What does the future of financial advice look like when AI, automation, and modern technology reshape how people manage their money? In this episode of Boldin Your Money, Steve Chen sits down with Subbiah Subramanian, VP of Product Management at Clearwater Analytics, to explore how technology is transforming wealth management, financial planning, and the advisor-client relationship.
They discuss the recent Vanguard–Altruist acquisition, the growing advice gap, how AI can empower both advisors and consumers, and why the future of financial planning will likely combine intelligent technology with human expertise. Whether you’re interested in retirement planning, fintech, or the future of AI in personal finance, this conversation offers valuable insights into where the industry is headed.
Watch the video on our YouTube Channel:
Listen Now
Listen to the podcast on Riverside or right here:
Transcription
Steve Chen
Welcome back to Boldin Your Money. Today we're going to dive into how AI and data are being used across personal financed and institutional investors. So Wall Street, think Wall Street investors, to help people make better decisions and achieve better outcomes. So we're gonna look through the lens of what is happening today and where things are headed. So today I'm joining us, I have Subaya. Supermanian, who is part of the Bolton community, has spent more than 30 years at the center of capital markets running global data products at State Street and BNY Mellon and leading AI and data machine learning strategy at various different firms. And so he's seen this from the lens of the institutional side. And we're gonna talk about also how he sees it in his own personal journey. So with that, Subaya, welcome to our show.
Subbiah
Thank you very much, Steve. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be on the podcast.
Steve Chen
Yeah, no, it's great. I'm I'm really glad that we connected. We connected on LinkedIn and just wanted to dive in here. So yeah, I would love to kind of get your take. I mean, since you've seen this both, you know, on the institutional side in your career, but also personally and you were kind of sharing more about, you know, how you learned about Boldin and like what you're doing in your own life as your own journey to financial independence. Yeah, I would love to kind just get like a few minutes on, you know, how the personal side evolved and like how you invest and kind of how you got to financial independence yourself.
Subbiah
Yeah, no, thank you Steve. know, thank you for for the opportunity to to share my experience. You know, really my my personal journey really started, you know 30 years ago with with with investing right as a newcomer, you know to this country you are put in a situation where you just don't have any any any other you know parents or friends or others to kind of help you right when there is an emergency right? So you're almost. forced into this, where you're thinking about saving, how do you create an emergency fund, just the basic stuff. It was not a major plan, but you're almost forced to do it. Then as your family grows, you have kids, and things come up out of the left field, you get to get used to this thinking, that you are responsible for your financial well-being, and you get to start saving and investing. I was almost forced into it. That's one part of it. The other part of my investing journey was really shaped by my professional life. I, myself and my wife always worked for big financial institutions. So what that meant was we had access to all kinds of proprietary data, our clients' data, our own data. So we were almost shut out of trading. You couldn't trade freely because of all the regulations which we took very seriously. So I was really forced to look at very straightforward mutual funds or ETFs and stuff. So I couldn't execute on very complex equity strategy or option strategy and things like that because of my job, right? So even though academically I knew how to do it, but from my professional investing, I really had to go with plain, very little things. So that almost in hindsight, that actually helped me to keep it simple, right? I never invest in things I don't understand. It was pretty straightforward investing. So that's kind of my my journey and I think it has worked really well.
Steve Chen
Yeah, it's super interesting. D did you like, you know, I was actually reflecting on this. I was talking to someone earlier in our company about just how I got to this. Like I out of college, I was an engineer and I just started working in financial services. I didn't know anything about investing or, you know, but because I worked in like and I was a consultant at places like Charles Schwab and Wells Fargo, you know, you just kind of like absorb it. But for most people, they don't have that. And I was never taught personal finance.
Subbiah
Mm-hmm.
Steve Chen
I mean, did you get and you're an immigrant, right? So did you get like any training or just kind of read books along the way?
Subbiah
Yeah, I know it was really not there was no formal training, is which is I think we should focus on that for the next generation. We never got taught this, but it was more you know it was forced you know that we have to save and what do do with the money? You don't want the bank. So what do do? You start with basic, you know, buy mutual funds. I used to work for Putnam Investments, know back in the day. So we bought you know Putnam mutual funds right, which which is kind of how it started and then it kind of like. You know, go from there so I wouldn't say there was a major, you know, academic thing behind this. It was all just trial and error, right? Yeah, yeah.
Steve Chen
Right. Got it. And then it sounds like you also do some real estate investing. So is your for yourself, is it a mix of like traditional like stock market equity, whatever, fixed income, plus you do some rental properties and stuff like that?
Subbiah
Correct. Yeah, so basically, you when you start growing in your career and then you get to a certain level in your job and we kind of realized, my wife and I, we would talk about this, we were both in capital markets for our job and obviously our 401k and all of that money was in the market, right? So we were really looking for a way to diversify our value industry. That was the main driver behind real estate. our home was of course, you just like many of us, that's our biggest investment. We also have some rental properties and stuff that we primarily did it for diversification, right? In case stock markets go up and down and we wanted to make sure not all of our eggs are in the same basket. So that's kind of how I got involved with real estate, purely from a diversification perspective.
Steve Chen
Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Some some folks I meet in the you know, FI, the financial independence, or it used to be called FIRE, right? Financial independence
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
or whatever. They're all in they're kind of some of them feel like they get kind of quote religious about like I I'm just gonna do the rental property thing and I'm gonna have whatever, twenty rental properties and that's everything. And then that throws off enough income and they just live on that. But that doesn't sound like what you're doing.
