Dani Fava: The AI 'Tipping Point' for RIAs Is Here

Fava, Carson's decision-maker for technology products, expects an immediate tech shift among financial advisors. She anticipates "AI-focused RIAs to be the winners in this chaotic moment with AI."

More broadly, independent advisors are "facing pressure from a lot of different places," Fava maintains, and a significant juncture is occurring now.

In the interview with Fava, who previously held key management posts at Envestnet and TD Ameritrade, she recounts the vision of Omani Carson, the firm's founder, that laid the groundwork for the company's embrace of AI. She also details how the company is applying the technology.

Here are highlights of our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: Is now a significant juncture for independent advisors; and if it is, why?

DANI FAVA: This is really a pivotal moment for an enterprise RIA. Independent advisors are facing pressure from a lot of different places, like rising client expectations and some significant shifts in the market. We've seen a lot of AI narratives impacting the stock market at a high velocity.

RIAs are facing a more competitive growth environment overall. They're wrestling with organic growth pressure, an incredibly frothy valuation market and many technology changes.

There's a lot at stake. The firms that navigate this and get it right will grow faster and realize those valuations.

THINKADVISOR: What's a trend that you anticipate?

FAVA: I'm anticipating AI-focused RIAs to be the winners in this chaotic moment with AI because everything will be automated. But RIAs are selling trust and human relationships, and that can never be automated.

THINKADVISOR: What goes through an independent advisor's mind concerning AI?

FAVA: What we're seeing in the marketplace right now is that AI is changing the game. That's causing a lot of questions from financial advisors about the technology they and their clients are using.

What's happening with AI is that things for which we used to rely on vendors, we can very easily get done with AI.

That's shifting expectations and demands. Software solely designed to organize information, and display and analyze information is now being called into question because we can do a lot of those things very easily with generative AI.

THINKADVISOR: What, specifically?

FAVA: I can load data into AI or layer AI on top of my data. I can find data very easily and analyze it quickly.

There's a revolution happening that calls into question many of the different technologies that are out there.

For example, we saw a lot of pressure in the market last week around Salesforce and Monday.com. Why is the market reacting this way? Because Salesforce, for example, is a company that's primarily used to organize and display information.

If you're a user of AI, you know that organizing and displaying information has never been easier. So you ask, "Will I need these software tools in the future? Will I need to spend so much of my software budget on these tools? Will RIAs need them in the future?"

It's a pivotal moment for an enterprise RIA to wonder, "Will our software budget shift? How much are we spending on AI?"

THINKADVISOR: But AI has been around for some years. Why did everyone get so excited last week?

FAVA: Because you're starting to see companies that have been in our space for a while, such as custodians like Altruist, now able to do things using AI that you didn't think a custodian could do; for example, tax planning recommendations.

That's kind of mind-blowing for a custodian and for RIAs too.

It was a tipping point that shifted your understanding.

THINKADVISOR: So you're saying goodbye to some software vendors you work with?

FAVA: Not quite yet. The immediate shift will be that advisors won't sign three-year software contracts anymore. I don't think they should.

The pace of innovation is so rapid that you want to be nimble and move very quickly.

That's the immediate change that software vendors will start to see. It won't be an immediate drop of software, but there are lots of things we can do that we weren't able to do before AI.

THINKADVISOR: What about clients who have big investments in software company stock whose businesses stand to be eroded by AI? What should advisors tell such clients?

FAVA: We're telling ours that the market reaction is likely exaggerated right now.

The technology sector, like all sectors, is going to have winners and losers.

THINKADVISOR: Talk more about functions to which Carson is applying AI.

FAVA: There are several. We allow our advisors to find and analyze information using generative AI. As part of Carson's core tech stack, we have partnered with Amazon, using tools like Bedrock Amazon [which simplifies AI app-building], [where] we're able to layer AI on top of all our data. That has given advisors a ton of capacity.

THINKADVISOR: What's the benefit to advisors in all of this?

FAVA: In 2025, Carson was able to increase the average number of households that a single advisor manages by 17%. That was in just one year.

This is the top metric I use when measuring the impact of the technology we're giving advisors.

THINKADVISOR: Is there another hot-button issue for advisors right now?

FAVA: I'll tie it all back to organic growth. It drives valuation for an RIA. AI increases capacity; increased capacity drives organic growth, which drives enterprise valuations. That's what I'm really excited about these days.

THINKADVISOR: Omani [Ron] Carson said some years back that the firm they were using to supply technology, LPL Financial, wasn't providing everything they needed. Was that a display of foresight on his part?

FAVA: Omani was a true visionary. The No. 1 thing he did that set Carson up [as a firm] for the best success in this world of AI was that, when he started his own firm, he invested in data. He never wanted to be a prisoner to someone else's data.

He said he would build a data warehouse and control his own data centrally. Because he did that, I'm now able to layer AI on top of that data and open a world of possibilities that other RIAs can't realize. We own our own data.

He knew how important data would be in the future. He knew data was the No. 1 piece of value he could build into the data stack.