\n Opening the Hubbis and Intellect Design Arena event at The St. Regis Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Banesh Prabhu, Chief Executive Officer of IntellectAI, examined how artificial intelligence (AI) could help wealth businesses serve a growing investor base, strengthen advisers\u2019 capabilities and change the economics of their operations. His argument centred on a practical requirement: institutions need to connect their own knowledge and govern how it is used before AI can deliver dependable business results.\n <\/p>\n
Remarks delivered by Banesh Prabhu, Chief Executive Officer, IntellectAI, at the Hubbis and Intellect Design Arena event Beyond Fund Distribution \u2013 Building Lasting Investor Relationships, St.Regis Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, 1 October 2026.<\/p>\n
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Key Takeaways<\/p>\n
\n\tAI should strengthen the trusted adviser relationship. By reducing operational and compliance workloads and improving access to information, AI can give advisers more time and capacity to serve investors as wealth changes hands and advisory needs evolve.
\n\tConnected institutional knowledge is the foundation for effective AI. Institutions need to bring together structured data, documents, policies and procedures so that people and agents can act with the business context their responsibilities require.
\n\tFaster implementation requires greater flexibility in business processes. Banesh urged institutions to adopt composable capabilities and reconsider established ways of working, rather than recreating bespoke processes that slow deployment and complicate maintenance.
\n\tGreater autonomy must come with governance and human accountability. AI agents remain at an early stage and can produce inaccurate answers or take unintended actions. Institutions need guardrails, ongoing oversight and staff equipped to manage agents within their daily work.
\n\tAI investment should deliver measurable business results. Revenue growth, regulatory compliance, cost and operational efficiency, and customer experience provide four practical tests of value. Specific applications tied to these outcomes can support broader distribution and stronger investor relationships.
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About The Event<\/p>\n
Hubbis hosted Beyond Fund Distribution: Building Lasting Investor Relationships, an invitation-only Asset Management Leaders\u2019 Lunch, in exclusive collaboration with Intellect Design Arena at The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur on 1 October 2026. Designed for senior leaders from Malaysia\u2019s asset management and unit trust industry, the gathering focused on distribution, agency business, digital transformation and AI, operations and customer propositions. The programme featured a keynote by Banesh Prabhu, Chief Executive Officer of IntellectAI, a presentation by Hari Menon, Partner & Global Business Head \u2013 Wealth and Capital Markets at IntellectAI, and a panel discussion chaired by Michael Stanhope, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Hubbis. Discussions explored adviser enablement, connected digital and adviser-led channels, and the role of goals and retirement planning in building lasting investor relationships.<\/p>\n
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Banesh saw substantial scope for growth in Malaysia and across Asia. But capturing that opportunity would require more than another digital channel or access to a general-purpose language model. Institutions would need to reconsider how they implement technology, equip their people and measure the contribution AI makes to the business.<\/p>\n
A Growing Market with Changing Advisory Needs<\/p>\n
Banesh placed the discussion against a backdrop of wealth moving between markets and generations. He described geopolitical uncertainty as one influence on cross-border capital flows, while the transfer of wealth to new owners was changing the demands placed on financial institutions.<\/p>\n
Some recipients would have less experience of managing the assets they inherited. At the same time, he pointed to shortages of qualified financial advisers in the markets IntellectAI serves and the prospect of experienced practitioners retiring. Together, those pressures raised a question about how the industry could expand access to guidance without relying entirely on adding more advisers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWealth, fundamentally, whether we like it or not, is a very emotive business,\u201d Banesh said. \u201cBecause of that emotion, you build a lot of trust with your advisor.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the institution, the opportunity was to give that trusted person better information and more time to use it. Banesh argued that too much advisory capacity was absorbed by operational tasks, regulation and compliance. AI could help relieve that burden and improve the adviser\u2019s ability to respond to the customer.<\/p>\n
Technology Implementation Needs to Move Faster<\/p>\n
Banesh was critical of the time financial institutions still take to implement technology. He linked part of the problem to a preference for recreating established internal processes, even when that produces a bespoke version of a platform that becomes difficult to maintain.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still take way too long to implement technology,\u201d he observed. \u201cI think we have to learn to compose and consume and change our business processes very often to suit what the customer wants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Composability, in his account, means assembling and adopting capabilities in a way that allows the business to evolve. That requires institutions to consider whether their existing way of working is genuinely necessary, rather than automatically treating it as the specification for every new system.<\/p>\n
The issue is particularly relevant for organisations with substantial legacy platforms. Much of their earlier digital development had focused on websites, applications and other channels. Banesh saw AI as an opportunity to reach further into the operating model, affecting how institutions develop propositions, run compliance and organise their work.<\/p>\n
It could also enable activities that people had previously been unable to perform efficiently. His expectation was that AI and digital technology together would create new ways to serve customers and manage the business, provided institutions were prepared to change the processes around them.<\/p>\n
Skills Development Extends Across the Organisation<\/p>\n
