For a firm that built its reputation on making markets more efficient long before artificial intelligence entered the mainstream lexicon, the current wave of AI adoption represents less a revolution than an acceleration of a trajectory already decades in the making. The technology is moving fast, the tools are multiplying by the day, and the competitive landscape is shifting, but the fundamentals of execution quality, data privacy, and client trust remain as relevant as ever.
At the recent Hubbis Independent Wealth Management Forum in Hong Kong, David Friedland, Managing Director for Asia Pacific at Interactive Brokers, offered a detailed and practice-led view of how one of the world’s largest electronic brokerage platforms is integrating AI across its operations and client-facing tools. Speaking on the second panel of the day, Friedland outlined a strategy that balances rapid innovation with rigorous caution, and made a compelling case for why execution infrastructure and capital strength will continue to matter in an AI-enabled market.
Key Takeaways
AI Adoption Starts at the Top: Interactive Brokers has embraced AI firm-wide, encouraging all 3,000 staff to use internal AI tools and effectively turning every employee into a potential innovator.
Client-Facing Tools Are Evolving Exponentially: New AI-powered features are being released at pace, from verbal portfolio analysis to supply chain mapping and investment theme scanning.
Caution Is Non-Negotiable: Despite the speed of development, the firm is extremely careful about how AI is deployed in client-facing contexts, guarding against hallucinations and unreliable outputs.
Data Privacy Is a Strategic Priority: Significant resources are being directed towards ensuring that client data remains private as AI capabilities expand.
Execution Quality Remains the Foundation: AI tools enhance research and decision-making, but it is execution efficiency and cost that ultimately drive client outcomes.
Embracing AI From the Top Down
Friedland was unequivocal about Interactive Brokers’ approach to AI adoption: the commitment starts at the very top of the organisation and extends to every employee.
“We embraced it. That’s critical. So it goes from the top down,” he said. “We have an internal chat platform. All staff are encouraged to use AI, use it for your tools.”
The firm employs a significant amount of programmers, but Friedland argued that AI has effectively expanded that capability across the entire workforce. Any employee with an idea can now prototype a concept using AI tools and promote it internally. The democratisation of technical capability, he suggested, is one of the most underappreciated consequences of the current technology cycle.
The pace of change, meanwhile, demands that users revisit tools regularly. “Try the tools today, but also try them two or three weeks from now, because AI is transforming so fast,” Friedland advised. “The change is just exponential.”
A Platform That Keeps Expanding
Friedland illustrated the breadth of Interactive Brokers’ AI integration with a real-time example. The firm had that morning announced the launch of Korean stock access for offshore Korean investors through an omnibus account structure, a first for the industry. Friedland described how he had immediately used the platform’s AI tools to explore the market beyond the obvious names.
“Everyone knows Samsung and Hynix, but I don’t know the rest of the stocks that are connected to them,” he said. “We have tools that pull out connected stocks, related stocks, supply chain, and you can use those tools to find other investment options.”
The platform’s scanner tools allow users to identify laggards and outperformers in real time, while a feature called Ask IBKR enables wealth managers to interrogate their portfolios using verbal commands.
“You can do all sorts of analysis just by verbal commands,” Friedland explained. “It makes it much easier than pulling out tools and saying, ‘I’d like to have this certain report.'”
Yet for all the pace of development, he stressed that quality control is non-negotiable.
“We have to be very careful,” he said. “You don’t want hallucinations and garbage making investment decisions. So we’re extremely cautious in how we release stuff.”
Shifting Resources, Not Cutting Them
When the discussion turned to whether AI is genuinely reducing costs for wealth management firms, Friedland offered a perspective grounded in client expectations rather than operational metrics.
“Especially high net worth clients, they always want to end up talking to a person,” he observed. The real value of AI, in his view, is not in eliminating human interaction but in reallocating it. By automating the resolution of routine queries for standard clients, firms can redirect resources towards the high-touch service that ultra-high-net-worth clients expect.
“We’re going to be able to take resources and solve the basic problems for the generic clients and increase resources to the more high-end clients,” he said. “AI will help shift those costs.”
Execution Quality: The Numbers That Matter
Friedland was direct about the role that execution infrastructure plays in client outcomes, and the data he cited was striking. Interactive Brokers’ hedge fund clients outperformed the S&P 500 by approximately ten per cent in the prior year, while the firm’s generic client base for accounts over 50,000 US dollars beat the market by two per cent.
“That comes down to execution quality and overall cost of a trade,” he said. “Everyone talks about no commission. There’s really no free commission.”
For wealth managers evaluating platforms, the technology layer is important, but it sits on top of an execution engine that must perform independently of any AI enhancement.
Trust, Capital, and the Competitive Moat
Friedland also addressed the competitive dynamics of an industry where barriers to entry on the technology side are falling. New entrants can route orders and offer low-cost execution with relative ease, but building the compliance infrastructure to operate across 170 markets worldwide, while maintaining the capital base and regulatory standing that institutional clients require, is a different proposition entirely.
“These new firms that come around, they’re fine, but is your money safe?” he asked. “Are they charging extremely low margin just to make a quick buck on their side, but taking risk ultimately affecting all their clients?”
He pointed to the enduring strength of traditional banks as evidence that trust and perceived safety continue to outweigh technology and pricing in client decision-making. Banks in Hong Kong, he noted, may not be paying competitive interest or offering the most advanced technology, but they still command significant client assets and revenue.
“People want to be safe with their money. It’s about preservation of wealth,” Friedland said.
Regulation: The Necessary Brake
On the question of whether regulators in Hong Kong and Singapore are keeping pace with AI development, Friedland was pragmatic. He acknowledged that rules predating the internet remain on the books and that regulatory evolution tends to lag technological change, but he argued that conservatism is a rational response to the risks involved.
“They have to be conservative because unfortunately, for the 99 per cent of the world who are good actors, it’s that one bad actor that makes things horrible for everyone,” he said.
As for whether the region holds any particular competitive advantage in AI adoption, Friedland was sceptical. “Someone sitting in Antarctica, if they have access to a computer, they’re going to have just the same amount of edge as someone sitting in Hong Kong,” he said. The differentiator, in his view, will not be geography but the regulatory frameworks that govern how the technology is applied.
Evolution, Not Revolution
Friedland’s perspective is that of a firm that has lived through multiple technology cycles and emerged stronger each time. The brokers who failed, he noted, were not those who lacked access to new technology but those who were unwilling to change. The same principle applies today.
AI will continue to reshape how wealth managers research, communicate, and serve their clients. But for Friedland, the lesson of every previous cycle holds: the firms that endure are those that combine technological adaptation with the capital strength, regulatory rigour, and institutional trust that clients ultimately demand. The tools will keep evolving. The foundations must remain solid.