With Susie Cranston, CEO, Cresset | Kelly Wagman, PhD, Director, Head of AI Strategy, Cresset
Cresset CEO Susie Cranston and Head of AI Strategy Kelly Wagman explore the modern family office, AI as a scale enabler, human-led advice, equity, culture, and what Cresset is building next.
In Summary
What does the modern multi-family office really look like—and how might AI change what it can deliver?
Cresset has grown from an idea less than a decade ago into a national wealth management and family office firm with more than $250B in assets under management and advisement and more than 700 professionals. Yet its next chapter isn’t simply about getting bigger. It’s about finding new ways to extend highly customized advice and family office capabilities while preserving the human relationships at the center of the model.
CEO Susie Cranston and Kelly Wagman, PhD, Director and Head of AI Strategy, share how Cresset is approaching that challenge. Susie draws on lessons from helping build First Republic’s wealth management business – including the importance of a client-first culture, empowered advisors, and balance-sheet strength – while Kelly explains how Cresset is using AI, integrated data, and firm-specific tools to give advisors greater leverage.
The result is a look at a modern family office where technology may expand what advisors can deliver rather than diminish their role—and where culture, ownership, talent, and human advice remain fundamental to the firm’s vision for growth.
The Storyline
The family office has traditionally been a difficult model to scale. Its value comes from knowing a family deeply and coordinating an increasingly complex set of needs that can stretch from investments and estate planning to family governance, tax strategy, bill pay, household management, and even security.
Cresset has invested heavily in that infrastructure from its earliest days. Today, approximately 150 professionals are dedicated to family office services, supporting a broader organization with more than $250B in assets under management and advisement.
For Susie, the model also reflects lessons learned during more than a decade at First Republic. She describes how a deeply client-centric culture and empowered client-facing professionals helped create extraordinary loyalty and growth. But the bank’s collapse also left her with an appreciation for the importance of a “fortress balance sheet” and a clearer understanding of the tradeoffs that can come when banking and wealth management coexist within the same organization.
Topics Covered
- What defines a true multi-family office—and why dedicated infrastructure matters
- How Cresset grew to more than $250B in assets under management and advisement
- Lessons Susie carried from First Republic to Cresset
- Why client-first cultures depend on empowering client-facing professionals
- The importance of balance-sheet strength and business-model structure
- How Cresset approaches family office wealth strategy and wealth administration
- Why AI may make sophisticated family office capabilities more scalable
- How integrated data can improve speed, personalization, and advisor productivity
- Cresset’s approach to building AI tools versus working with outside vendors
- Why security, compliance, and data ownership matter in an AI strategy
- How Cresset thinks about culture, equity, and advisor alignment
- Equity versus cash when advisors evaluate potential partnerships
- Independence versus joining a scaled wealth management platform
- Why AI may increase rather than reduce the value of human advice
- Cresset’s vision for talent, leadership, and the next decade of the firm
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Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors
Cresset Today: $250B+, 700+ Professionals and a National Footprint (06:28)
Susie describes Cresset today, including its wealth management, institutional consulting, and family office capabilities—and an ownership structure in which employees and clients own approximately 80% of the firm.
Lessons From First Republic’s Client-First Culture (08:30)
Susie explains why doing what is right for the client—even when it carries a short-term economic cost—can create long-term loyalty, referrals, and a stronger business. She also shares why empowering client-facing professionals was critical to First Republic’s culture.
The Hard Lesson: A “Fortress Balance Sheet” (12:19)
The collapse of First Republic changed how Susie thinks about financial strength, risk, and the tradeoffs involved when banking and wealth management are combined.
Why Cresset—and Why the Independent RIA Model? (14:57)
Susie explains what attracted her to Cresset: a client-centric culture, strong balance sheet, and an independent structure capable of serving the increasingly complex needs of ultra-high net worth families.
What Does a Real Family Office Look Like? (20:31)
With approximately 100 advisors and 150 professionals dedicated to family office services, Susie explains the infrastructure Cresset has built to extend well beyond traditional investment management.
AI as a Family Office Scale Enabler (23:53)
Susie explains how AI could help extend services such as bill pay and tax support to a broader range of clients and family members—using technology to scale expertise that historically has been difficult and expensive to deliver.
The AI Opportunity Starts With Integrated Data (25:22)
Kelly explains why Cresset views data as foundational to its AI strategy and how it could support faster answers, more personalization, and more advisor time devoted to clients.
Beyond Investments: What Family Office Clients Actually Need (28:15)
From estate and tax planning to family governance, household payroll, travel logistics, and security, Susie offers a practical look at the complexity behind comprehensive family office service.
Culture, Alignment and the Case for Cresset (33:17)
Susie explains why Cresset puts culture first when considering advisor teams or institutional partners—and why ownership and alignment are important parts of the firm’s proposition.
Equity as a Currency for Advisor Wealth Creation (36:24)
Susie discusses the potential advantages of equity, why Cresset does not require advisors to take it, and why the right answer depends on an advisor’s circumstances and objectives.
Joining a Firm vs. Building Your Own (39:14)
Susie offers a balanced perspective on independence, including the economics, infrastructure requirements, and a more personal question: How much does an advisor actually want to be their own boss?
Cresset’s AI “Sweet Spot” (42:06)
Kelly describes Cresset as large enough to invest meaningfully in AI but small enough to remain nimble, allowing it to build firm-specific tools and capabilities around its own data and workflows.
Key Takeaways
A real family office requires real infrastructure.
The term “family office” has become increasingly common across wealth management, but Cresset defines it through dedicated capabilities and people. Its offering extends beyond investments into tax and estate planning, family governance and education, bill pay, household administration, payroll, logistics, and other complex family needs.
AI could change the economics of high-touch family office service.
Many family office capabilities are expensive and difficult to scale because they rely on specialized professionals. Cresset sees AI as a way to leverage that expertise more broadly, potentially bringing sophisticated services to more members of a family and a wider range of clients.
The AI strategy is ultimately a data strategy.
Kelly explains that Cresset’s approach goes beyond adopting general-purpose AI tools. Integrated firm data, custom capabilities, build-versus-buy decisions, compliance, security, and thoughtful implementation are central to creating meaningful value for advisors and clients.
Human advice may become more valuable—not less.
AI can accelerate information retrieval, automate routine work, and increase personalization. But Kelly argues that trust becomes even more important when technology can generate many different answers. The combination of a trusted person working with AI may prove more powerful than either alone.
Culture and ownership remain central to Cresset’s growth model.
Susie sees culture as a prerequisite for any advisor or firm joining Cresset. Equity can then create another form of alignment by allowing advisors to participate in the enterprise value they help create.
Scale should create capability, not simply size.
