Before you kick off that custom tech build in your wealth firm

Before you kick off that custom tech build in your wealth firm, ask your vendor this one critical question: “How do you use AI in your own business?”

If you haven’t asked this yet in your vendor evaluation, you should. Don’t put it in writing — ask it on the fly to get the genuine, unvarnished response.

You’d be amazed how many software development vendors flail when this comes up.

Bad answers sound like:

• “Er, let me grab our tech lead. He handles the AI.”
• “Oh sure, our support team uses AI, they’ve got a chatbot.”
• “Our senior devs don’t really trust AI — we’re waiting until it matures.”

These are red flags. They signal a lack of vision, ambition — and relevance.

What you want to hear sounds more like this: “It’s been a game-changer. We’ve deployed AI strategically at every step — from discovery calls to design, dev, QA, releases and support. Want to see?”

By now, any dev shop worth hiring should be at the ROI stage with AI. That means faster, better and cheaper outcomes — for you.

If your dev partner hasn’t embraced AI throughout their business, you’re paying too much. 💸