Subbiah
Yeah. No, are. are really, you know, diversification has been, you know, you know, has been at the core of how how I think about personal finance, right? So it's it's it's an equal mix because if you really think about, you know, long term, I don't think from a pure returns perspective, real estate will would beat would beat, you know, you know, a stock market in the long run. I was just looking at it, you know, for this podcast. If we just put thousand dollars, you know, in 2006. I would I would literally have $8,900 today. It's it's a cumulative nine times, right? I mean
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah.
Subbiah
you really can't beat it, right? But so we really didn't feel like we should put everything in real estate or here. It's it's really not diversification is how we look at it. Yeah.
Steve Chen
Awesome. How do you how do you educate your kids about this? 'Cause when we were talking you were
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
saying your kids are starting to like build stuff with AI and but also it sounds like you're talking to them and as well.
Subbiah
Yeah, yeah, I would say a lot of lot of how our kids learned is by by seeing us right. It's not the we sat down and then taught them how to do it. It's it's more by watching us over the years, right? How how we how we spend money. Each family has his own spending pattern. You know some some some families go on vacation. Some some go to other stuff. So each of us have spending patterns. So I don't think there's any right or wrong answer, but our kids learn to be. You know, careful with money and just live with an amines and things like that. Just by by watching us and seeing us right, I don't think it was a major. You know, kitchen table like discussion like they kind of knew it, you know. Right, yeah.
Steve Chen
Yeah yeah. Right. That's good. Yeah. How do you how do you think their lives will be different than yours? Like from a finance perspective, 'cause they're kinda c they're they're born into a financially literate household that is already saving money and like has been doing good things for decades, you know.
Subbiah
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, in general I'm I'm very very bullish. know, I have heard you know a lot a lot about you the American Dream and all of that, but I am very bullish about this right now because you know because there is there is, know, of a good times are yet to come. I mean, every time we say we are picked something else comes. I mean AI is a good example. We didn't have this two years ago, right? So and and you know. The biggest innovation prior to that was smartphones, right? And we said, okay, we had peaked, but now AI comes in. So I'm very bullish. And I think, look, I think there are some rules that never change, right? Live within your means, invest, pay attention to, making money is one thing which we all spend a lot of time, but what is painful to watch even with my friends' community is how much time they spend in investing, how much time they don't spend, right? So. It's you know, if you don't invest in your money doesn't multiply. These are some basic rules that I don't think are going to change between our generation and the next one.
Steve Chen
Yeah, yeah. Right. Diversify. How much time do you spend like thinking about your investments or working on them, you know, on an annual basis or quarterly basis?
Subbiah
So that's, think, yeah, if there is one thing that technology is helping me is cut down that time really, right? Because 20 years ago, 15 years ago, you literally have to go to multiple websites and then look at it and almost this whole aggregate exposure and stuff is very hard to do as an individual. I did work every day, but when I came here, there is someone saving, some here, some there, there's literally no way for me to put it together. So I would spend some time. trying to put it in a spreadsheet and stuff. But I think this is where platforms like Boldin are really helping me in terms of it's automatically fed in, all the assets and libraries are all in one place. So you can ask questions and things like this. So it's actually cutting my time. And like I said, my investment strategy is very simple. So SMP 500, Dow Jones. in a total index. I would be lying if I said I had some major complicated strategy. So if you keep it simple, I think you can do a really good job with minimal time, maybe an
Steve Chen
Hundred percent.
Subbiah
hour, hour and a half a week. So I think that's all it takes.
Steve Chen
Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. For sure. I mean I've for what it's worth, I've kind of I should probably put more time in, but I've highly automated. I you know, just kind of saving and investing largely through, you know, qualified, you
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
know, four one K, I think most pe many people do that, or maybe some Roth stuff and HSAs and stuff like that. But it's the vehicles and then it's like have a pretty broad based portfolio and just keep dumping money into it. I mean, rebalancing is important, but you know, even
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
if you but if you get it broadly diversified, that's like And just keep doing it for a long period of time, you should be fine. so okay.
Subbiah
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the power of compounding is something that folks don't think about, but it's amazing how that works, right? So you don't have to be a genius. You just need to be disciplined, I think.
Steve Chen
Well, it's funny. It's like it doesn't when you're when you're younger you don't see that you kind of I think especially for people that start like yourself and and me too, like with essentially nothing and then you build it, it's kind of like watching paint dry for a while. You're like, Okay, nothing's happening. And then you start to have more money and then you're like, Wait a sec, this thing's taking on a life of its own. and
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
people talk about those moments when, you know, their their returns beat their savings rate, right? So then it's just like, you know, you can't save like your savings rate becomes less important as just versus the compounding that's happening in your
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
in your portfolio. And then eventually if it beats your, you know, your withdrawal rate or your safe withdrawal rate, you know, people talk about the safe withdrawal rate of like four or five percent. But then you peop people that are keep keep doing this sometimes are like, well, my safe withdrawal rate is declining because my asset pool, like I'm not really spending more money, but my asset pool is increasing.