Cresset’s thesis is that its position between very large institutions and smaller independent firms can offer an advantage: sufficient resources to invest in talent, technology, data, and family office infrastructure while remaining nimble enough to put those capabilities to work.
Quotable Moments
Susie:
“If you always do the right thing for the client, and you’re always delivering the very best you can for the end client, good things happen.”
“AI is going to be a tool that really enables that scale.”
“Clients are saying they want more human advice, not less, in the world of AI.”
“We always say we do culture first no matter what.”
Kelly:
“Cresset really is at that sweet spot of being big enough to be able to invest in the space, but small enough that we can still be nimble.”
“People are better when they’re working with a person who is then working with AI.”
FAQs
What is a multi-family office?
A multi-family office provides coordinated wealth management and other specialized services to multiple ultra-high net worth families. Susie explains that Cresset’s capabilities include investment management as well as estate and tax planning, family governance and education, bill pay, household administration, payroll, travel and logistics, and other services required by complex families.
How is Cresset using AI in its family office model?
Susie and Kelly describe AI as a way to scale the knowledge and capabilities of Cresset’s family office professionals, automate certain workflows, improve access to information, increase personalization, and give advisors more time to interact with clients. The firm is also developing Cresset-specific AI tools and capabilities around its data and internal knowledge.
Can AI make family office services available to more clients?
That is one of the opportunities Susie sees. Services that traditionally require significant amounts of specialized human labor may become more scalable through AI and automation, potentially allowing Cresset to extend certain family office capabilities to clients or family members at different wealth levels.
Does Cresset believe AI will replace financial advisors?
No. Kelly says she is not concerned about AI eliminating the advisor’s role, particularly in the ultra-high net worth market. Instead, she expects AI to raise expectations for speed and personalization while increasing the value of a trusted human advisor who knows how to use the technology effectively.
What did Susie learn from First Republic?
Susie points to First Republic’s client-first culture and the empowerment of client-facing professionals as important drivers of its success. Its collapse also reinforced for her the importance of maintaining a strong balance sheet and understanding the risks and tradeoffs created when different financial businesses are combined.
Why does Cresset emphasize equity for advisors?
Susie views equity as a way for advisors to participate in the enterprise value they help create. Cresset does not require teams to take equity, but she argues that ownership can provide alignment, distributions, potential appreciation, and participation in future liquidity events.
What should advisors consider when comparing independence with joining a firm like Cresset?
Susie suggests advisors examine both the economics and what they actually want from their careers. Building an independent RIA can provide control and ownership, but it also requires responsibility for compliance, custodians, infrastructure, operations, and other functions. For advisors who primarily want to serve clients and grow, joining a larger platform may offer a different tradeoff.
What is Cresset building for its next chapter?
Susie describes a continued focus on comprehensive wealth management and family office capabilities, investment in experienced talent, and AI-enabled tools that can improve service and scalability. Despite advances in technology, she expects people and human-led advice to remain central to the firm’s strategy.
Related Resources
Susie Cranston
CEO
Susie Cranston serves as CEO of Cresset, an award-winning multi-family office and private investment firm. In this role, she leads the development and execution of the firm’s strategic objectives and drives scalable growth. In close partnership with founders Eric Becker and Avy Stein, and alongside Cresset’s executive leadership team, she oversees day-to-day business functions and enterprise-wide initiatives. Her leadership is guided by Cresset’s core commitment to delivering exceptional service and keeping clients at the center of every strategic and operational decision.
Susie most recently served as the Chief Operating Officer at First Republic Bank, where she was responsible for the sales, client service, operations, strategic planning, and administrative management of the First Republic Investment Management business. After the firm’s acquisition by JP Morgan Chase, Susie served as the COO and Head of Integration.
Susie originally joined First Republic in 2013 as EVP of Private Wealth Management, moving on to build one of the most successful wealth management businesses in the industry. She started her career at McKinsey & Company, where she spent 12 years consulting in various roles of increasing seniority and focused on strategy, risk management, and transformational change for financial services companies.
Active in the San Francisco business community, Susie is a “Forever Influential” honoree and three-time recipient of the San Francisco Business Times “Most Influential Women in Business” designation and a member of C200. Susie is also a board member of the Commonwealth Club. She has authored several published articles and a book on women and leadership, How Remarkable Women Lead.
Susie earned a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering and an MBA in business from Stanford University.
Kelly Wagman
Director, Head of AI Strategy
Kelly Wagman serves as Director, Head of AI Strategy at Cresset, where she leads initiatives to help advisors and teams harness artificial intelligence to enhance client service and drive business outcomes. She brings deep expertise at the intersection of human-centered design, advanced AI systems, and enterprise technology.
Prior to joining Cresset, Kelly earned a doctorate in computer science from the University of Chicago, specializing in human-centered AI. She has also worked in venture capital, focusing on AI startups, and at Microsoft, where she developed enterprise software products. In addition to her PhD, she holds a master’s degree from MIT and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University.
Kelly is a frequent speaker and writer on the future of AI in the workplace. Outside of work, she enjoys hiking and skiing, travel and exploring Chicago’s food and arts scene.
Disclaimer: Cresset and its representatives may, from time to time, appear on third-party media outlets, including television programs, podcasts, or online publications. Such appearances are for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation by the media outlet of Cresset or its services.
Cresset did not provide any compensation to, and did not receive any compensation from, the media outlet in connection with these appearances.
References to Cresset by third-party media are independent of Cresset and are based solely on publicly available information or the outlet’s own editorial discretion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation.
View the transcript of this episode...
The Modern Family Office: Cresset’s CEO & Head of AI on Building for the Future
A conversation with Louis Diamond and Susie Cranston, CEO of Cresset, and Kelly Wagman, PhD, Director and Head of AI Strategy at Cresset.
Louis Diamond:
Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is The Modern Family Office: Cresset’s CEO & Head of AI on Building for the Future. It’s a conversation with CEO Susie Cranston and director, head of AI strategy, Kelly Wagman. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors.
Mindy Diamond:
At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned.
And each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002.
Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual advisor transition report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent.
Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. To download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport.
Louis Diamond:
For a long time, the family office model has been defined by something that’s inherently difficult to scale. Highly customized advice, deep knowledge of a family, an entire ecosystem of services that can extend well beyond investments into tax and estate planning, family governance, bill pay, household management, security, and just about anything else a complex family might need.
But AI has the potential to change that equation, not by replacing the people delivering that advice, but by helping firms bring more expertise, information, and personalization to more clients and potentially expand the kind of family office experience that historically has only been available to the wealthiest families. That’s one of the ideas behind what Cresset is building today.
