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In 2020, Toronto technology veteran Ali Saleh was looking for a new challenge. He saw two big opportunities: artificial intelligence and the great wealth transfer.
Combining the two—using AI to meet the challenges of that huge, anticipated transfer of wealth from baby boomers to subsequent generations—led Saleh to create Evolving Intelligence, his venture into the world of technology that could manage intergenerational wealth.
He says he was hearing people throw around numbers like $120 trillion passing from one generation to the next over the coming 25 years, and he wondered: “If your assets are global and your beneficiaries may or may not be in the same country or same state or province, how are you going to manage this?”
Saleh, who comes from a wealthy family, has firsthand knowledge of the issues facing multigenerational families with assets scattered around the globe. He is originally from Pakistan and his grandparents lived in India.
“My mom passed away in 2019 before COVID. That’s where the estate angle came in, and I said, ‘Okay, how do you manage all these global assets when we really didn’t know what she owns?’”
Wealth transfer is complex, and it keeps changing, says Saleh. You might have marital breakdowns, births and deaths, as well as the setting up of companies, the selling of companies, and the buying and selling of property.
“How do you keep this global asset pool together? How do you manage the ownership? Because there are different tax implications when you are transferring assets,” he adds. “There are different regulations. Who do you engage when you need advisors with certain expertise and certain licenses?”
Re-engineering processes is Saleh’s forte, and he saw that AI could help.
Saleh obtained his masters in engineering, materials science and mineral engineering in 1995 from the University of California, Berkeley. But it was also the dot.com era, so that’s the direction he went, founding a software startup that automated the processing of credit card forms.
He joined business tech giant OpenText in Toronto, where he worked in technology and process automation in oil and gas, banking, insurance and pharmaceuticals. When he left, he was director for professional services for Ontario.
“I grew with the company. I was employee number 700-and-something when I started. Now there are 23,000 employees.”
In 2021, Saleh left and embarked on the creation of Evolving Intelligence, his AI solution for the management of wealth across borders and generations. “I made this platform, which is from the ground up AI-enabled.”
The company is designed to track the risks of wealth transfer and provide insights on regional tax and compliance rules. It’s designed to offer the AI equivalent of a private team of regional experts.
In the third quarter of this year, Saleh plans to launch Evolving Intelligence’s first platform, the Trusted Advisory Service, a private communication and collaboration application for family offices, trust companies and wealthy families to identify and engage with global advisors. It will complement the company’s Family Legacy and Continuity platform, a secure wealth preservation tool for asset, trust, estate and philanthropic management and administration, supported by AI-enabled services for wealth transfer, investment, distribution, tax optimization, control and governance.
The staff of the Toronto-based firm includes Saleh, two Canadian advisors, one advisor in Switzerland and contracted offshore developers.
To get a grounding on the wealth advisory side, Saleh says he spoke to firms in the multi-family office sector across North America.
Evolving Intelligence is initially targeting North American family offices; private trust companies; estate, financial and legal advisors; regional banks with private wealth services; and philanthropy advisors.
On the AI side, Saleh sought help from Toronto’s Vector Institute, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence.
Craig Stewart, executive director for applied AI at Vector, says Evolving Intelligence participated in Vector’s FastLane program for small and midsize firms looking to accelerate their businesses with AI.
Evolving Intelligence met the qualifications to undertake Vector’s bootcamp program, says Stewart. “We see them as a company that has the capability and the skills required to work with us, which is a high bar.” For Vector to take them on, firms must have the machine learning capability and data, and be organized and have a good proof-of-concept.
AI is being adopted by a growing number of financial services around the globe, and Canada’s financial institutions rank among the world’s best so far, says Stewart. Several Canadian banks ranked in the top 25 in the world in 2024 in terms of maturity of their use of AI, according to the Evident AI Banking Index.
Saleh says families, advisors and trust companies sometimes hold crucial documents in different applications and different locations. Stakeholders could use varying accounting systems as well.
“If you don’t have the entire ecosystem of information, how are you supposed to guide the families of the trust that you’re working with, without actually engaging them?” Saleh asks.
For every asset a family has, his model looks at 12 categories of risk. They can be as wide ranging as geopolitical and economic risks and as detailed as tax implications, licensing expiries and regulatory and security risks, including anti-terrorism regulations in the case of international business dealings. The AI can also recommend advisors in other jurisdictions who can help.
“It’s different depending on the asset class, the actual transfer type. Are you gifting it, donating it, or inheriting it?” Saleh adds. That’s where machine learning comes in, he says. “We built our own model … to make those types of assessments.”
Saleh stresses that while AI can offer assistance, licensed advisors need to make final decisions.
For instance, an investment committee might determine that 10 per cent of a portfolio should be invested in ESG stocks. But if those stocks suddenly skyrocketed in value, that percentage could grow.
“AI can, in real time, let the advisor know that this is happening. The action has to be performed by the licensed advisor.”
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