Subbiah
Exactly. And he also asked me about my financial independence fire strategy. The way I look at life is you have two levels. One is you can increase your assets. You can make more money. You can work in increased assets. Or the other one is can figure out how much money you need to spend. Those are the two levels you have. I really looked at how much money I would need. Right? You know, realistically with some good scenarios, right? And then that's to me, because the other end, is no end to it. You could keep working. You could keep making money more and more and more. There's no end to it. But I think your how much you need, you know, is pretty capped because you know what you spent the last 30 years fighting that to me is financial independence too. Right? So, you know, hey, you know, so much I really need. Right.
Steve Chen
Right. And you can yeah, you can approach it. do you use the the four percent or the twenty five times like kind of rubric?
Subbiah
Yeah, I mean, yeah, those are those are some guardrails that that you
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah.
Subbiah
kind of roughly know, but I don't think there's any one number. It all depends on on on what your needs are, right? Yeah.
Steve Chen
Right, right. A hundred percent. so you know, shifting to your it kind of institutional side, like how would you you know, say that you know, they think differently versus retail investors?
Subbiah
Yeah, look, mean, know, financial capital markets were very ahead of the curve in technology. You probably remember in NYSE, you used to do a billion trades in 2000, right? So it is heavily, heavily automated, right? So I think, you know, if you look at an institutional investor, know, it does, you know, the level of complexity has increased and increased. It's only going to get worse, right? private investments with real estate. And so now the, what used to be a very small group of investment firms that were investing in these private assets and other areas now that has gotten to almost everybody, right? So now every one of our institutional portfolio is complex, regardless of size, regardless of, you know, regardless of who they are servicing, whether they are servicing, you know, asset owners like an endowment or a 401k, regardless of who they're servicing, they all have gotten. complex, right? So this is why the more technology catches up, the complexity even becomes more complex. So there
Steve Chen
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Subbiah
is always this game where, at least in my career, the complexity seems to be ahead of technology. It's always getting more difficult. So I think this is where a lot of focus on data. And then what do do with the data, which is where AI comes in, is really, we believe, it's going to change how investing works. That's how all the institutional investors are looking at it.
Steve Chen
How w like so I I totally hear you on this. I mean, that things are do become more complex, but and there's also like a battle, like to try to keep things simple. Like as an individual, you try to keep things simple. But like in what ways do you see institutions leveraging data that maybe retail investors aren't doing yet?
Subbiah
Yeah, look, I mean, know, you know, if you look at a typical, you know, institutional investor, right there, their main advantage is number one to search, right? So this is why they're able to handle the complexity, right? So what the level of complexity like a hedge fund or an investment manager is able to do cannot directly apply to an individual investor, right? Because they have teams of teams of analysts who are educated to do this, plus they have technology behind them that they're able to throw some of them spend billions of dollars in research and creating the technology that let them be complex. So I think this
Steve Chen
Yep. Yep.
Subbiah
is why I'm a big fan of investing in mutual funds and stuff because as an individual you cannot take the complexity on you because you're
Steve Chen
Yeah.
Subbiah
not a professional to do that. So that is one angle to it. The other angle to it is where AI and data is helping institutions is lot of mundane stuff that
Steve Chen
Yep.
Subbiah
took up human capital is
Steve Chen
Yep.
Subbiah
now being automated, is now being done by AI. For example, when a portfolio manager of a company that manages $100 billion comes in, they could only analyze their portfolio so many times a month because of human. That's how it was before. They had systems and stuff, but the qualitative analysis, the insights, you could only do so many times. But now
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah.
Subbiah
you could literally have 100 agents look at it every day.
Steve Chen
Yeah, go on.
Subbiah
looking for certain signals, looking for certain exposures, that
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Subbiah
all could be automated. Is it perfect? No. But does it bubble it up so that a
Steve Chen
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Subbiah
human can then curate it? Yes, that's where they're going is how do you do what was done by humans but at scale, right?
Steve Chen
Yeah, yeah.
Subbiah
So that the humans are really looking at the output, right? That's the...
Steve Chen
Yeah. I think there's a parallel. I think it's super interesting. There's like a parallel I see with personal investing is that and like with us, for instance, you know, we're we're trying to help people get a a higher and higher resolution at their situation, right? So like first, okay, you know, hey, I've got money all over the place, you know, where is it? You know, how much home equity do I have? And like what am I paying in taxes? What what's likely to happen? And then it's like, what's happening at the position level? And then how does that reveal like tax opportunities. And so I think as you get a better look at things and you understand the rules, like tack like we're not trying to like our view isn't don't try to beat the market, but just try to take advantage of the market. But you can there are definitely tax opportunities for many people. And there's also around where how things are positioned, how you withdraw it, how you even go across generations. And I think as you start to get a better picture, you can then find these opportunities faster and at scale for many people.
Subbiah
No, absolutely. This is where my interest in personal finance and AI comes in, right? Because what you just said, I'm sure it's happening today, but you need to have $10 million in assets because you need a human to do this, right? I think now it's bringing it down like platforms like Boltran is able to bring it down to because these complexities exist regardless if you have $100,000 or if you have $5 million, it doesn't matter, right? For every individual, these complexities exist. I think AI is going to help put the data together, create insights so a human can make a decision. If you look at personal finance, the hard part is not the decision itself, but the hard part is getting it to a place where I'm seeing numbers, where what happens if I buy a new car? What is it going to do if I buy a new home?
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah.
Subbiah
Those are questions we have every day. But the answer is if we can get a few numbers in front of you that make sense, then you can make the easy decisions. I think that's where I think AI is going to be a big help.