My guests are Susie Cranston, CEO of Cresset and Kelly Wagman, a PhD, the firm’s director, and head of AI strategy. Cresset was founded by Eric Becker and Avy Stein in 2017. And here’s a quick tip. If you do a search for Cresset in our podcast archives, you’ll find an early episode with Avy along with several from top advisors who call the firm home.
Today, the firm has grown to more than 250 billion in assets under management and advisement with more than 700 professionals in a significant infrastructure dedicated specifically to family office services. After serving in leadership positions at First Republic Bank and JP Morgan Chase, Susie joined Cresset in 2024 as president and was recently appointed CEO in March of this year.
Susie offers a perspective on what she learned from her experience at client-centric First Republic, and how that’s helped her build on the already strong foundation at Cresset. And now she’s taking on the next big thing, how AI can serve as a force multiplier for their model, a charge led by Kelly. We talk about what a true multifamily office looks like today, where AI can create real leverage for advisors and clients, and why both Susie and Kelly believe the future of wealth management will require more human advice, not less, and how AI can help facilitate that.
We also get into Cresset’s culture, its use of equity as a currency for growth and alignment, and Susie’s vision for the firm’s next decade. Because the interesting question isn’t whether AI changes the family office, it’s what the family office can become because of it. Let’s get to it.
Susie and Kelly, thank you for joining us today.
Susie Cranston:
It is our pleasure. We are thrilled to be here. Thank you for having us.
Louis Diamond:
Awesome. Susie, I’ll direct the first question to you. Can you tell us about your professional journey? I know it was a little bit different than most and how you found your way to First Republic, which I believe was your first job within our amazing industry.
Susie Cranston:
So, the first decade of my career I was at McKinsey. While I didn’t work for a wealth management firm, I did consult in the financial services space. So I spent a little over a decade after studying engineering and as an undergraduate in the wealth space as a consultant, and really decided after I’d been in McKinsey for about 10 years that it would be great to work in a company, but I believe deeply that you’re going to work for a company, it’s got to be a client first company. It’s got to be a company that has a great culture.
And so as I was looking around within San Francisco where I’m from, First Republic seemed like a great stop. And so I spent a little over a decade there building primarily our wealth management business, which was about 25 billion in AUM when I joined and about 250 billion when we became part of JP Morgan 10 years later.
Louis Diamond:
Amazing. And we’ll get into aspects of the time at First Republic. Everyone’s interested to hear more. Kelly, similar question for you. So I know we’ll spend some real time digging into AI and what Cresset’s up to on the AI front a little bit later, but can you give our audience a little bit of perspective on your background and what your role is at Cresset?
Kelly Wagman:
Sure. I’m the head of AI strategy here at Cresset. I’ve been here for about a year. Previously I did a PhD in computer science focused on AI, and I also worked at Microsoft for a number of years doing enterprise software development. So I am relatively new to the wealth management industry, but very excited about the intersection of technology and business.
Louis Diamond:
Amazing. Very succinct answer. And if you ever get stumped on the industry, AI can help you understand it better. So Susie, for you. So for listeners who maybe aren’t as familiar with Cresset, and we can’t assume they caught earlier episodes we did with some of your partners like Avy Stein and Justin Berman and Wen, how would you describe the firm today? Who’s it for and what makes Cresset different?
Susie Cranston:
Thank you. Well, so today Cresset has a little over 250 billion in assets and management and advisement. We are a nationwide firm, so we have over 25 locations nationwide and over 700 professionals delivering services that range from wealth management to institutional consulting, to family office services.
And it’s been an incredible journey. Cresset isn’t even 10 years old yet, but it has been a really rewarding one. We are, I should also mention, 80% owned by employees and clients. So-
Kelly Wagman:
Yes.
Louis Diamond:
Wow.
Susie Cranston:
… it’s a very employee client-centric story that we have always had at Cresset.
Louis Diamond:
Very cool. I remember probably, if Cresset’s been around for 10 years, maybe it was 11 years ago, sitting down with Avy Stein and Eric Becker, your two co-founders, and it was legitimately, it was an idea. There was a premise that there were no clients, there were no advisors, there were no employees, and it’s amazing to see what’s been accomplished in a decade.
700 professionals, professionals, the amount of AUM. And I think pretty much every advisor or person in the industry has at least heard of Cresset. So it’s an amazing testament to you now as the steward of the company, but also to those who came before you.
Susie Cranston:
Absolutely. I think Eric and Avy famously founded Cresset so that it was founded by clients for clients. They were both retired and that’s probably when they met with you to get your advice and perspective and really decided when they couldn’t find what they wanted in the marketplace to build it themselves.
And the fact that so many clients have followed and joined, I think is just a testament to the vision that they had and what we’re trying to build here today.
Louis Diamond:
Amazing. Maybe I’m biased from the seat doing this podcast, but I think all the best firms that have started in the last 10, 15 years, they started around a similar premise. It was either a manager, an industry executive, even an industry outsider, or in Cresset’s case, clients of financial services firms looking around saying, “Hey, if this doesn’t exist, why don’t we create it?”
And that’s their big “aha” moment is trying to think through what are the pain points that I’m uniquely capable of solving for? So it’s a really cool journey. Susie, I know we’re talking about Cresset today, but I asked you about getting into First Republic, but I mean First Republic, everyone knows the end result. But I mean to me, while First Republic was in its heyday and really until the collapse, it had an amazing client-first culture.
Advisors were super happy there. I’m sure employees are really happy. I mean, to me, that’s not something that happens by accident. So is there something you could point to about what made First Republic special? I’m sure it was more than just something in the water.
Susie Cranston:
Well, it’s interesting. It’s a great question. And I think there’s really two pieces of what made First Republic so successful, and there’s probably more to the story, but from my perspective in any event, the first is around having a very client-centric culture. And I think what everybody intuitively knows is that if you always do the right thing for the client, and you’re always delivering the very best you can for the end client, good things happen.
However, sometimes that means you do things that are short-term unprofitable or short-term against the best interest of the firm in order to deliver the right thing for the client. And I think one of the things that First Republic always got right was the idea that benefiting the client even at the short-term cost of the firm is always the right decision. And so we always could tell clients with a very straight face and a very strong conviction, that we were doing our best for them. And I think that makes a huge difference in terms of the caliber of the client experience, but also in terms of who wants to work at your firm.
And that gets me to the second part that I think First Republic did right, which is we had a very empowered client-facing set of professionals. So, if you really want to be a client-centric firm, the idea that any one manager, the idea that any management team is going to sit in an ivory tower and figure out what needs to happen and be successful, I think is a fallacy. I think the best way to be a client-centric firm is that the people who are interacting with the clients are empowered and are informing the decision-making and the strategy setting that you’re doing as a firm.
