A CIO of a single-family office, as the sole investment professional, has successfully used AI tools like Claude as a de facto analyst. This has allowed her to handle tasks from legal review to building custom tools, postponing the need to hire a human team member.
An investment team intentionally prohibits using AI to draft the core thesis of an investment memo. The act of thinking through and articulating the risks, potential pitfalls, and core bets is a crucial part of the human investment process that should not be outsourced to a machine.
Before a diligence meeting, feed AI your viewpoint on a manager or portfolio and instruct it to take the opposing side of the argument. This creates a "red team" debate that helps you anticipate challenges and develop a richer, more nuanced perspective for the actual meeting.
To give an AI persistent context about your organization, dedicate an hour for it to interview you. Ask it to query you on your business, history, working style, and goals. The output becomes a master context document that can be fed into any future project for more relevant and informed results.
To deliver more effective feedback, one CIO writes a performance review and then feeds it into an AI along with the employee's self-written "How I Operate" document. She then asks the AI to reframe the feedback in a way the specific individual is most likely to hear and accept.
One firm intentionally avoids over-automating tasks for junior team members. They believe that the "grunt work" of digging through data and manually building analyses is crucial for developing pattern recognition, process understanding, and the core skills necessary for a successful investment career.
The rise of powerful AI development tools has flipped the build-versus-buy equation for investment firms. One OCIO went from relying on 90% externally developed tools to building 90% of their software internally, creating highly customized solutions for their specific workflows at a fraction of the previous cost.
A senior director at CPP Investments posits that since AI technology is available to everyone, it will commoditize analytical prowess (IQ). The lasting competitive advantage will therefore accrue to adjacent areas that are harder to automate: organizational emotional intelligence (EQ), trust, and relationships.
CPP Investments created a multi-agent AI reviewer called a "memo coach." It analyzes draft investment recommendations through various lenses—logic, risk scenarios, value creation, communication—to identify weaknesses and generate prioritized questions for the team to address before the official review.