Steve Chen
Yeah, yeah.
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
For sure. I you know, it it's interesting. I think it's it's it is seeing what the opportunities are, right? I think the other big thing with individuals that's different with hu than institutions is that institutions like they're like a business, they're objective about it. It's not their you know, it's a bunch of people's money, right? So they c they're kind of like more objective and their job is to act act on that money and do things with it. I think with individual is with individuals, sometimes it's like first, yeah. Where are the opportunities? So seeing it. But then the second thing is like actually taking action. So sometimes people see what to do, they still don't do it. Like, and that's where like having human financial advisors or maybe even AI to like, Hey, you you know, Steve, you said you were gonna do this, you know, fund your HSA and it like your deadline's approaching. Have you done it? Like, and I got busy,
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
you know, like how do you make make sure that stuff happens?
Subbiah
Yeah, no, I think that's a that's a great point and this is where you know I think as an industry we have to build the confidence in the people that that their data safe. They are able to because this is very personal information that I'm giving. You know giving you know platforms and AI right? I think as an industry we have to you know earn the trust right that you know the same trust that they have with their financial advisor. You got it on it with with AI so that it will tell these things right in a meaningful way right so we can. Yeah, agent can be your counterpart, right, in this journey.
Steve Chen
Right. Do you do you feel on the institutional side? I mean it's AI is still may it's emerging, it's always having like how what are some of the like as how fast do you see it changing? And like
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
how much like I don't know if you can kind of kind of help describe how much you think it will change over the next few years. Because it does
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
feel like I was looking at the Clearwater site for inst for example, and like fully focused on data and agents and AI and you know. Yeah, I'm curious to get your take on that.
Subbiah
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if you look at, you know, at my work, it's not like a choice that we want to use AI or not, because AI is simply embedded within how we think about life, right? Within our products, how we interact with clients, how we do everything, right? So that has already arrived, right? In the fintech, in the tech area that has already arrived, right? So that's not a question anymore. And what is different about For example, we lived through internet, Where in the late 90s, came cloud, then came your handle, like your smartphones and stuff there. We were really talking in terms of years, right? It'll take 10 years before. Now we are literally talking months and in some case weeks, right?
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah.
Subbiah
Because the models, even in, we started using it big time. You know, we have been at this journey for a year and a half, but it really started accelerating somewhere in Q3 last year, Q3,
Steve Chen
Mm-hmm.
Subbiah
Q4 last year. But even in the last six to eight months, we have seen a big difference in how smart the model has gotten, right? So we are really looking at pace of change in terms of months, right? Not, not years, right? And look, this is not without, I mean, I wouldn't. We are nowhere near perfection yet, right? That's definitely not what I'm saying. But things are changing pretty fast. And at a pace where users are beginning to trust what is put in front of them, I'm sure there are some misses, some hallucinations and stuff that is not without
Steve Chen
yeah.
Subbiah
them, but things are changing faster than the last few tech journeys we have had. Absolutely.
Steve Chen
For sure. You know how do you measure like we internally, like we are looking at the, you know, productivity, right, per, you know, engineer, for instance.
Subbiah
Yes.
Steve Chen
but like I like are there other metrics that you use when you think about the impact?
Subbiah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we really like to measure things in terms of output and not activity is kind of how we think about life. The output can be client delight, right? What is you know is our score of a satisfaction score going up right at the end of the day crystallizes what we do right is our sales going up right is our number of tickets that our clients are opening with us going down right? and how many of these tickets are being closed by AI agents. So, are really looking at those outcome. And then there's activity, how many check-ins we are doing, how many code mergers are happening done by AI. So, those are all activity leading up, but our success really lies in client satisfaction, sales bookings,
Steve Chen
Yeah. Right.
Subbiah
and stuff like that. So, we are measuring at the end of the day.
Steve Chen
Yeah. I mean it it is interesting like right right now. It does feel that they you know historically I think like, the internet happened, right, or mobile or cloud, right? And you kind of saw, it's changed, and then you kind of build to the the thing, the capability. But I think in this in this world of AI, it that does feel like these frontier models, their capabilities are accelerating. Like so you're we're accelerating, but they're accelerating. So It and it's not obvious that it's gonna slow down. It in fact it feels like it might continue to accelerate, which is which is where things get crazy because of some of the capabilities that are emerging right now.
Subbiah
No, mean the capabilities are definitely outpacing the current needs is how I think about this. mean, because folks are still trying to figure out what the use cases are, right? But the capabilities are going much faster, right? I'm sure it'll catch up. But at this point, you know where the industry needs to think about is where am going to use these capabilities, right? It's one
Steve Chen
Yeah, right.
Subbiah
of those things that is reverse, you know.
Steve Chen
Yeah. How do you surface internally you know, new use cases? Like how like how do you do you do you have a way of facilitating that or you just kind of like we'll give people these tools and watch what they do with them, you know, inside of your inside of Clearwater?
Subbiah
I mean, look, we have a pretty disciplined product management process. We measure everything. The use case really comes in terms of, if you had to do something, the first question we would ask is, how would you have done this five years ago? And how would you completely rethink how you would do using AI? I think it's a very methodical process we are trying to put in place where we are not leaving it to a chance that we will use AI. I think that's kind of how we are approaching it and it is beginning to work really well.