And so at First Republic, the people that worked with clients always were advising us on what we should do. They were always empowered to do the right thing. And so I think those two ingredients I have seen when those exist in a firm, that’s where you get that magic outcome because what happens over time, and we proved this out at First Republic, when you have great clients that are really loyal and have a fantastic experience, they refer friends and family that are better or equivalent clients, and you get this really wonderful flywheel to go.
Louis Diamond:
Amazing. Yeah, I mean I saw it firsthand. I would agree with you that legitimately every advisor we have replaced at First Republic, that was one of the first things they said was like, “It’s fun to work here. They listen, we have a voice.” And I know people who are clients of First Republic and the bank, it was always raved reviews about service and about just the level of care that they received.
I mean, it’s almost like, I know Raymond James and has been a competitor to yours, but I feel like that’s the way that’s been part of Raymond James’ success has been looking at the advisor as the client, empowering advisors, et cetera. And it sounds easy to replicate, right? We want to be client first, we want to empower advisors, but it’s much harder in practice from a compliance standpoint or from a responding to shareholder standpoint.
So, I think it’s amazing and I’m sure that a lot of that is what you’ve carried into your role at Cresset. How about, let’s say, a hard lesson learned? Obviously you weren’t in charge of the balance sheet of First Republic or anything else that happened, but is there a lesson that you carry from the collapse of First Republic or is there anything that it makes you watch out for now that you wouldn’t have known before?
Susie Cranston:
This will probably make some people laugh, but I have newfound religion around the idea of a fortress balance sheet. Right? So as you said, on the wealth management side, we didn’t control the asset side of the balance sheet as much, but there can be no doubt that when Jamie Diamond talks about JP Morgan’s fortress balance sheet, he knows what he is talking about.
So one of the things that I have been myopically focused on at Cresset is making sure we have an incredibly strong Fortress balance sheet because when you’re operating from a position of strength and the balance sheet, you can weather all sorts of storms and you can take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace.
But the thing that I also took away from it and has been part of what led me to Cresset was this realization that when you combine banking and wealth management, you’re opening yourself up to risk and challenge in ways that sometimes don’t seem that big of a deal, but then sometimes can be a really big deal.
So, it was interesting. I did spend time, I went from First Republic to JP Morgan, and operating in the JP Morgan environment, it’s an incredibly well-run organization and it is highly regulated as all too-big-to-fail banks are. And that has to be when you are a too big to fail bank, a big priority because you don’t get to operate if you don’t follow the regulatory requirements.
But having all of those bank regulatory requirements on top of what you can do in wealth management at an RIA does change the offering set that you can provide to clients. Right? So the biggest takeaway from me from this whole last chapter of my career was to really understand and be thoughtful about what you’re getting and what you’re losing when you’re combining different parts of businesses, because sometimes it doesn’t seem like a big deal until it does.
Louis Diamond:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s almost like it gives you the ability to be skeptical or play devil’s advocate in a way that you probably had known about before, but you didn’t really appreciate it. It’s like things were going so well, amazing reputation, doing things right by clients, crushing earnings, et cetera. But then the unexpected happens and no one ever expects the unexpected to happen, but the ones that are best prepared can weather the storm. So, it makes a lot of sense.
So Susie, after First Republic and then a stint at JP Morgan during the integration phase, I’m sure you had quite a number of options. So, why Cresset? What was your why story behind joining Cresset as a professional executive, obviously not as a founder, but what was it that you saw in Cresset that led you to it over any other opportunity or staying with JP Morgan?
Susie Cranston:
Well, I will say going back to your first question about what made First Republic special, I think having a client-centric firm where you do the right thing for clients, even if it’s against the economic interests of the firm, I think that’s the winning recipe in the professional services space.
And I say that from my McKinsey tenure, from my First Republic, JP Morgan tenure, that recipe always works if you’re really running a good business, because even if you take a short-term hit from not doing something in the short-term that you could, the benefit you get from retention, from referrals, all of that does take care of that in the long run, and it’s a better long-term business.
I also knew that a big reason why First Republic had been successful was because of its culture. As you alluded to very kindly, it was an incredible place where frontline professionals had a seat at the table. They drove the strategy, they were interacting with us every day to give us their input. And so I felt like I knew that was an incredibly successful model in the wealth management space.
And I also learned, as I spent more time at JP Morgan, that if you were going to try to deliver a really client-centric experience in a too-big-to-fail bank, which to be clear, that was the only type of banking I was ever going to do after my First Republic experience. It was either going to be too big to fail or I wasn’t going to do banking.
And as I got to know what it would mean to run a business like this in a too-big-to-fail regulatory infrastructure, I started to realize that for the ultra high net worth family office space, there was going to be an opportunity for independent RIAs to really take, not even take market share from the big institutional players, but to take all the new market share that was emerging, right?
Because we are in a period of incredible wealth creation in this country right now. I mean, there are over a hundred thousand families in the US alone that have more than a hundred million dollars net worth. Even if you did an inflation adjusted look back 20, 50 years, the number of people that have this much wealth has never been seen before in the history of our country.
And so, what really brought me to Cresset was this platform that was incredibly client-centric because it was founded by clients for clients. It had been built in a really robust manner and had the balance sheet strength that I was looking for, and had the ability to deliver these services that this incredible emerging wealth was going to need.
Because what we’re really seeing right now in the market, which is so fascinating, is that as people have more and more wealth to manage and it’s more and more complicated, they need that integrated bill pay, tax advice, estate planning, and family governance and education. Right?
All the things need to be provided by an integrated provider or someone’s going to just build their own family office. And so those kind of market needs and those realizations were what made Cresset a top choice. And I admit that as I was looking in the space, there weren’t a ton of places that checked all those boxes. And so, I had a very famous conversation with my mom where I said, “Mom, I’m not sure what I’m going to do if Cresset doesn’t end up hiring me,” but fortunately it did end up working out.
Louis Diamond:
And knowing Avy and Eric, I’m glad you didn’t tell them that. It would’ve hurt your leverage and the negotiations.
Susie Cranston:
Our right to negotiate. No, they were great.
Louis Diamond:
Awesome. Kelly, I want to shift some of the attention to you. I noted in your… And I think it’s a new title, it’s Head of AI Strategy Director. What does that actually mean? So are you actually developing your own custom AI tools for Cresset and its advisors, or is it more about, let’s come up with a strategy for how the firm is going to deploy and leverage AI into the future? What does the title mean to you?
Kelly Wagman:
It’s a good question, and I think I can actually speak to the evolution because I think the role has evolved. So I think of the first step of any strategy being that enablement piece. So I came in really focused on enablement, which meant to me, empowering people to use these new tools.
