How AI Will Replace Your Financial Advisor
In this episode of AI Leadership Lab, host Ryan Heath sits down with Fahad Hassan, CEO and co-founder of Range, to discuss how his company is building a fully autonomous AI-powered wealth management platform.
Fahad shares why he spent five years deeply understanding the financial advisory industry before automating it, how Range is disrupting century-old fee structures, and why he believes 99.9% of Americans won't need human financial advisors within the next few years.
Key Topics:
The "Uber to Waymo" journey: Starting with human advisors to build fully autonomous AI
Why the asset-based fee model is broken and how Range is fixing it
Building AI agents that check each other's work for compliance and accuracy
Navigating AI innovation in a heavily regulated industry
Why radical transparency is Range's competitive advantage
The path to a fully autonomous wealth management system by 2027-2028
Guest Bio
Fahad Hassan is the CEO and co-founder of Range, an AI-powered wealth management platform that's reimagining financial advice for everyday Americans. Rather than rushing to build an AI solution, Fahad and his co-founder David spent five years hiring financial advisors, getting SEC registered, and deeply understanding the wealth management ecosystem before systematically automating it. Range is backed by Gradient Ventures (Google's AI-focused fund) and Caffeinated Capital, and is on a mission to make high-quality financial advice accessible, transparent, and affordable through AI.
Timestamps
[00:00] Intro - Why AI is better than humans at financial advice
[01:00] How AI is embedded throughout Range's platform
[01:58] The five-year journey to understand wealth management first
[03:00] The Robinhood analogy: From stockbrokers to automation
[05:00] Why Range still has human advisors (for now)
[06:00] The horse-and-buggy to car transition
[07:00] Disrupting the percentage-of-assets fee structure
[09:00] Why the billable hours model won't survive AI
[12:00] The personalization advantage AI has over human advisors
[13:00] Radical transparency as a core value
[16:00] Building customer advocates who fight for you
[17:00] What AI laws should look like
[18:00] Why Gradient Ventures and Caffeinated Capital invested
[19:00] The bold pitch: No more humans in wealth management
[21:00] The 2025-2030 tsunami of AI transformation
[22:00] Future fundraising and doubling down on technology
Key Quotes
"Humans lose money left and right. They're wrong all the time. And the worst part about it is you can't back into why they gave you that decision. With technology you can do that."
"Most Americans end up paying their financial advisor $250,000 to $300,000 over the course of their lifetime in fees. And most advisors are parking you in the S&P 500."
"We're not gonna augment anything. We may do that temporarily, but our belief is in a fully autonomous agentic AI wealth system."
"I think the same tsunami is gonna happen between 2025 and 2030. You're gonna wake up and all of a sudden, no more flip phones. You don't have a choice."
"Software should be radically transparent. We have our pricing in big size 18 font right on range.com. You will not find that on Fidelity, Schwab... Their pricing is buried in size 8 font on page 27."
Extra resources
Connect with Fahad Hassan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fahadrange/
Ryan Heath Consulting: https://www.ryanhealthconsulting.com