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it it is fascinating. And and like do you notice do you switch between models when you're doing things like like I we use Claude a lot, so we'll you know, Fable five, you know, versus like Opus or whatever. You know, it's it's it it is do you do you test the capabilities? Like are you switching between models internally?
Subbiah
We definitely do, but because there is a big cost aspect to it, right? Because each model cost differently and we are beginning to look at what is a cost benefit, right? You you can do certain things this way and here is a benefit. But if you use this other model, there are certain aspects of it that are more sophisticated that we might use some more, you know, latest model from from Anthropic versus for everything, right? Because some of them are very expensive and you may not get the cost benefit, right? So that's again. Those are all things we are still learning. right on on on how do you measure success and what what is the cost benefit of a certain model compared to others.
Steve Chen
Right. I don't know if you use if you measure token usage per engineer. I I was I just I think I I'm on I'm not sure this is exactly right, but I I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about I think Ramp has this data. Ramp is a credit card company and they serve tech firms and so they said that the median spend per employee on AI was eleven or twelve dollars a month. But the top one percent was like seventy five hundred dollars per month. You know, that's such a huge Difference.
Subbiah
Exactly, there are some power users that use a lot and we are being to measure the productivity and why and all that. Yeah, that's kind of where we're getting.
Steve Chen
Right. Yeah, for sure. Do do you see, you know, switching back to the personal finance side, do you see the it kind of AI leveling the playing field for individuals and and
Subbiah
It absolutely will. I think one major area is it's leveling the field is what was only available to very high network individuals, Separately, SMAs and they got the service because they had $50 million, whatever the number was, right? And they got the white glove service. They used to call it the white glove service where they had all kinds of reports, all kinds of things handed to them because there was a huge team behind them because you could afford it. Right now. My view is every investor going down, starting like 80,000 regular investors, regular individuals could and will get the same level of service. And if you look at my usage of Boldin, that's kind of what I do. I ask questions every day. What happens if I do this? What happens if I do this? What is my risk? Can you run the scenario? All of that stuff, I can imagine doing it like three years ago. Right, because my financial advisor simply will not have enough time to answer my questions. And
Steve Chen
Yeah. Right.
Subbiah
personal finance is not a once in a six month meeting, right? It's a constant interaction because your life changes every day, right? I think it's definitely going to level the playing field for average investor. That's what
Steve Chen
Yeah.
Subbiah
excites me.
Steve Chen
Yeah. No, that's pretty cool. I mean, I I remember you we were talk we were talking about Boldin AI and like how it yeah, today we have every day three thousand conversations or three thousand people having conversations. And I do think it has changed, right? You the old way was, you know, you had an advisor, they built a plan, they gave it to you, and then they kind of managed your money and then maybe you talk to them once a year or whatever, sometimes. And now I think people are as they have more information and they have more questions and they're I also think they're people are learning faster. And it's it's not only just kind of like I mean, YouTube has been huge, right? But also FinTalk and like social media people they just learn about these techniques and they're just like, wait, could we do this strategy in in house? And i it even among my friends, it's interesting. People come in and they have these way more nuanced ideas about things they could do with their real estate or their investing. So it's
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
interesting to see that emerge.
Subbiah
I mean, running scenario analysis, right? I never thought as an individual investor, I could run scenario analysis, Monte Carlo simulation stuff that you do in in in Bolton. I never thought that will come to an individual investor because there are only for the. Even in the institutional world, that was only for a sophisticated investor, not for every, you know, institution investor, right? So getting that down in like, you we are in the beginning of the journey. Even now, if you're able to get into here, imagine what can happen in the next two years, three years.
Steve Chen
Yeah.
Subbiah
I think it's fascinating.
Steve Chen
Well, I also it's it's just interesting for teams like I mean, you know, as our bus like I think if you asked us you know, a year ago or eighteen months ago, we're like, well, we're building this really cool like planning software to empower lots of people and and we're still doing that and helping trying to educate a lot of people. But now when we look at these capabilities, we're also like, I think we're gonna end up being more like a full service financial services company where it's not just gonna be planning, but we'll actually get into like you're gonna see us like helping people think about their portfolios in a much more granular way, cash drag, bees,
Subbiah
Yes.
Steve Chen
you know, risk tolerance, how you're invested. And then we can keep going. Well, would you like us to automate that, you know, across your whole household? Do you need an estate plan? Do you need a retirement income, like pretty particular retirement income? I mean, there's all these things that are like you start to feel and I you know, as a small company, right? But I'm sure in inside of, you know, your company at Clearwater and stuff that you guys you know, your ambition goes up. You're like, well, yeah, like why not? Like let's let's bring all this power to to the individual.
Subbiah
Yeah. Exactly, because once you have a trusted user community who's trusting you with the data, right? And then what you can do with it, even basic asset allocation, we're back in you because again, we have to keep in mind these investors don't need. complicated investment strategy. All they need is a is a basic straightforward investment strategies that they can understand. That's all they're asking for, right? It's not like it doesn't have to be. A major call put parity kind of sophisticated thing. It can be basic investing right back and I find opportunities that can you find better savings rate back? Can I? How can you tap into your home equity loan? Just basic stuff, right?
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah.
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
Like how yeah, I have a question. Like, you know, I'm looking at you know, in your institutional side, you know, companies are spinning up agents to do work, right? You know, in parallel with human workers. d d would you trust a human like do do you see that coming to life in personal finance and you personally would you like say, Hey, go book me a trip or go make this like money transfer for me or something like that? I mean, like what where do or and where do you think that's headed?