And I think what we realized as we started doing that is that that’s great, but we also needed to be understanding what our use cases were, prioritizing them, starting to build out or look for vendors for particularly complicated things, thinking about our data strategy. And so, my role evolved into this more strategy focused role as we realized we needed to think a little bit bigger picture about AI at Cresset.
Louis Diamond:
Very cool. And at Cresset, and I always try to square this because I know every company’s different, but is it that the strategy is we’re using Claude and we’re using ChatGPT and whatever else, or are you actually building your own AI tools, or maybe it’s a combination of the two?
Kelly Wagman:
Yeah, we are definitely building things. We are not building foundation models. We’re not out to replicate ChatGPT or Claude. We are using those tools.
But then there are more complicated use cases. You can think about particular operations workflows, or people talk about things like meeting prep or these things that we do want to provide a standardized version to people. So we’re building those. And then we’re also, we use some vendor partners in places where that makes sense as well.
Louis Diamond:
It makes sense to me. Susie, question for you. I’ve heard the term, “We’re a family office,” or, “We offer family office services” everywhere. It’s almost like water in this industry. Everyone on some website has said it or mentions it, or if you ask them what they do, they say, “We offer family office-like services,” or, “We are a family office or a multifamily office.”
So, obviously I know with Cresset, it’s more than just a buzzword. I think last I read, there’s over 150 people just in the family office group alone out of over 700 professionals. So, what do you believe a real family office looks like? What are the services that are being provided, and how does what Cresset provides as a family office or multifamily office differ from a number of other firms that just really like their clients and maybe they work with some larger ones so they can throw the word around?
Susie Cranston:
So, what really differentiates Cresset is that we have been doing this and investing in this, and building this from day one. So, we have a deep infrastructure across all the elements of family office services that a client might need. And the way to differentiate it that I found when I was looking around at other options several years ago was just ask firms, “How many dedicated people do you have to family office services?” Right?
Because a lot of places talk about it, but when you ask how many dedicated professionals, the answer is like, “Well, we got a few here, a few there.” And we have a hundred advisors and 150 people doing family office services. So, when you’re talking to clients about the depth of coverage that we can provide and you’re trying to demonstrate credibly that you can take care of the family’s full range of needs, we have a very competent, compelling, detailed story to tell.
And the reason I think this is so important is that because there’s so much wealth being created, there is new populations of people who need support that never needed support in the past and there’s no existing infrastructure for them. At the same time, we’re seeing a decline in the supporting functions for family offices. So the number of people graduating from accounting to programs is down 50% over the last eight years.
So you’re seeing the population of supporting professionals is dwindling, getting harder to find, and the demand for this shrinking supply is growing. Right? And so having capability that you can really meaningfully deliver to support families is really important because even the biggest family offices in the country, the biggest names everybody would know if I said them, those family offices don’t do everything in-house themselves because of privacy reasons, because of business continuity reasons.
So, there is a really important relationship between being able to deliver family office services and being able to advise and support the wealth of those families. And that has been something that Eric and Avy understood from day one, and so we’ve always invested in that. And listen, it’s a tough choice to make, I think, when you’re starting a business because you have to build out the infrastructure before it’s fully profitable.
So, we had to make a very hard choice. Eric and Avy made a hard choice to take that cost on before it was fully profitable, but that has then translated into incredible success. And to tie it into Kelly, who I just have to say we are so fortunate to have, she is a complete star and she’s very modest, but she’s just done amazing work at Cresset.
And one of the things that we are also able to do with our knowledge of Family Office is when you have 150 practitioners at Family Office, you can start to say, how do we leverage AI to bring bill pay in an affordable way to clients that have a $20 million net worth? Or how do we do the taxes in an automated way leveraging AI for clients that have 20 million?
And you can really start to scale those services. And that’s actually really important when you’re working with families because the matriarch or the patriarch of the family may have hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, but maybe some of the children haven’t inherited it yet. So you’ve got to support the full family where they are at, and AI is going to be a tool that really enables that scale.
Louis Diamond:
It’s such an interesting use case for AI. And maybe Kelly, you can elaborate. The fact that Cresset has these, I would assume very expensive, very knowledgeable professionals that are working with the top tier of clients, but being able to use AI to take their intellectual capital and what they’re doing at the high end and scaling it to kids or to smaller clients, can you weigh in on that use case and how it’s shaping out at Cresset right now?
Kelly Wagman:
Yeah, I think a lot of the promise of AI is actually being able to build things on top of integrated data. Once you do that, there’s a lot of unlock that you have. So we spent a lot of time working on how do we get our data into a place where we can start to build some of these things.
But I think that also does unlock at the higher end where you can still have very customized bespoke white glove services, but people can get their questions answered more quickly, advisors can spend more time on those client interactions, you can have higher levels of personalization. So I think we spend a lot of time on getting this core platform so that we can then expand use cases in both directions.
Louis Diamond:
It’s so interesting. When you’re thinking on behalf of Cresset about do we build something ourselves or do we go buy some AI tool off the shelf, whether it’s like a Jump AI or a CogniCor, or some add-on from Addepar or the various tech vendors, how do you think about the trade-off between you and your team building it specifically for Cresset versus buying something off the shelf and maybe customizing elements of it?
Kelly Wagman:
I think there are two pieces of that. One, I think we need to continue to own our data. Again, I think the data part is very valuable, so I don’t want to have a product that’s going to somehow take that data and make it not accessible to us. And then two, a lot of it comes down to whether the thing is well offered and how customizable it is.
I think in this era, people are building software in ways that is more customizable and faster to iterate on. And so if a vendor is building something that is the thing that we want and they’re willing to customize it to us, I think that’s great. If there’s something that just doesn’t exist yet or that we really need to build ourselves, we can also look at that.
But in a regulated industry, I think we need very robust software. So, working with vendors, especially on some of these kind of critical areas, is important for that.
Louis Diamond:
Awesome.
Susie Cranston:
If I can just add one thing onto that, Louis, I think one of our theories of the case is that given how regulated our industry is, that the AI rollout has to be much more controlled and thoughtful in our industry than it would in something like software, because you can’t have an AI tool that’s overriding compliance features or that’s doing something accidentally that then puts the firm at risk. Right?
So that’s part of what I think all of our competitors and we are really being mindful about.
Louis Diamond:
No doubt about it. Susie, back to the family office question. I think another kind of knock on the term family office is people think it’s like, “Oh, we walk our client’s dogs,” or, “We pick up our client’s dry cleaning.” Maybe that’s part of your answer, but when you look at the services that Cresset provides in its family office, what are the top couple that are the most valuable, or maybe even take another direction, the most out there that clients have requested that you’re now offering?
