Cambridge Investment Research, the independent broker/dealer with 4,000 advisors and $235 billion in assets under advisement, has developed an agentic AI tool that completes a sliver of its direct account opening process.
The firm has taken some of the steps that happen in the middle of the account opening process for direct accounts and trained “digital associates” to perform those tasks. This part of the process typically takes a human associate 17 minutes to complete from start to finish; the AI can do it in seconds.
Put another way, if you look at Cambridge’s total volume of work for this slice of the process last year, the AI can process that same work in two hours.
“We wanted to start in a place that was very manual for our associates. What we have built is what I call a digital associate that can come in and do these manual steps just like our associates do,” said Valarie Vest, executive vice president and chief experience officer at Cambridge. “It’s really freed up our associates to do higher-level, better work.”
Vest gets daily reports on what’s gone well and where a human needs to come in and help. The firm is now working on using the AI tool within its brokerage account opening process.
“The same decision-making process is still in place,” said Sean Van Moorleghem, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Cambridge. “It’s simply a digital associate making those decisions, doing that reasoning. AI has not only the reasoning skills now but also the hands to make the transaction flow, as it’s integrated into our platforms here.”
The firm said it has not had to eliminate any associates as a result; rather, it has freed up employees to deliver better service to advisors. And some roles will change.
The firm did utilize a number of third-party vendors to create the tool, such as large language models, but he declined to name them.
Van Moorleghem was brought on earlier this year as the firm’s CTO, succeeding Nick Graham, who stepped down at the end of 2024. Before joining, he was at Charles Schwab in technology roles.
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