Subbiah
I mean, I think it's only a matter of time, right? It's only a matter of time that that you know we used to call travel agents right now that is not going to think right and we just go to any number of traveling sites and we book it right. You know we went to a teller and to the bank to make transfers. Now you know we do it on a website, but it's still automated right? I don't think if you can wrap an MCP around it, there's no reason why I can't tell me agent to make a transfer. It's it's not. I don't think it is. I think it's a matter of. Again, I would go back to earning the trust right to the extent that as as a industry we can earn the trust of the of the individual investor. I think they will be OK to do a lot of things and then the sophistication. Is you know, you know, as you go along, you got to that. They might be OK with the bank transfer, but not make a huge investment decision yet, right? But I think it's a matter of time. Yeah.
Steve Chen
Right. It's kinda it's kind of interesting. Do we end up I mean, we we you know, we put an C P server around some of our capabilities as a test. We've had people you y basically, you know, you could come and say go talk to Claude and say, Hey, I wanna go build a financial plan. It could come to Boldin, login and create stuff and come back with that. You know, I do think that we'll be part of the future. But also I think people wanna know who their agents are dealing with as well, you know. So
Subbiah
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah, I think agent to agent communication is becoming a big thing, right? To the extent that you you can can you can imagine a situation where you know you have an MCP server. You have an agent that is interacting with the agent from Bank of America, right? To make a transfer right? That's that's doable right today.
Steve Chen
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Subbiah
You you log into a website and do it. To the extent that you are authenticating it that I don't see that as a big stretch right or make a trade in Schwab or make a trade in. fidelity in a of things. I think today humans are doing it. They're logging in, doing it, and to the extent that you can pass an order. Because remember, institutions have been doing it for years. Somebody's sitting on an OMS, and they're starting a trade, and it is getting executed in JV Morgan, and then it comes back. That is happening today at the institution. Not like humans are calling somebody to make a trade. So I think
Steve Chen
Right. Yeah.
Subbiah
people are used to it in an institutional setting, and I think they will get used to it in a personal size setting too.
Steve Chen
Right. Right. It yeah, it's it's it's just amazing how you know how c it'll it'll be interesting how quickly it's adopted. I think maybe the maybe the limiting factor will just be like, yeah, probably will be just humans learning to trust this and and having confidence that their financial decisions and and actions they want taken are going to be executed and then controlled, and then you know, they can they can still kind of keep their hands on the control, right? It's like, you know.
Subbiah
Yeah, no, no, definitely. I'm not. I'm not definitely suggesting that you know agents would would be a replacement for a financial advisor who's a fiduciary. I'm not saying it, but what I am saying is I think it will give us good data so that fiduciary or the individual can make the right decision, right? I think the biggest battle with personal finance is just getting the information to a place where you can make a decision, right? I think AI can get us all the way there. And then you can facilitate decision, whether it is the individual or the financial advisor.
Steve Chen
Yeah, for sure. I mean it you know, for many of our users they have complicated situations. They've got money at different custodians, for one K here, IRA here, banks, you know, maybe a couple of banks and then they're dealing with their kids as well and like different generations and they've got to think with their housing and their mortgage and optimize, keep track of everything and and kind of, you know, yeah, make sure it's secure. So I do feel like like being able to kind of ride herd on all of that is people are gonna need help with it and And and you know, if we had into this abundant future, people are probably gonna have more money and more resources. So
Subbiah
Yeah, yeah, and and more types of investments and stuff and and that will hopefully you know platforms like burn can help them optimize it if the money is sitting in a savings account. Why not do this? And you know those are all things that people don't do it because of inertia, right? They don't. They actually don't. We don't get up and do it right. So these simple things if it's automated, maybe that will help folks make better financial decisions, right?
Steve Chen
How when when you on the back on the institutional side, so you're using agents and your partners are using agents and the agent to agent, d do you feel like like how would you characterize Clearwater adoption versus other companies? 'Cause it does feel like there's a range, you know, for some of these businesses about how quickly they move to adopt things and you know, do you do you
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
see any patterns there?
Subbiah
Yeah, no, no, we have been in this journey for over two years now, right? So we are, you know, we are. I want to say we are ahead, but look, everybody is in this race, right? So I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say we are years ahead. You know, I like I would measure it in months, right? And look, everybody's making progress, right? But what I find is at the end of the day, all the progress that is being made by different parties, whether it's Clearwater or others is. at the end of the day, adding efficiency to the whole process, know, clients are doing their job better. So the market itself is making more efficient. This is kind of where I see this going is as we individually add efficiencies, right? You know, how do you interact with the two institutions? It used to be human, it used to be email, now it can be agents, right? So it's documented, it's self-healing, right? I think it's going to infuse efficiency to the system, right, overall, absolutely.
Steve Chen
Okay. Yeah. Any any huge lessons that you think individuals can take from the institutional side? So institutions are running ahead, they're doing this stuff with a
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
lot of data and a lot of money. Are are there any things that like things that have blown up along the way or big insights that you've gotten that you think, hey, consumers should we think
Subbiah
Yeah,
Steve Chen
about this?