Susie Cranston:
So we think about our family office services in two categories of offerings. There’s the wealth strategy piece, and that’s things like the estate and tax planning, the family governance and education. It’s really all the kind of thoughtful planning pieces that you want to put in place to effectively manage your resources. And then we have wealth administration, which is a day-to-day management and oversight of all the trappings that go with your assets, bill pay, tax, all the kind of travel planning and logistics.
Another big one is household payroll and household management. Oftentimes wealthy people start to accumulate quite a few different professionals that help them in different capacities, and managing that starts to become a lot of work. You have to manage all the tax pieces, you have to manage the payroll administration, you have to make sure you’re filing all the right documents and following all the right compliance rules in all the different states that you operate in or countries.
And then multiply that times you got the yacht going all over and the pilots for the plane going all over. So the complexity of these families multiplies quite quickly. And so I would say the top service that everybody seems to want and we get the most requests for is probably some combination of tax and estate planning, which is part of wealth management in general, but then double clicking to the next level.
But family governance and education is a huge focus for a lot of clients. How do they think about raising their children, their grandchildren in ways that don’t allow, that mitigate any potential issues coming from having so much wealth and letting them take advantage of the resources that the family has created? There’s a lot of complex family dynamics that emerge when you’re dealing with wealth.
The number one way that wealth is created, as many of us know in this industry, is through owning and operating companies. Ownership of companies is the wealth creator that drives everything in the United States. So, when you think about all of a sudden you’ve got cousins, aunts, uncles, all sorts of different people trying to manage a company together, trying to manage a family business together, having processes and systems and support for how to do that effectively while maintaining the family relationships is really important.
So that’s another big one that we get, as well as they’ll pay household administration. That’s just something that a lot of families want help with. But an out there example is security. Right? So we have helped clients exit Israel after the issues that happened there. We’ve helped clients get out of Ukraine when Russia initially invaded. So, there’s all sorts of things involved in being a family office.
But if you can’t deliver those services, then the families have no choice but to build their own family office and then the whole benefit of what you’re trying to provide for them is moot. So you do have to be able to accommodate a range of needs.
Louis Diamond:
It’s crazy. Yeah. I mean honestly, I wish one day I had that much money where those services are made available to me or maybe through Kelly’s work, they will be soon. But it is quite the investment that Avy and Eric made. And I was going to ask a question, but I think you already answered it about what did Avy and Eric get right in the beginning that’s overlooked. I’ll ask it, but I would have to answer first and say really investing, building out a massive organization in very expensive areas before a dollar of client assets came.
Would you agree or would you have a different answer?
Susie Cranston:
No, I’ve thought about this a lot. What is it in what Eric and Avy did that made it so differentiated? And I think you’re spot on, Louis. What Eric and Avy had going for them that I think is often overlooked is they were successful and retired when they started this. So they had all the experience and all the knowledge of decades of being successful, executives, entrepreneurs, founders, and they were okay already.
They were set. They could have just stayed retired. And so when they created this business, they didn’t have the pressure of this being the make or break thing for their families. And it allowed them, I think, to really be expansive, do what they thought was right, prioritize the long game as Eric would say, in ways that I think are harder to do if your family’s really all riding on this one thing.
Louis Diamond:
Yep. On the other hand, it’s if you’re retired and successful, why are you trying to create stress in your life?
Susie Cranston:
That’s the DNA of Eric and Avy. They are very hardworking.
Louis Diamond:
Love it. Susie, another question for you and then I’ll turn it back to Kelly. So from First Republic, just you have to live under a rock in this industry to not respect the fact that there’s so many different firms, types of firms, business models that a successful advisor, a team, an independent RIA, could opt to partner with.
You can go to sell to an aggregator, you can sell a minority stake in your business, you can launch your own RIA, you can affiliate with a supported independent platform, go to an IBD, go to a wirehouse, probably 50 different types of options. Forget about all the different firms underneath it. So when you’re recruiting or looking to win an M&A deal, what’s your honest case for why Cresset over any other option that someone might have available to them?
Susie Cranston:
Well, it’s probably twofold. I think on the one hand, Cresset has always been myopic about its culture. We always say we do culture first no matter what. That is the sort of golden rule of our organization. And so I think the first thing that I always say to institutions we’re thinking about partnering with or teams that are thinking of joining is listen to what we’re saying about how we operate our culture.
And it is a very client first, take care of clients, take care of colleagues culture. And if that resonates with you, that is wonderful. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay too, but then we should part ways as friends because the culture piece is a really big part of what we’re doing. But the second thing that I think is really important is alignment. And one of the things that was interesting about being at First Republic is that wealth management business that we built drove so much wealth in that business, which was fantastic and people benefited for the time business existed.
But if you are a partial owner driving that kind of wealth and opportunity, that allows you to benefit from your hard work in a different way. And I think it is really exciting to be in a place in the industry’s evolution where people that work at Cresset can have the opportunity to do great work for clients and be very culturally aligned and have that benefit their families in ways that we couldn’t do before. Because the way that Cresset is structured, when people join Cresset, the benefits are taxed at capital gains, not income. So there’s a huge delta in the benefit of what ends up staying with the family.
But then secondly, what I think people don’t always understand is when you’re thinking about, for example, a deal to join a firm, the equity value can increase so rapidly. So we had a client, a team that joined us two years ago, and the equity value of their deal has already increased the multiple of their deal substantially.
And we have distributions, we have periodic liquidity events. So, the wealth creation that can happen here I think is really unique for advisor teams. And I don’t think it’s always well understood, but it’s interesting because it’s a little bit of the cobbler’s kids have no shoes, right? We all as professionals work with families and we see how do families get this wealth. They usually get this wealth by owning enterprises and running businesses. So, here we are today in a place in time where the advisor had the opportunity to do that. And I think for a lot of advisors, that’s really exciting.
Louis Diamond:
How about I give you two-part question? I’m going to put you on trial here for a little bit. So I think equity is peaks and valleys. It’s either everyone wants it, everyone hates it, and there’s some sort of event or something, whether it was the financial crisis, or I hear XYZ firm just that diluted everyone and couldn’t sell, couldn’t raise capital, and cash is king. There isn’t a perfect answer for every advisor, but make the case for a deal with Cresset that is at least part equity versus a probably larger headline number check from a wirehouse or W2 firm.
That’s the first part, and then I’ll get to the second one.
Susie Cranston:
First of all, I would say at Cresset, I mean, we don’t mandate that people take some percentage of equity. So I think if people really want to go with a cash deal, we would do a competitive deal. It would just be that you don’t have the equity upside and you don’t have the benefit of distribution over time.