The discussion of AI often begins with job losses. Banesh emphasised the scope for people in different functions to acquire capabilities and perform tasks that had previously required more time or specialist support.<\/p>\n
Building agents and using them within daily work was becoming easier, he said. That placed skills development on the agenda for the organisation as a whole, as well as for individual professionals. The benefit would depend on people learning how to apply the technology to their own responsibilities.<\/p>\n
His optimism was accompanied by a management problem. An institution introducing AI agents acquires another set of activities to supervise. Having spent much of his earlier career managing people in technology and operations, Banesh now found himself considering how to manage agents alongside them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we think AI agents work efficiently, that would be a mistake,\u201d he cautioned. \u201cAgentic AI is just early. It will get smarter.\u201d<\/p>\n
The point was that greater capability does not remove the need for oversight. Agents can supply knowledge and support decisions, but Banesh expected human accountability to remain important, including in the eyes of regulators.<\/p>\n
Guardrails Must Accompany Greater Autonomy<\/p>\n
Banesh referred to hallucinations and reports of agents taking unintended actions. He treated those failures as operational concerns for institutions adopting the technology. A system\u2019s apparent capability was insufficient evidence that it would behave as intended.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to have the guardrails,\u201d he said, describing control and governance of AI agents as one of the most important responsibilities institutions would face.<\/p>\n
His concern extended beyond the accuracy of an answer to the institution\u2019s ability to govern the agent itself. Greater autonomy therefore needed to be accompanied by a means of controlling its use.<\/p>\n
That requirement sits alongside the adviser\u2019s continued role. AI can increase the knowledge available to a person, but the institution still has to make the resulting process work within its business and regulatory responsibilities. Deploying the technology does not transfer those responsibilities to the agent.<\/p>\n
Connecting the Knowledge the Institution Already Holds<\/p>\n
Banesh \u2019s main implementation priority was the creation of a connected knowledge layer. Financial institutions already hold large amounts of information, but it is often dispersed across systems, documents, policies and procedures. A person may need to search several places to establish what applies to a decision. An agent faces a similar problem if the relevant knowledge is incomplete or inaccessible.<\/p>\n
He invited delegates to consider whether their institutional documents had been extracted and made available in a form that both people and agents could use. A data warehouse or data lake alone would not capture everything required, particularly where important information sits in unstructured material.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the connected knowledge layer is incomplete, the agents will not perform,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
IntellectAI calls this a multidimensional, multilayered system of connected knowledge (MSOCK). Banesh described it as bringing together structured information and the knowledge contained in documents, including policies and procedures. The purpose is to make the institution\u2019s own context available when a person or agent needs to act.<\/p>\n
For a wealth business, that context matters as much as the ability to retrieve general information quickly. A model may know a great deal about markets, yet still lack the institution\u2019s rules, processes or customer information. MSOCK was presented as the foundation for applying AI to particular business uses with the knowledge those uses require.<\/p>\n
Four Tests for Business Impact<\/p>\n
Banesh proposed four areas against which institutions should assess their AI objectives: revenue growth, regulatory compliance, productivity and customer experience.<\/p>\n
Revenue asks whether the technology helps the institution grow the business. Compliance asks whether it can respond more effectively to regulatory requirements that continue to change. Productivity addresses the pressure on margins and the cost of operations, compliance and technology. Customer experience tests whether the resulting service is better for the investor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can achieve all our AI objectives grounded against one of these business impact areas, then you can say I\u2019m actually getting some ROI on AI,\u201d he said, referring to return on investment (ROI).<\/p>\n
Access to tools such as ChatGPT or Gemini can make information gathering faster. Banesh \u2019s concern was that institutions might stop there without connecting that capability to a defined business result. The task was to use the knowledge layer for specific applications that could demonstrate a contribution in one or more of the four areas.<\/p>\n
That discipline also gives technology investment a clearer purpose. An institution can ask which problem it is trying to solve, what knowledge the application needs and how improvement will be recognised, rather than treating the adoption of AI as an outcome in itself.<\/p>\n
Expanding Distribution with a Stronger Operating Model<\/p>\n
Banesh closed by returning to the market opportunity. Asset managers and wealth institutions could reach investors through direct channels, sales agents, family offices or a combination of routes. He encouraged delegates to consider how technology could support a broader distribution network and allow the business to grow beyond its current reach.<\/p>\n
His proposition linked that expansion to the operating disciplines discussed throughout the keynote. More distribution points would be useful if advisers had better intelligence, processes could change faster and the institution could maintain control as activity increased.<\/p>\n
For Malaysia\u2019s wealth and investment industry, the opportunity was therefore both commercial and organisational. Banesh saw considerable room to grow participation and relationships. Realising it would require connected knowledge, people able to work with AI and business objectives specific enough to show whether the investment was delivering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opening the Hubbis and Intellect Design Arena event at The St. Regis Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Banesh Prabhu,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-628305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}