STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE & INSTITUTIONAL INSIGHTS
The 2026 Edition of our annual report is now available.
In our analysis, much of institutional finance relies on AI it cannot demonstrably control. The gap between what institutions claim about their AI and what they can prove — to a regulator, auditor, or fiduciary — is among the defining exposures of 2026. It runs deep, across the five ecosystems AI operates on, and wide, across the managers, servicers, and providers institutions delegate to but remain answerable for.
Now available to qualifying institutions. Request a copy below.
AI is a given. Control is not.™
FROM OUR 2026 ANNUAL REPORT - THE FORWARD VIEW
THE QUESTIONS EVERY BOARD MUST ASK ON AI CONTROL
BOARD BRIEFING │ 2026 EDITION
A Note to the Board
A board that asks these twenty-five questions and records honest answers will produce, in a single sitting, the most accurate picture of its institution’s real AI control posture it has ever held.
The pattern of answers — not any single answer — is the finding:
· Identify the critical cells. Five cells — one per ecosystem — typically carry the highest fiduciary consequence. Resolve those first.
· Assign an owner and a date to every "assured only" answer. An open control gap without an owner is an unmanaged risk.
· Make this a standing review. AI control is a fiduciary matter that sits above the technology-risk layer. The twenty-five questions are a quarterly instrument, not a one-time exercise.
For the institutions that steward the world's capital
Top Business Needs of Asset Servicers, 2026–2027
Strategic priorities, and the AI control imperative.
The institutions that safeguard, administer, and report on the world's invested capital are no longer back-office utilities. Custodians, fund administrators, transfer agents, and securities services providers have become the operating layer the entire investment ecosystem depends on — and that layer is being rebuilt, in real time, on artificial intelligence.
Production AI is already moving into reconciliation, corporate actions, NAV production, tax, and client reporting. The defining question of 2026–2027 is no longer whether asset servicers will deploy it. It is whether they can demonstrate control over it — show, on a regulator's or auditor's timeline, exactly what an AI system did, on what basis, and on whose infrastructure.
This paper maps that gap. It analyzes the global accounting function stack one function at a time — trade capture through financial reporting — traversed across mutual funds, ETFs, hedge funds, private markets, retirement, and insurance general accounts, with the regulatory divergence between the US, UK, EU, and APAC flagged where it changes the operating model. Every named assertion is sourced.
The view it advances is consistent across every category, function, and jurisdiction: in our assessment, AI control — not AI adoption — is emerging as the binding operational constraint on the industry. The infrastructure is being built at remarkable speed. The control discipline is not yet keeping pace.
An Institutional AI white paper · May 2026 · 43 pages · Reference edition
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AI is a given. Control is not.™
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