So, for people that feel really strongly, if they’re a cultural fit, I think we want to accommodate teams where they’re at and different people are at different stages in their lives. But the thing about equity is that it is tied to the underlying value of the business and the underlying value of a wealth business is incredibly stable for the most part.
We all know there’ll be a down cycle and there might be a few years where we’re building back up, but in general, the arc of time, I mean the reason we all sit in these wonderful seats is that the market continues to grow and therefore the business continues to grow, if hold onto your clients. And if you’re doing a great job for clients, you’re actually growing their wealth and they’re getting their referrals at the same time.
So as you think about whether you want equity or not, you have to ask yourself, “What’s the underlying risk of that equity?” And I think the benefits of equity in this space outweigh the potential risks if you look at it objectively. Now, as I said, I totally understand that at different points in life and different places in your evolution of what your family needs, different things may make more or less sense.
But I believe that the people who have been the most successful in our industry over the arc of time, are the ones who’ve taken the initiative, bet on themselves, believed in themselves because the way that equity doesn’t manifest itself is if there isn’t a business. Right? And that can happen in software. People might say, “Oh, now I can vibe code my own version of Salesforce. I don’t need Salesforce anymore.”
The risk in wealth management would be that somebody says, “I don’t want someone to manage my money.” And every indication, every survey we’ve seen is that clients are saying they want more human advice, not less in the world of AI. So I think it is certainly a choice that everybody gets to make themselves. And at Cresset, we’re happy to meet teams wherever they want to be met. But I also think if you’re not excited about what you’re building and you’re not excited about what the equity can do, then we might not be at the best place for our team because it is an incredible opportunity.
And for those of us that have been doing this for a while, it’s been incredibly lucrative.
Louis Diamond:
Yep, I would agree. What about the case? What about someone who says, “I’m successful. I grow at 10, 15, 20% per year. It’s better for me to go independent or stay independent and own 100% of my own business. And then 10 years from now when the business has compounded and grown, I can sell it to Cresset. I can sell it to whoever.” What’s the fault in that logic or that same individual, same business? How potentially could a deal with a Cresset or one of your competitors that structures deals in a similar way? How could that be potentially a better outcome for that individual?
Susie Cranston:
Well, I think it is worth people always doing the numbers on those calculations, right, to see, can you go independent and have that be more lucrative with all the different machinations that are involved in that, than it would be to do a transaction now? And interestingly, both at Cresset and at First Republic, we often had those conversations very explicitly with teams that were thinking of joining.
And I think the fact that we had so many teams join First Republic and now Cresset is testament to the fact that starting on your own can be great, but to maintain growth when you all of a sudden have to deal with compliance, custodians, all the back office, all the infrastructure, all the things that go into this space, it can be challenging to sustain that level of growth, take care of all your clients, and add all of that workload on.
And then there’s a time value of money. So you’ve got to get offices, you’ve got to get infrastructure, you’ve got to get all these things going. And even with partners, then you’re giving a percentage of the business away. So the question just becomes, I think economically, is it better to try to do it on your own, or is it better to try to make a transaction now? And I think the real deciding factor in all of that really does become, how much do you want to just be your own boss?
Because I think economically it’s probably pretty close in terms of you can get a competitive deal that would be similar to doing all of that work and going independent. And so as I’ve talked to teams, if you really want to go be your own boss, then by all means go start your own firm. I think that is an interesting and exciting adventure for many people.
If what you love to do is to grow your business and be with clients and make things happen on the client front, which a lot of advisors are incredible at and get so much joy out of, then finding an opportunity where you can join a firm, have a seat at the table and be a leader in terms of the strategy, but not have to do all that incremental work, I think it can make a difference.
Louis Diamond:
Thank you for giving two very balanced answers and not just eating your own home cooking, but I completely agree that I think anyone can build a financial model or run projections that tilts one way or the other, the join a firm, equity appreciation, et cetera, versus just doing it on their own. So I think so much of it is, what are you most passionate about? What gets you out of bed?
And ultimately, under which model do you think is going to have the most fun and you’re going to be the most successful at? And that’s why I love my job. There isn’t a cookie cutter answer. It changes across the board.
Susie Cranston:
That’s 100% right. Yeah.
Louis Diamond:
Question for you along the similar lines, but more so on the technology or AI front. In your opinion or in your view, what does an advisor or team access being part of Cresset on the AI front or on the technology front that they couldn’t access strictly as their own if they’re building their own RIA from scratch, or even let’s say at a major financial institution that has more to spend on technology but likely has legacy systems, and is a little bit slower to market than Cresset can be?
Kelly Wagman:
Yeah, I think to that point, Cresset really is at that sweet spot of being big enough to be able to invest in the space, but small enough that we can still be nimble and offer people some of the best and newest tools. We are building out the wrapper around it to provide a lot of Cresset-specific skills and access to data.
So not only do you get access to the LLM, you also get to say, build in skills that help with looking at your email or that help with meetings or that we have a whole suite of tools where people can look up knowledge bases from different teams. So, whether that’s HR, things about banking and lending or these different areas. And so I think that it really empowers the advisors to get started with something that feels a little bit like a Cresset specific assistant that we’re continuing to work on.
Susie Cranston:
I would also add to that things like talking about family governance and education. So we are thought leaders in all of these spaces. And so, to have access to tools that can help you quickly have answers to some of the common questions that clients have and the assurance that it’s a best practice answer, that’s research that’s used across multiple families, is really valuable.
The other thing I would just say having spent time in larger organizations is that as Kelly mentioned earlier, the data is really the critical part to letting AI help advisors be more efficient. And because we are in this kind of sweet spot size, we’re not so big that we can’t have the integrated view of what’s working in clients and have it be across all the different facets that we serve clients for.
So we have that integrated view, but we are still at a size where we can actually translate that into things that teams can do. “Hey, this is what was interesting to four other clients of a similar profile, similar size, you should talk to this client about it.” Those kinds of insights I think can get hard in a very large organization where the data is too distributed, and it’s candidly pretty expensive for a very small firm to invest in or they don’t have big enough data set.
Kelly Wagman:
And on the compliance side, I mean, Susie mentioned this earlier, but I think developing security and compliance around AI is a totally new area because AI is so new, and I think that’s a space where having the support of a firm is really helpful.
Louis Diamond:
For you, someone who is much more knowledgeable about AI, where it’s going, what it’s capable of, and probably really being able to see around corners better than probably anyone else could, how worried or fearful should an advisor be right now about the stability or about the permanency of their jobs in this industry?
