Former KPMG adviser launches AI consultancy for wealthy families

Tony Cowell, who left KPMG in 2023 after three decades of consulting hedge funds and private equity funds in the Cayman Islands, has launched a new AI consulting platform targeting wealthy families and investors.

When the Old Guard Left

Until recently, consulting ultra-wealthy clients remained a craft — personal relationships, years of experience, advisor intuition, access to closed investment syndicates. When Cowell began his finance career, artificial intelligence seemed like science fiction. By 2023, when he decided to retire, AI was still perceived by many as an experimental tool.

"I saw how ChatGPT and other large language models transformed what I did manually for 30 years,"

Cowell said. Instead of fully retiring, he decided to retrain and create a service that combines his experience with new AI capabilities.

What the Platform Offers

Automating key wealth management functions that previously required constant presence of an experienced advisor:

• Real-time portfolio analysis and recommendations for asset rebalancing
• Personalized tax planning accounting for international jurisdictions
• Monitoring regulatory requirements and compliance obligations
• Long-term financial strategies based on life goals and time horizons
• Integration with asset management platforms and brokers

The target audience is families and investors with assets over $10 million who want to digitize the management process and receive analysis at machine speed, but are not ready to completely abandon human judgment.

A New Wave in Financial Services

The wealth management market for high-net-worth investors has historically been conservative. KPMG, Deloitte, and other major consultancies for years did not integrate AI into core processes, fearing loss of trust and wanting to preserve high margins. But when ChatGPT demonstrated the ability to process complex financial documents and generate investment strategies, demand for automation surged.

Cowell combines deep experience in classical finance with an understanding of new technologies. His consulting competes with the partial automation of major players, but is positioned as a more flexible, faster, and more accessible alternative.

What This Means

The emergence of AI consulting for the HNWI segment signals that even the most conservative segments of the financial industry are undergoing digital transformation. For wealthy clients, this could mean access to faster and cheaper strategies, while for traditional consultants, it poses the risk of obsolescence if they fail to adapt.