Three years ago, Natalie Wolfsen was named CEO of Orion, which provides technology and asset-management services to wealth management firms-including 17 of the top 20 firms on Barron's ranking of registered investment advisory firms, according to the company. Orion, which directly services more than $200 billion in assets on its platform, recently announced several enhancements. This week it said it added customizable model portfolios from BlackRock, Fidelity, and Vanguard to its tax-advantaged direct-index offering. Last month it launched fractional share trading for advisors who custody with Schwab, and in late July, it enabled end-to-end digital account opening for advisors who custody with Goldman Sachs.

Wolfsen, who resides in the San Francisco area and is on Barron's most influential women in finance list, spoke recently with Barron's Advisor about why the pace of launches at Orion seems to be accelerating, how artificial intelligence is changing life for financial advisors, and why more women are advancing as leaders in the wealth industry, particularly in tech. An edited version of the conversation follows.

You've been CEO for three years and Orion is launching a lot of new services lately. Is that partly the time frame it takes to implement change? The most recent announcements show our emphasis on innovative technology. We put five strategic pillars in place when I joined three years ago: innovative technology, scalable and reliable service, comprehensive wealth solutions, a flexible ecosystem, and growth resources. At any given time, Orion is very focused on delivering against those five strategic pillars.

We just recently announced we crossed the $6 trillion threshold to $6.6 trillion in assets under administration, and we also crossed the $200 billion threshold in our assets that are managed directly on our platform. That figure is now $211 billion, which is pretty significant growth. We've seen 26% growth year on year in assets, and nearly doubled the amount of assets that are managed on the platform. We're really excited about that.

We're also really excited about the next phase of our AI program. We aspire to serve as the R&D arm for our clients, and this year we're making our largest-ever R&D investment, most of it in AI. Our clients get the benefit of that work.

How much of the growth in assets is attributable to the industry and the market? It's not just industry growth, but it is a combination of four things. We've done an analysis of growth of advisors who use Orion's platform relative to industry growth, looking at publicly available information, and we also survey our clients once a year. Both of those sources show us that our clients grow 40% faster organically than average industry growth.

At Orion we participate in about 75% of industry M&A, meaning that our clients are buying companies, buying smaller firms, or they are merging with firms in the industry. When they do so, those firms often move from their existing tech to Orion's tech. And so, inorganically, our clients are growing very quickly, and they're consolidating those assets on the Orion platform.

Also, we launch products advisors are interested in using with their investors, and so we grow share of wallet or share of spend from existing advisors, and that grows the assets on our platform.

Which of your offerings are the most popular with advisors now? If you look at what we're doing with AI, or digital account opening, or even the consulting services that we provide for M&A, all of those things lead to new growth. As do expanding our UMA [unified managed account] offering, and expanding our tax management. So all those things lead to share of wallet or share of spend.

How do you see AI reshaping the industry? It's an incredibly powerful set of tools for everyone, which is really exciting. You have the ability to move from question to insight quicker than anyone could have imagined a year or a year and a half ago, and as a result, it's raising the playing field for everyone. That includes financial advisors.

Will it replace advisors? There is a conversation in professional services generally about whether or not AI will strip the need for expert advice. As it relates to financial advice, it's really important to remember that the stakes are incredibly high.

If you make bad choices about your retirement accounts early or late in life, it meaningfully changes your ability to retire comfortably. If you make bad decisions as it relates to your investments, the consequences over your lifetime earnings can be major. As those stakes increase, folks want to validate what they're thinking with a trusted expert.

I think it's a little bit like the medical field. Online medicine has been around for a while, and that doesn't mean you don't have a need for a doctor. It means that the patient comes into the doctor's office with much more informed questions. The same thing will be true of financial advice.

It doesn't mean they're not going to use AI tools. Investors are going to increasingly use AI tools, and as a result, when they have a conversation with their financial advisor, they're going to come with a much more informed perspective. That's why advisors need to be using the tools that investors are adopting, so that they can engage at that level early on.

What about the risks of AI? You have to make sure that you're looking out for your client's privacy, that you're protecting your data, that the insights that you're driving are clear and accurate.

We announced in June that we got certification from the International Organization for Standards for AI governance. It's the ISO 42001 certification. Any time you're talking about client data at this scale, you really need to make sure that you're protecting it and using it in a responsible way. This certification is just one proof point of that for Orion.

Do you think there will be more regulation of AI in the U.S.? Yes. Regulators will want to be sure that investors are protected and that they understand how the advice they are being given is generated and that it is appropriate given their risk tolerances, their wealth and their stated objectives.

What are you hoping AI will do for advisors you serve? At Orion, we have four pillars for our AI investment. As you can tell, I'm really into pillars. It focuses people. So sorry to use that word again.

One is growth. We want to help advisors spot opportunities sooner, follow up more consistently, and focus on work that moves the business forward. The second is client experience. So we want to give advisors much better context for conversations with their clients, so they can move to meaningful, insightful, important conversations faster.

The third is capacity. We want to make sure that we're reducing time spent on administrative work so advisors can spend more time with clients, including the moments that matter: planning for retirement, planning for the birth of a child, understanding their cash flow needs. The last of the four pillars is trust and governance, because we want to make sure AI is permissioned, fully auditable, and advisor controlled, so that firms can adopt it with confidence.

What stage of adoption do you think we're in? Oh, it's early. We're in a highly experimental time with AI right now. Folks are trying to determine what they want to do on their own and what they would like others to do for them.

What are advisors doing now with AI on your platform? We have three levels of AI that we are offering. Different firms will adopt different levels depending on how much they want to invest and how comfortable they are using various tools for their clients.

This is an example of how we're being flexible. If you want to get AI from Orion in a turnkey way, we can offer that to you, and many small and medium-sized firms want that. If you want pieces of it in the tools you've already adopted, you can get that as well. Or if you're at a more sophisticated firm and you've developed AI tools and you want to make sure they're working in concert with your other client and portfolio information, we can do that too.

You're the CEO of one of the largest wealthtech firms, which seems like an area where women executives are getting ahead. Why is that? Technology is an incredibly innovative and vibrant space where things are changing rapidly. Because of that degree of innovation, because of all the new entrants, there's just a little bit more of a gender balance than portions of the market that are more mature or where it takes a longer career to get to senior levels.

What about among financial advisors? There are many really influential women in all parts of wealth management. There are CEOs like Heather Fortner at Signature FD, or very senior people at large RIAs like Danny Fava at Carson Group. Shannon Larson is president of AE Wealth, and there are several senior women at Osaic and at Cetera, two very large broker-dealers. At Orion, we have four women on our executive team: myself, the general counsel, the head of HR, and the head of marketing.

There's no question there's still a long way to go, but I feel like if you have that mentorship at the top it's only going to get better over time.

Advisors are highly likely to have long careers. Then there are industries like tech where you have companies that succeed or fail in much shorter timelines. So I wonder if there's something about tenure that's driving the overall numbers because I know of a lot of very successful women entrepreneurs that are financial advisors. It's not that they're not there. I just wonder if the numbers won't move until you have the next wave of retirements.

Last question: Do you think Orion will stay private? We've had some big IPOs this year. We're focused on serving our clients and helping them grow. The team at Orion comes to work every day to create a wealthtech community where every advisor and investor can thrive, which is our mission.

Thanks, Natalie.