AI Wealth · AI Ownership
Only 42 of the 455 Biggest RIAs Have an AI Leader. 71% of Those Firms Hire for AI.
Among firms hiring for AI, 56.6% made no compliance or security hire to go with it.
· 2 min read
Caddi Technologies, an AI workforce provider for wealth firms, found that most of the AI-titled leaders at the largest registered investment advisers (RIAs) are new: 17 of the 24 started their jobs in 2026.
The titles are arriving, but the compliance and security roles that would sit beside them mostly are not. Caddi found that 56.6% of the AI-hiring firms in its analysis added no compliance-archiving or security hire in addition to their AI hires.
Does an AI owner change who hires?
The comparison that matters is 71.4% against 11%. Of the firms with a clear AI leader, 71.4% have hired for an AI tool; of the firms without one, 11% have. Firms with a chief technology officer or head of technology but no AI leader sit between the two, at 32.7%, against 8% for firms with neither.
“The firms getting somewhere with AI all did one thing first: they gave it an owner,” Caddi CEO Alejandro Castellano said. The count shows that firms with a leader hire more for AI, not that the leader is the reason. It also stands on public records: Caddi ranked the 455 largest independent wealth-management firms by assets in Securities and Exchange Commission filings (Form ADV), then read each firm’s LinkedIn job postings since late 2023 and its employees’ profiles. No firm supplied data.
How new are the leaders?
Only 42 of the 455 firms have someone whose title marks them as an AI or innovation leader, and 24 of the 42 carry AI-specific titles, such as chief AI officer or head of AI enablement and automation. Seventeen of those 24 took the job in 2026, so the role at most of these firms is under a year old.
A second count, on a different measure, points the same way. Astraeus, a startup AI infrastructure provider, analyzed 6,384 Form ADV filings from independent RIAs with Pirker Partners and found that 6% disclosed AI use in their March 2026 filings. Those firms manage about 11% of the industry’s assets. Pirker said Form ADV data probably understates AI use, because larger firms document their work more diligently.
What did the AI hires come with?
Among the AI-hiring firms in Caddi’s analysis, 56.6% made no compliance-archiving or security hire in addition to their AI hires. The count covers hires: it does not show what work the existing compliance staff took on.
Which of the firm’s AI hires has a compliance-archiving or security hire beside it?
