise each other.

Bella, more than anyone I’ve worked with, is a real leader. So many people have followed her leadership and our partnership across organizations. It’s really special to have that connection, because even on the technology side, this business is all about relationships.

When you are hiring senior technology people, knowing what they have done and how they think is so important for success. With Bella and [me], we’re on that same page.

ALLAIRE: It’s so helpful. As Vince said, we don’t have to constantly explain our thinking to each other.

We have a shared vision; that’s a big reason why we have been able to accomplish what we have been able to accomplish over the last 10 years here at Raymond James. It’s because we have a team that works together well. That makes a huge difference.

(Pictured: Vin Campagnoli and Bella Allaire)

John Manganaro

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