AI in the Investment Office – Abby Barlow, Laura Hill, Brian Sugrue, Jenny Heller, John Lawrence, Matt Bank, Kristin Kallergis Rowland, Jon Webster

Ted Seides (0:07)

I'm Ted Seides and this is Capital Allocators.

AI is top of mind for everyone in the investment business. Our summits are abuzz with curiosity about what others are doing. So I asked eight Chief Investment Officers to share how they're using AI today, including what's working and what isn't, the tools they've adopted and where they're headed next. They range in available resources from a single family office with one investment professional to one of the largest pension funds in the world with thousands. What emerged is a picture of the current state of AI in the Investment Office, including preparing for meetings, conducting analysis, and leveling up decision-making. You'll hear some consistency in the tools used alongside different views about how far AI should go. Taken together, there is a progression of opportunity in the Investment Office that awaits everyone in the seat. So let's get started. First up is Abby Barlow, CIO of Westwood Management, a single family office at which she is the sole investment professional.

Why don't you tell me about your role and how you're using AI in it?

Abby Barlow (1:26)

I am the CIO for a single family office. I started here three years ago. I have not hired yet on my investment team. Part of the reason I have not hired is because I happened to start at the same time that AI was becoming a thing and have leaned into it to support me and become my analyst. I joke with my team here in the family that my analyst's name is Claude. He works all hours of the night and he's amazing.

I'm going to put him on our org chart.

I mostly am using Claude. We feel comfortable that it's not training on our data and it's walled off in terms of privacy and security. We also have a co-pilot subscription. It is not as good at this moment.

Ted Seides (2:23)

Why don't you walk through the different ways that you're using Claude?

Abby Barlow (2:28)

The better question is almost how we're not using it. We are using it in every step of the process. From the first time a fund manager sends us a deck and we agree to take a meeting, I'm feeding the prep materials into Claude as a project, and I'm saying, summarize, help me prep, help me ask smart questions. It's amazing at that. All the way to the point where we're making an investment, you're at the 10-yard line, they are sending you legal document revisions. In the final stages, I will take a red line, got one recently. There were 185 tracked changes in this document, which historically I would skim them.

If anything seemed relevant, I would probably send it to council. We would pay them to review it. It would take a day or two or three.

Now, I can just take that, put it in Claude, and in one minute get back a good summary of what's relevant. It is better than what I could do on my own. We're saving a lot of time and money doing that. We ask better questions to the fund manager than we otherwise would.

Ted Seides (3:52)

Beyond the meeting notes and legal, what are some of the other ways you're using it in your process?

Abby Barlow (3:57)

We're building a lot of tools. Think of this as an app or a software program that historically you would maybe go by from the market. Benchmarking or a pacing model or portfolio company look through to understand what you own. But instead of paying someone to host that service and implement a tool, I said, I'm going to see what I can build first. This benchmarking tool is a great example where I used to in Excel build vintage year comparison across funds and peer groups. It was messy. I would end up with 60 tabs in Excel. It took a long time. I got halfway through with one of those projects and I said, hey Claude, look what I'm trying to do.

How would you approach this? In five minutes, it thought about that. It spit out an app.

I iterated it with Claude to dial it in to exactly what I wanted. It probably took me half a day to say, I have this amazing tool that I can now use. I've used it eight or ten times since.

Ted Seides (5:13)

What have been some of your other large use cases?

Abby Barlow (5:16)

Investment committee decks. I've been going through this strategic review of our equity program, public equities. There's a 30-year history and it's complex. I'm trying to make a recommendation. I used Claude as a thought partner in laying out the setting. This is what we own. This is the history.