Laura Adams talks tech, growth, and the potential for women in the industry
Artificial intelligence (AI) will certainly play a key role in the wealth management industry in the years ahead, but will that be good or bad news for advisors?
One of the global financial services industry’s biggest players is leveraging AI for the benefit of its advisor teams and client-focused agents, mindful of the potential for misinformation by over-reliance on technology.
Laura Adams, managing director and head of institutional sales and trading at Morgan Stanley Canada Limited and the CEO of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Canada, spoke to BNN Bloomberg and revealed how the firm is prioritizing safety in its AI usage.
“Morgan Stanley has actually invested in OpenAI a couple years ago and we have been working and leveraging that technology to build our own solution that is based on a closed network,” she explained.
Being a ‘closed network’ is the important point here, as Adams explains that the technology uses only Morgan Stanley internal data which means advisors are only accessing validated information.
“I think that's where a lot of the focus has been around safety and regulation,” she added.
The aim is to help advisors be more efficient when searching for answers to client matters, and to help with productivity, although she was not drawn on how this may impact jobs in future.
Canadian growth
Morgan Stanley has been operating in Canada since the 1960s, mostly with an institutional focus.
But wealth management is a clear part of the Wall Street firm’s strategy and it has been growing by stealth in Canada.
In 2019, it acquired Solium, a Calgary-based global provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) for equity administration, financial reporting and compliance.
Morgan Stanley said at the time that the plan was to be an industry leader in Workplace Wealth Solutions.
“The acquisition provides Morgan Stanley with broader access to corporate clients and a direct channel to their employees, as well as a greater opportunity to establish and develop relationships with a younger demographic and service this population early in their wealth accumulation years,” said James Gorman, chairman and CEO on announcing the acquisition.
Solium has since been renamed Shareworks by Morgan Stanley and is part of the banking behemoth’s suite of workplace financial solutions.
In her BNN Bloomberg interview, Laura Adams reaffirmed her firm’s corporate wealth position.
“That is really where we are focused on delivering our initial wealth management approach is helping those corporates with financial education, with equity compensation, with planning, administration, pension and rolling that into the country for Canadian employees and residents,” she said.
Being different
Adams also spoke about what makes Morgan Stanley different in the Canadian wealth management space.
Scale is the main thing - its global footprint and the close working relationship between Canadian and US wealth management teams.
But that focus on corporate wealth solutions is also a less common path for expansion.
Adams also talked about being a woman in wealth management, given her 24 years of experience in the industry.
Although she acknowledged that there are some amazing women in the industry, she said representation of women was “stubbornly pathetic.”
She was lucky to have a role model in her aunt, who was a portfolio manager, and grew up believing she could do it. But the industry needs more trailblazers.
“We need more, more role models of women who are doing it and who have balanced lives, are able to have families, are able to give back to the community and still kill it at work,” she urged.
