{"id":566723,"date":"2026-07-30T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/566723\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T11:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:00:10","slug":"mercer-global-advisors-launches-ai-native-apsen-2-0-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/566723\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercer Global Advisors Launches AI-Native Apsen 2.0 Platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercer Global Advisors, the Denver-headquartered registered investment advisor with $110 billion in assets under management, has released Aspen 2.0, the second generation of its proprietary, unified operating system, which the firm has been working on for the last year and a half.<\/p>\n

The new version is artificial intelligence-native, meaning it was built with the explicit intent of allowing AI agents to work alongside human advisors in a controlled manner. Aspen connects data, workflows and communications into a single shared platform, enabling local teams to collaborate with specialists across the firm. It maps the relationships between the firm\u2019s clients, team members and services being provided.<\/p>\n

Mercer worked with Avantos, an AI-native operating system in which the RIA has invested, to build the horizontal operating layer of the Aspen system. It powers the contextual layer for the data that supports the AI engines within Aspen, according to Rabih Ramadi and Bassam Chaptini, Avantos co-founders and co-CEOs.<\/p>\n

Related:ACA Group: AI Skyrockets as Firms\u2019 Top Compliance Concern<\/a><\/p>\n

Avantos, which is also backed by Vanguard, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, and SEI, uses a combination of large language models, the most common being those from Anthropic.<\/p>\n

The Aspen platform is currently being used by Mercer\u2019s 450 lead advisors and about 1,200 financial professionals on advisory teams, Mercer President Daniel Gourvitch said.<\/p>\n

Gourvitch said the firm started thinking about the platform about four years ago, hoping to solve an industry problem; as advisors continue to do more for clients, they are adding software to the tech stack that they need to learn to use and move data between and across.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we found was that our teams were spending a lot of time bringing data and workflows together across different systems, each of which had its own underlying data architecture and its own workflows,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Aspen has allowed the RIA to create an integrated, common understanding of how they work and collaborate across the firm. That\u2019s helped, given Mercer\u2019s interdisciplinary approach.<\/p>\n

To do so, the firm first had to build a \u201cknowledge graph architecture,\u201d which forms the reasoning foundation for AI. This was a necessary piece of the puzzle, Gourvitch said, so that the different disciplines within the firm could relate to one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the heart of Aspen is a unique knowledge graph\u2014built AI-native from the ground up\u2014that fully contextualizes client data and powers the agents working on advisors\u2019 behalf,\u201d said Avantos\u2019 Ramadi. “That\u2019s what makes it a transformative platform for client management, with advisors and their entire team operating from a single, unified view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:WealthStack Roundup: Zeplyn Launches AI Advisor Coaching Feature<\/a><\/p>\n

Secondly, the firm built a \u201ccanonical data model\u201d of the workflows, which aims to present data entities and relationships in the simplest possible form to integrate processes across systems.<\/p>\n

Lastly, Mercer built a \u201cdata ontology,\u201d a way to link data in various formats based on concepts. This helps the RIA bring real-world concepts to people who can understand them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a very big difference from having an integrated platform that is simply a bunch of disparate pieces of software that are connected to one another and actually having a common understanding that is reflected in a knowledge graph, canonical workflows, a proprietary ontology that really is the reflection of how we\u2019ve all agreed to collaborate together,\u201d Gourvitch said.<\/p>\n

Gourvitch said the firm has invested tens of millions of dollars a year in the platform across people, technology and process.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt its core, Aspen orchestrates the collective intelligence and capabilities of our planning, investing, tax and estate professionals in delivering a cohesive family office experience,\u201d Mercer CEO Dave Welling said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Aspen 2.0 has tight integrations with Mercer\u2019s technology providers, including Orion, Box, eMoney, Estately by FreeWill, Pontera, Salentica, Salesforce, Zoom and Microsoft. It\u2019s also integrated with its custodial partners, including Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Raymond James Financial, Goldman Sachs and others.<\/p>\n

Related:The WealthStack Podcast: Helping Advisors Serve Business Owners with RISR\u2019s Jason Early<\/a><\/p>\n

For example, the \u201cdeeper\u201d integration means Orion\u2019s capabilities and data flow natively into Aspen\u2019s unified environment in real time, said Trent Mumma, Orion\u2019s chief product officer. \u201cSo advisors act on them without leaving the platform, and the data stays in sync in both directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aspen 2.0 has several AI agents embedded, powered by various integration partners depending on the task or workflow the advisor is in. Gourvitch said to think of Aspen as the framework for allowing AI agents of all types.<\/p>\n

But he stressed that Mercer does not have AI working autonomously without human supervision. \u201cThis is all to support our advisory teams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAspen is helping to set the pace for what agentic AI looks like in the real world, bringing intelligence directly into the day-to-day work of advisors in a secure, compliant way,\u201d said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercer Global Advisors, the Denver-headquartered registered investment advisor with $110 billion in assets under management, has released Aspen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[114,268,85,46,266,267],"class_list":["post-566723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}