A traditional family office has long required millions of dollars in overhead, armies of accountants, and endless spreadsheets. Remy Blaire talks with Don Epperson, co-founder and CEO of Annise, about how AI is changing that. Epperson says AI has dramatically reduced the cost of setting up and running a family office, brought low-cost agents to estate, tax, portfolio, and budget work that suggest insights and opportunities around the clock, and made conversations between families and their advisory teams more holistic.
Epperson explains how agentic AI works in a wealth platform that holds banking, brokerage, alternatives, trusts, LLCs, and documents like tax returns and partnership agreements, along with a family’s own prompts. On risk, he says security is a top focus and describes guardrails Annise uses, including blocking responses outside policy, masking account numbers, and keeping data separate between users and family offices.
Epperson also says the definition of an accredited investor is changing, hopefully expanding, which would let more people buy alternative assets like private credit and private equity, possibly through IRAs and 401(k)s over time. He says that makes portfolios more complex and requires more than basic portfolio management. His vision for Annise is a single platform that brings together a family’s full wealth context with its own AI team of estate, tax, portfolio, budget, and back-office agents.
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Remy Blaire: A traditional family office has long required millions of dollars in overhead, armies of accountants, as well as endless spreadsheets to track complex alternatives and tax entities. But as artificial intelligence advances, that structural barrier is collapsing. Joining us to weigh in is Don Epperson, co-founder and CEO of Annise. Good afternoon, Don. Great to have you on the show.
So when it comes to running a family office, it did once require millions in overhead. So how does AI change the equation? And how does this technology automate some of the back-office drudgery as well as actually deliver institutional family office power?
Don Epperson: Yes. Hi, Remy, thanks very much for having me on the show today. We appreciate it. As you know, the wealth management industry today is just about as exciting as it’s ever been, and it’s mostly because of AI, and really for three big reasons. The first is AI has reduced the cost of setting up and running a family office dramatically. We can now bring the services, sophistication and solutions of a typical family office to [unclear: “anyone that runs that wants it”].
Second, AI has brought very low-cost but extremely high-value agents to all aspects of wealth management. So insights and opportunities are suggested 24/7/365 by estate, tax, portfolio and budget agents, working independently and across all of the information within your family office to just provide feedback and offer up opportunities.
And then lastly, AI has also made it possible to supercharge the family’s conversation with the advisory team. And just as important, the reverse: AI has made it possible for advisory teams to supercharge their conversations and discussions with clients. With the benefit of AI, the conversations become more holistic and [unclear: “depth decision oriented”]. So today, AI has fundamentally changed how you can set up a family office, how you run a family office, and how all those within the family office and the advisory teams are experiencing wealth management services.
Remy Blaire: Yes. And you just mentioned agents. We can’t have a conversation about AI without mentioning agentic AI. So tell us about some of the regulatory risks and how this can be managed.
Don Epperson: Yeah, agentic AI is really, really interesting, and it’s evolving obviously very quickly. So the first thing is just to explain what it is. You have your full wealth management in a platform, and it has your banking, your brokerage, your alternatives, your entities, your trusts, your LLCs, all of those kinds of things. But it also, very, very importantly, has your documents. So think about your tax return or your partnership agreement, all of those kinds of things. And then it has your prompts. Based on what’s in the platform and the data that you have, you have proprietary prompts. So you take that data, you take those documents, you take your prompts, and that will give you real good insight across your portfolio and offer up just things you might not be aware of or things you want to dig into as well.
Obviously, security is 100%. Everybody is focused on it. We need to make sure things are secure. We also need to make sure that the AI agents are responding in [unclear: “the appropriate rates”]. So for us, we don’t obviously allow any swearing or anything like that with the agents coming back or going forward. We just say, hey, that’s outside of policy. If something comes back that has an account number in it, it’s masked and we don’t do it. Those kinds of things are what we have with AI as we start to add guardrails around these agents. And clearly, no data is shared between, obviously, different users or different family offices.
Remy Blaire: Yeah. And since we’re talking about the evolution of the space, I think it’s key to mention that the definition of an accredited investor has also expanded. So do you think legacy wealth tools can still keep up as client portfolios shift from simple public equities into more complex private funds?
Don Epperson: Yeah, I think that’s one of the most exciting things that’s happening within the industry right now. The definition of an accredited investor is changing, hopefully expanding, and that means more people will be able to buy alternative assets. And in general, there are so many more alternative assets. Big companies are obviously wrapping private credit and private equity. We have big companies that are acting as distribution partners across their networks, like Schwab, but we also have these funds going into new types of accounts, maybe IRAs and now maybe 401(k)s over time.
So as all of this happens, we get more and more portfolios with more and more complex assets. And that literally means that you’ve got to do a little bit more than just your basic portfolio management.
Remy Blaire: And finally, before I let you go, we have about 60 seconds here. So give us your take on the vision for the organization as you move forward, and give us a little bit of insight into why you think the wealth industry has remained siloed for so long.
Don Epperson: Yeah. Well, you know, for us, what we’re trying to do at Annise is really take your family’s full wealth context. So think about yourself, your banking accounts, your brokerage, your alternatives, all those entities that you’re associated with, whether it’s a trust or LLC, and all the documents that are associated with that. There aren’t too many platforms out there that can do all of those things, and you really need to do that and bring all that together.
If you’re going to pair that with your AI team, everybody is going to have their own estate agent, tax agent, portfolio agent, budget agent, back-office agent doing the work. Those three things all need to come together into one platform, and that’s really going to generate much more on the wealth management side, many more portfolios, a lot more opportunity.
Remy Blaire: Well, Don, we will have to leave it there for today. But thank you so much for joining us, and thank you so much for sharing your insights as well as your perspective.
Don Epperson: Thank you, Remy.