Anachronism…

In the 13 years that I spent in Private Banking, there was never a rush of wealth like the one we have seen this year. There was no SpaceX. There was no Anthropic. There was no OpenAI.

But, I can imagine how it feels to be in those banking offices today. Some advisors may have intercepted a few employees early in their careers. They may have found them before there was a lot of revenue to be made. That means these employees are spread around inside the financial institution without a coherent plan. They might be getting different advice from advisors of different calibers. Each one's experience is unique but not personalized. This is bad. It is in fact one of the wealth management's shortcomings. It lacks real strategy or structure. It has done well without them but would be much more powerful (and profitable) if it had them.

Today, as these companies approach “liquidity,” HQ gets involved. Calls happen between executives. A “special relationship” is forged between provider and client. This leads to pricing discounts and other special considerations. The goal is to win the business. The “business” here is bank accounts, investment management, and lending opportunities. But it is also the larger and more profitable investment banking business of the future. M&A, capital issuance, and the holy grail of the IPO.

If you are in an office near one of these companies, your executive team could bring you a banner year.

But, this situation highlights three important realities:

• Far too many decisions have already been made (or not made) by employees at this point. There is neither the time nor the ability to address many critical issues.
• No single institution offers or manages a truly holistic picture. A personal balance sheet is more than bank accounts, investments, and loans.
• AI cannot scale an advisor beyond the hours in the day, yet. This is why you can’t get any help from the “A” team. There are big fish to fry and only so much time and attention.

We are developing the capacity to move past a reliance on financial institutions. They can continue to provide the products. We can personalize an instruction manual for how to combine and coordinate them. We can use that manual and then build systems to do it for us. But, we are not there yet.

It is great that SpaceX and Anthropic push for better treatment of their employees. Could they have done the same thing 2 years ago and had much greater impact? Absolutely.

But a larger question needs to be answered. Should people who design and build cutting edge technology rely on the same structures and processes that their parents and grandparents did?

No.