Subbiah
yeah, I mean would would would go back to simple rules that that that Warren Buffett would always say right, you know, don't do things you don't understand right. You don't have to understand how MCP works, but you need to understand at a very basic level what you're investing in right? What you are in also the same would would apply to you know to hearing before you give the data do some basic due diligence on the firm on on who you're giving the data right? If you don't understand certain things as an individual, I wouldn't do it. Because institutions have a lot more checks and balances and things for errors, but as individuals we don't. So that is the biggest advice I would give you is keep the strategy simple. Because this is not a full-time job. I think people have to make up their mind, right? If he's investing a full-time job, then that's a whole different level. But if you are investing to grow your assets, when you're doing your, when you have a day job, then, you know, keep it simple, right? Even simplest things, you know, would, you don't need to be a genius to make money, right? You know, it's just discipline is what I would strongly propose, right? With or without AI, right?
Steve Chen
Okay. Yeah, yeah. all right. So I want to shift a little bit to kind of the well, people getting started now, and then also we'll talk a little bit more with the future. But for people that are early and they're like, I don't really try like because I think you know, majority of this country or a huge part of this country does not like AI. Like data centers and they're or they're not surely trustworthy of it. But if people are kind of curious and they're like, this is happening, I want to get started. Any tips on Like for you as an end user, like how like how they can start approaching this and learning about it.
Subbiah
I mean, you use of AI, you know, in your, mean, if financial life is a bit more complicated for you that you don't want to go there yet, use of AI in your day-to-day stuff, you know, on Amazon, on Google, right? Being able to book, think you can, my sense is you cannot avoid AI for a long time, right? Imagine if somebody said, I don't like the internet, I don't want to use it. Imagine somebody said that, right? Or I don't want to use a smartphone these days. I don't want to do that, right? I don't think you can hold up much longer, right? But that is not to say you should completely trust everything I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. But I think I would get used to the idea that it's here. And there are some good legitimate uses of it. And I will start with things that are comfortable, know, booking a reservation at a restaurant, booking, you know, things like that. And then you can, I would, would certainly, you know, you know, start thinking about how the supplies to your bank, right? things that you trust, but how do you layer in AI on top of it, right? Then it's like, how do I connect data from two or three of my assets so I can look at it, right? Just take it in steps,
Steve Chen
Right. Right.
Subbiah
but I would not avoid it because it's coming, right?
Steve Chen
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Subbiah
And we are missing out a lot if we completely say, I don't like it.
Steve Chen
Right, right. I think if you start using these tools, you'll see how quickly
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
they're moving. And it's always you can just start asking it anything. I mean, I think you know, y people are worried, like how do I pro you could just start talking to it and they even have voice, you know, and just s go back and forth with it, see what it a ask it any question and you know it it's pretty interesting.
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
yeah, like in terms of you know, but as people use it, I do think they should like I always feel like, hey, the most important thing we learn in school is how to be a critical thinker. And like with us hallucinations and stuff like that, I also like, hey, we you have to ad acknowledge that AI is can be wrong and sometimes is wrong and and and not always accept everything that it says.
Subbiah
Absolutely, you look, you know, there are many, scenarios, you know, even, you know, in the bold and platform, you know, look through it, right? You know, because I wouldn't just, it'll come back and say, I missed it. Good catch. It's here. It's here. all the time, because I would, I would, I would ask the question. The answer wouldn't sound right. Or it'll be too good to true. When I dig in and ask questions, it'll come back and say, I missed the piece. I miss his expense or I missed his income or whatever that happens to be. Right. So I would, yeah, I would be. Just like anything in life, I would be skeptical about this because it's your money, right?
Steve Chen
Yeah. Right.
Subbiah
At the end of the day, it's your responsibility, regardless of what tools you use, you are at the end of the day in the driver's seat. So I would be skeptical, would ask questions and I would, know,
Steve Chen
Right.
Subbiah
yeah.
Steve Chen
Well, I think it's interesting. Like people are always like, Well, AI needs to be perfect, otherwise it's bad. But like if you talk to a typical human, human get some else makes lots of mistakes, human beings, right? You know, you're talking to some random person,
Subbiah
Exactly.
Steve Chen
ask them a question, then it's like give you a totally wrong answer. even when you're calling like the government, people tal say, I was gonna go claim social security. I called the So Social Security Administration to ask about how I should claim this. And, you know, they can give you mostly it's good, but they can also give you wildly wrong answers. so you have to
Subbiah
Absolutely, yeah, it's it's it's it's like anything else, right? So it's going to be, know, you don't want to, you know, kill the kill the good for the perfect right? So yeah, it's it's a journey.
Steve Chen
Yeah. So, you know, as we as we kind of go to wrap up here, I'm curious, like, as you look forward, you know, five years from now, which feels like like and these days I feel like I have no idea what the world's gonna look like in five years right now. But like how do you think this might come to life and and and and then also what would you be like excited about and what would you be worried about?
