A prominent registered investment advisor (RIA) specializing in retirement planning aimed to extend its services to the mass affluent market—a growing segment with unique financial needs. Known for delivering tailored investment strategies, the RIA sought a way to provide high-quality, personalized advice to a larger audience without overburdening its human advisors or compromising its standards.

The RIA encountered significant hurdles in achieving its goal:

• Scaling Human Advisors: The firm struggled to scale its team of human advisors to meet the demands of the mass affluent market, where personalized advice was essential but resource-intensive.
  
• Regulatory Risks of AI: While interested in AI-driven solutions, the RIA was wary of the regulatory risks tied to probabilistic systems like large language models (LLMs). Inconsistent or inaccurate advice could jeopardize compliance and client trust.
  

These challenges limited the RIA’s ability to grow efficiently while adhering to strict regulatory requirements and maintaining its reputation for excellence.

Athena collaborated with the RIA to create a custom agentic AI platform that addressed both scalability and compliance concerns:

• Tailored Financial Advice Algorithms: Athena worked with the RIA to design algorithms that mirrored the firm’s investment approach, ensuring all AI-generated advice aligned with its philosophy.
  
• Digitized Investment Philosophy: By digitizing the RIA’s investment principles, Athena enabled the AI to respond to a broad range of questions from mass affluent clients while staying consistent with the firm’s strategy.
  
• Compliance-Focused Features: The platform included tools to log, monitor, rate, and provide feedback on every piece of advice, giving the RIA’s compliance team full transparency and control over the AI’s outputs.
  

This solution integrated seamlessly into the RIA’s operations, empowering the firm to deliver personalized advice at scale while meeting regulatory standards.

The partnership with Athena yielded impressive outcomes:

• Expanded Reach: The RIA now serves 300,000 retirement participants with a fully custom-branded agentic AI solution powered by Athena.
  
• High Engagement: Thousands of client questions are asked and answered daily by the AI, ensuring timely and relevant advice.
  
• Rapid, Efficient Growth: The RIA’s client base and sales have surged, with the AI platform enabling scalable growth without a proportional increase in operational costs.
  

These results highlight Athena’s ability to transform the RIA’s business model, making financial advice accessible to the mass affluent market while preserving quality and compliance.

“Athena’s agentic AI platform has allowed us to reach more clients than we ever thought possible. The ability to monitor every piece of advice in real-time has been a game-changer for our compliance team, and our clients love the personalized experience.”

– John Doe, Chief Operating Officer, RIA