\n The role of a chief investment officer demands expertise across every asset class and every market development at any given moment. Gary Dugan, Chief Executive Officer of The Global CIO Office, told the recent Middle East Private Capital Forum 2026 that AI has brought him closer to meeting that standard than at any previous point in his career, while cautioning that the technology creates new obligations around verification, trust and regulatory accountability that the industry has not yet fully resolved.
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\nThe panel, hosted by Hubbis at the Shangri-La Dubai and chaired by Michael Stanhope, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hubbis, examined how private wealth firms in the Gulf are deploying AI in practice. Dugan\u2019s contribution drew on his experience running an outsourced CIO services business to describe how AI is changing the speed and breadth of investment research, why the human element remains essential to client relationships, and where regulatory scrutiny is likely to intensify.\n <\/p>\n
Key Takeaways<\/p>\n
\n\tAI has expanded the range of topics a CIO can engage with meaningfully, according to Dugan, replacing the slower process of working through individual sources with rapid, curated access to perspectives on unfamiliar developments.
\n\tThe technology functions as a research accelerator rather than a decision-maker, with Dugan describing it as \u201ca super library\u201d whose output must still be checked and interrogated by an experienced professional.
\n\tClient trust depends on the adviser not simply relaying machine output, and reading the emotional dynamics of a meeting remains something AI cannot replicate.
\n\tVerification of AI-generated content is not optional, with Dugan warning that numerical errors and unchecked conclusions represent a tangible risk in everyday use.
\n\tRegulatory attention is likely to focus on data security, input quality and due diligence processes, with Dugan predicting a significant compliance burden as AI becomes embedded in advisory workflows.
<\/p>\n
A Super Library, Not a Replacement<\/p>\n
Dugan framed AI\u2019s value in terms that were practical rather than transformational. As someone running an outsourced CIO business, the breadth of knowledge required on any given day is substantial. Before AI, keeping pace meant working through Bloomberg terminals, newspapers and online resources one by one. That approach, he said, was \u201cnot the right answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
AI has changed the economics of that process. \u201cProbably for the first time in my career, I can be\u201d a genuine generalist, Dugan said, \u201cbecause the AI is enabling you to go on top of the topic that can be moving around. It\u2019s becoming noisy, and you can get a perspective very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
His characterisation of the technology was measured. \u201cI just see it as a super library that\u2019s been well curated to give you the answers, and then I have to go in there and check that the answer is valid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That checking, Dugan made clear, is not a formality. He noted that AI-generated content tends to adopt a generic tone that strips out the personality and judgement an adviser is expected to bring. \u201cIt will go and tie in an AI voice, and you have to go back there and put your personality back in there,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the one old world thing that I\u2019m still doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked how AI has improved the quality of his own output, Dugan pointed to the speed at which supporting material can now be assembled. \u201cWhen I\u2019m writing some kind of paper on something I\u2019m interested in, absolutely data points and absolutely often, what are the kind of professors out there saying about this at the moment. I can get all that to my desktop in 10 minutes,\u201d he said. Previously, that process would have required searching through individual sources or visiting a library. \u201cThe amount of information that gets distilled is definitely going to improve the quality, I think, of the analysis and hopefully of the decision and the guidance that you\u2019re giving by using it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trust and the Limits of Listening<\/p>\n
When the discussion turned to whether clients might trust an adviser less if they perceive that AI is doing much of the work, Dugan\u2019s response centred on the elements of client engagement that technology cannot capture.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou sit down with a client in a room, and the way that person interacts with you may be very different from the last conversation you had,\u201d he said. \u201cYou understand the mood. You understand what worries them, but they can\u2019t articulate it.\u201d AI, he argued, can process the words a client uses but cannot register the emotional dynamics of a meeting. \u201cIf AI is just, in a sense, talking to your client and just hearing the words, wanting the emotional thing and sitting with the client, that is very, very important,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The trust question, in Dugan\u2019s framing, is not about whether AI is used, but about whether the adviser is adding something beyond what the machine produces. \u201cHow do we keep the trust in this and the trust in ourselves that we\u2019re not just regurgitating a machine output,\u201d he said. The answer, he argued, lies in what the adviser brings to the process: personality, experience and the willingness to interrogate what AI returns rather than accepting it at face value.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the kind of the input you put in, which is obviously your personality, your experiences, interrogating AI to come back with an answer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Obligation to Check<\/p>\n
Dugan was candid about the temptation to use AI output without adequate review. He acknowledged that the speed of the technology makes it easy to take a generated response and send it directly to a client. But he was explicit that doing so carries real risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou really do need to read it,\u201d he said. \u201cI know it\u2019s just sometimes very rustic. I\u2019m just going to put it out, send it through an email. But you need to read it.\u201d He gave a specific example of the kind of error that can slip through. \u201cYou need to ensure that the number in there that says above 12 is probably right, and not one that says 37,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are the things that have got to get checked through.\u201d<\/p>\n
His assessment of where the industry stands on this was direct. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve got to a point where we don\u2019t, we have to stop checking,\u201d he said. The implication was that human review of AI-generated material is not a transitional requirement but an ongoing necessity, at least for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
A Regulatory Burden in the Making<\/p>\n
Dugan offered the panel\u2019s most detailed comments on the regulatory dimension of AI adoption. He predicted that regulatory attention will coalesce around three areas: data security, the quality of inputs used to generate advice and the rigour of AI-assisted due diligence processes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be about data security. I think it\u2019s going to be about the inputs that we\u2019re taking and where we\u2019re getting them from,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s actually probably a pending big burden on the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
He raised concerns about the potential misuse of AI in gathering information about individuals, noting the risk that firms might rely on AI-sourced profiles without adequate verification. \u201cGod forbid that people think they could just take a picture of someone and get the download on the individual,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dugan described using AI to generate preliminary due diligence questions from lengthy investment documents, while emphasising that such analysis requires independent human review.<\/p>\n
His conclusion was framed as a statement of professional accountability. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to take ownership of the output,\u201d he said. The phrase captured a broader principle that ran through his remarks: AI can accelerate and broaden the work an adviser does, but it does not transfer the responsibility for the result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The role of a chief investment officer demands expertise across every asset class and every market development at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-635511","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\/635511","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=635511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}