Subbiah
I am very, very excited. I'm very excited about this prospect, right? Because the innovation would, one thing I would never do is bet against American innovation, right? Because if you look at the big things, the internet, the cloud, the smartphones, it's all, that's what is changing our life and this will be one of them, right? AI will absolutely be one of them. And in my mind, In five years, I think we'll be at a state where AI will tell us, there is a better return. Why are you not refinancing your mortgage? Here is the rate. Here is a bank. So I think it will create a lot more ecosystems where, even in Boulder, if you're connected to the banks, because you know what the mortgage is, what the rate is, you can tell somebody, hey, you're at a 7 % rate. Here is a bank that is. Offering you at four and even if you take the closing cost, you'll still make money in five years, right? And use savings rate. Why not in this? You know why not in this particular mutual fund? Why you why is your money in this fund, right? I think it's a lot you can do. I think it will happen where this will truly be like having a human advisor next to you, right? Where on a daily basis, much more interactive and then you go to your financial advisor for checkups to make sure you're not completely. on a tangent, I think this is where I see them. And that is the promise in my mind of AI for individual investor who doesn't matter what an asset level is. That's the beauty of this. It doesn't matter if they have 3 million or if they have 120,000. People have these complexities. And I think the promise is, think everybody will benefit from this if we think about it the right way.
Steve Chen
Yeah, a hundred percent. D is there anything that you worry about? Do you think there's a downside scenario here?
Subbiah
Yeah, look, just like anything else, comes with the downside that you pull down autopilot. And then at the end of the day, you are responsible for all the decisions that are being made. It's being made on your behalf. there's nothing to say, hey, AI did it. It doesn't matter who did it. Especially when it comes to personal finance, the more you automate, the good side is you're investing more, your 401Q is automated and all of that stuff. But on the flip side, if you are two hands off, which you could, right, then something goes wrong and then you're, you don't know who to blame except yourself, right? That is one thing I would always worry about is it's just like self-driving car, right? If you meet with an accident, you are in the car. It doesn't matter who drove it, right? So I think it's a very similar thing. have to have the hand in the steering, you know.
Steve Chen
Hundred percent. Do you do you think I mean, like in your own journey, right? You've you've had obviously a big career, good career, you've are financially independent, you can kind of do what you want, but you you enjoy your work. I I also feel like we're headed kind of towards this abundant future and we might see people having the option to work twenty hours a week, thirty hours a week, and then being
Subbiah
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Chen
more intentional about that. Like like, do you have any view on the on how that emerges and if you think that'll happen?
Subbiah
Yeah, yeah, I certainly do. It will happen because my view is this generation of kids, right? The one next to us always saw their parents being extremely busy with work, right? Because you know the last 4050 years, right? You know you know that kind of took off and look a lot of wealth was created, right? It's not like it didn't come for free. A lot of wealth was created because people put in the time and and you know 60 over weeks, 70 over weeks, traveling and all this. So they are now asking. do I need to do the same thing? And they have the luxury of asking that because the previous generation did all this work and there's a certain amount of wealth, I think that will all lead to, I do something different? And then different can be, can I only work 20 hours a week? Can I do off, can I be remote? Can I do that? Can I retire in 40? This is one thing
Steve Chen
Yeah.
Subbiah
I hear a lot these days is I'm gonna retire. I think it's all change, it's for the better.
Steve Chen
I I think people younger people have a lot more context. Like one of my kids is a young adult and I was talking with him and he was like I was like, Well, you know I mean out here I'll give you some crazy stories like so I I met with someone in the wealth space and they were talking to a twenty five year old at anthropic who was worth a hundred million dollars. A hundred million. It's insane.
Subbiah
Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Chen
Right. And they're like, All right, you know, I was telling this to my son and and he was like, you know, yeah, but like I you know, he's an entrepreneur and and he was like yeah but you know I I control my schedule, I work with people I like, you know, I have great
Subbiah
Now.
Steve Chen
work life balance. I I just feel like there's i he he's talking like a someone who has a lot more context in their lives about
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
and perspective, you know, 'cause I think when I was, you know, in my early twenties, I was like, Well You know, my my scope of view worldview was kind of like, Well, I gotta get a job, pay off my some student loans, make money and like whatever, you know. And these guys like
Subbiah
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Chen
kind of step back and be like, Well, there's a whole world and how are we gonna what's our what's our life to
Subbiah
Well,
Steve Chen
be like?
Subbiah
yeah, I would think he was very linear, right? I mean, now it's it's geometric and I had a growth is everything is geometry. It's not linear anymore, right? So it's it's not going to take them 40 years to get to where we were, right? It'll be like quicker, much quicker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Chen
Right. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, it'll be interesting how it how it evolves. Okay. well look, Subia, this is this has been great. really appreciate you taking the time and bringing your perspective kind of the institutional side and how you work in AI and data and like what you're seeing out there on the cutting edge. And I and it's been great to kind of just talk about like what's happening today. Anything else you want to share with our audience before we we wrap it up?
Subbiah
No, this is it's been a great conversation. Thank you. Thank you for your you know for the opportunity. The only thing I will leave you is with is with you know you don't have to be a you know a major financial risk to do this right. It's just discipline and and and just do what you understand and I think you'll do well. That's that's departing you know thinking.
Steve Chen
Yeah, a hundred percent. No, it's great to see, you know, like I I feel like our community is full of people like yourself that have been like kind of, you know, making prudent choices, doing it for a long period of time and and then having success and then getting through that success, having agency and control and and also like people are hopefully we all live longer lives too. And so then it's like really choosing how to invest our human capital, you know, as as as we go forward.
Subbiah
Yeah.
Steve Chen
Awesome. Well everyone, thanks for you know, Sabia, thanks for jumping on and everyone for listening. Thank you for listening. And if a couple of things we'll leave a link to Subia if you want to learn learn more about his background and also any reviews of this are highly welcome and if you check out Boldin, we we appreciate it. So with that, thank you very much.
Subbiah
Thank you.
