Mariner's Hugo AI finds $22 billion in client assets

Mariner's AI agents have surfaced $22 billion in client assets its advisors did not know about, CEO Marty Bicknell said at the Schwab IMPACT conference in Boston, according to InvestmentNews. The agents, branded Hugo, run under a partnership with Humanity Labs announced in July and put 700 AI agents across the RIA's operations.

The $22 billion equals roughly 18% of the $125.4 billion in regulatory assets Mariner reported in its Oct. 2 Form ADV filing with the SEC. The filing also lists 186,791 accounts and 1,889 employees.

For a practice with a few hundred households, the equivalent is a systematic search of the book for accounts held elsewhere and a standing item on the annual review agenda. Bicknell's example is a client who changed jobs and left 401(k) plans at several former employers. Those assets sat outside Mariner's managed accounts. Mariner's Hugo runs that check across every household at once and routes each opening to the person inside the firm best placed to raise it.

"Being able to uncover things that, frankly, the advisor should have been able to uncover on their own, but no," Bicknell said. He also cited Mariner's 5,500 closely-held business clients as another source of openings: each company has a CEO, a president and a CFO, and those people can become planning clients themselves.

The partnership costs Mariner about $35 million a year, or $175 million over the five-year agreement, according to InvestmentNews. Bicknell tied the spending to scale: Mariner serves 70,000 households and wants 500,000 by the end of 2028, about seven times the current count. Humanity Labs' investors include Google Ventures and Vestigo Ventures, the firm founded by former LPL Financial CEO Mark Casady, per InvestmentNews.

As Private Wealth Daily previously reported, Mariner also sought a $150 million add-on to its first-lien term loan B, taking it to $1.3 billion from $1.16 billion. It is not yet clear how much of the $22 billion converts into assets Mariner manages and bills. The 500,000-household target at the end of 2028 is the deadline Bicknell has attached to the AI effort.