The number of advisors I speak to, it depends upon the day. Either, “I need to get a deal now or I need to sell my business, so I’m worried that AI is going to take my job over the next 10 years.” I feel like that number keeps going up and then some people are on the opposite end, which is, “AI is going to make my business more valuable because I’ll have more time to prospect and do the things I actually want to do. Business is going to be more fun and more scalable.”
Where do you rate out on that spectrum and just simply how worried should advisors be about the permanency of their roles?
Kelly Wagman:
I am really not worried about our advisors losing their jobs to AI. So my PhD is actually looking at human-AI interaction and it’s so important I think for people to trust the person that is managing not just their finances, but really many parts of their life. And I think you can get so many different types of answers from AI that actually having that person that you really trust is even more valuable.
I would say the flip side of that is that I do think client expectations will change around the speed of delivery, the level of personalization. So I think that it will be important to continue raising the bar on the level of service that we offer people. But especially at the ultra-high net worth space, as Susie said, it’s a growing segment. A lot of these people are new to wealth. Everything that I’ve studied about AI suggests that people are better when they’re working with a person who is then working with AI.
Louis Diamond:
Well said. Kelly, what’s a win or two that you’ve delivered to Cresset and its advisors on the AI front that you’re really excited about?
Kelly Wagman:
It’s a good question. I’ll just give you a couple of examples. I know we talked about the, I would call them FAQ GPTs, so the ability for advisors to look up information really quickly, some of these skills around common productivity tasks, including even things like PowerPoint. I don’t know how much you’ve tried doing PowerPoints with things like ChatGPT, but it actually took us quite a bit of work to get things like Cresset’s branding infused in those processes.
We have released a note taker, which I think has been a big win for advisors to not have to manually take notes in meetings. And then again, continuing to just build out this centralized platform that will. The whole philosophy is really how do we empower the advisors and how do we make their lives easier? How do we help them spend more time with clients? And so, everything we do really is with that view in mind.
Susie Cranston:
I think one of the things that would be an example of the integrated data we’ve been talking about are year-end summaries where you can talk about not just, okay, these are the investment returns that we delivered, but what are the tax savings? What are the time that we spend helping with your family governance and education? So really having integrated year-end summaries, for example, that are automated that advisors can then build from so that we can go back to clients on a regular basis to just say, “Hey, this is the value that we’re adding for you and there’s more we could do. Let’s have that conversation too.”
So those kinds of things I think have also been quite popular with advisors.
Louis Diamond:
Fantastic. Two more questions for you guys. So Susie, the first chapter of Cresset is nothing short of amazing. We covered some of it, but you’re steering this next one as the CEO. What are you building over the next few years that isn’t in place today, whether it’s a capability, a client segment, the reach of the firm? Can you characterize the Cresset that you’re building and what it’s going to look like a couple years from now?
Susie Cranston:
So, I think the Cresset that we’re building is definitely going to continue to have our arms wrapped around the client and particularly in the industries where I think there is a war for talent. So I feel like a total contrarian these days with everyone talking about, “Hey, AI is going to take away jobs.” I think for experienced professionals in the space of working with ultra-high net worth, there is about to be a war for talent and the firms that can solve that solution are going to be the winners because clients are going to need to have that problem solved.
So, what I think you’re going to continue to see in Cresset’s evolution is that we’re going to be continuing to double down on making sure that every client that has needs from the wealth management space to the family office service space, that we are there and able to serve them at whatever size and place they are in their personal trajectories.
And that will include AI, that will include people. I also think the other thing that we’re very much continuing to build around is making sure that we have the very best people. And that’s been something that we’ve had from the start, but in a world that’s evolving as quickly as the world that we have around us, if you don’t have the best people that are staying very close to what the clients need, I think that’s where firms are going to get in trouble.
And so we’re holding the bar for talent as high as we always have, even as we get bigger, which makes it more challenging and also puts the onus on us to really invest in training and development to make sure that we have the best people for generations across the client family need.
Louis Diamond:
Amazing. It’s such a cool answer that a big part of the vision is doubling down on people. Even though we have Kelly on here and there’s so much chatter about AI job loss and efficiencies and being able to run a larger business with far fewer people, that didn’t come up in your answer at all. It’s more bullish on advice and human-led advice sounds like is a massive theme throughout this episode.
Susie Cranston:
Yep. Well said.
Louis Diamond:
Amazing. And last question for you, Susie, then we’ll wrap. For someone who is stepping into a CEO or an executive leadership role for a firm that they didn’t found, what is a piece of advice you’d give them that maybe you learned the hard way or that you would wish to impart on them or something that’s worked really well for you stepping into the top seat of an established firm?
Susie Cranston:
One of the big questions and sources of anxiety for I’m sure Eric and Avy and myself as I joined the firm is that when you have a transition away from the founders, how do you do that in a way that is graceful and that doesn’t disrupt the business? And I feel like what Eric and Avy did incredibly well and I really benefited from is that they were very deliberate and thoughtful about how to do this because they want to build a hundred-year firm, they want to have succession happen multiple times.
And so they wanted to really be the architects of what that blueprint would look like. And I think the other thing I would say as advice for people that are moving into a situation like this is, spending the time together to make sure that culturally that the founders and the next generation of leadership are aligned so that the barometer of when you have to make a hard choice is always clear.
So Eric and Avy and I don’t always agree on everything, but we make sure that it’s always with the client’s best interest at heart. And so, even if not everybody gets every part of the answer that they wanted, everybody can live with the outcome because our values have been satisfied and that’s what we agreed to at the start and that’s what we continue to live by.
I think one other final little tip that Eric and Avy used between the two of them as co-founders that they’ve graciously extended and now is part of how I lead, they’re still the chairs of the board and they’re still actively involved in lots of things. And so what we have agreed to is that either all three of us agree to do something or we don’t do it.
And so, when we have hard decisions, nobody has to feel anxious that we’re going to do something we can’t live with because we know that we’re either going to find a way to agree collectively on what we’re doing or we pass and live to find the next opportunity another day.
And that served them well and has now served us well.
Louis Diamond:
This has been such a cool episode. First off, Kelly, thank you for coming on and giving us a little peek under the hood of AI in general, but specifically what’s going on at Cresset and what Cresset scale enables you to do. And Susie, always an absolute pleasure and very cool to see how you’re making your own mark on Cresset.
Thank you for unpacking for me what family office actually means instead of the, I think, diluted version that’s across the industry. And I’m excited to see just the continued evolution and success of your firm. It’s already amazing what’s been accomplished, but I know with you at the helm, this is only the beginning.
Susie Cranston:
Well, we appreciate that and I would be remiss not to say that you and your team have been fantastic advisors. So we really have always appreciated your guidance and thank you for having us today. It’s been a pleasure.
Kelly Wagman:
Thanks for having us.
Mindy Diamond:
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