BNY Investments held INSITE26 in Denver, Colorado, its annual conference for Pershing clients, the most widely used custodian and clearing firm among broker-dealers and RIAs in the Americas and the undisputed leader in wealth management across Latin America and the U.S. offshore market. More than 1,100 people attended the event, 25% of whom were connected to the ecosystem of these regions. In this context, Robin Vince, CEO of the firm, offered his assessment of the global landscape: “We have wars, record levels of public and private debt, turbulence in commodities, all-time highs in equities, and uncertainty around inflation. And, on top of that, simultaneous technological revolutions: digital assets and artificial intelligence,” he emphasized.
From his unique vantage point—BNY safeguards $60 trillion in assets and settles $30 trillion in Treasury securities every day—Vince described clients who are no longer looking for specialized providers but rather partners capable of supporting multiple transformations at the same time.
Regarding distributed ledger technology (DLT), the system BNY uses to modernize the traditional financial system, Vince appealed to the historical perspective of a 242-year-old institution. “We are moving from the classic ledger to something much more multifaceted,” he said. However, he rejected a more extreme or exaggerated vision of blockchain: universal and immediate tokenization does not seem likely to him. “This is a generational evolution of five to ten years, moving at a different pace from AI,” he argued.
What BNY wants to be is the bridge between the traditional and digital worlds. The bank was the first among major institutions to offer native Bitcoin custody and today operates with stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and tokenized securities. “Someone has to bring all the threads back together. That’s our job,” he summarized. With an annual technology investment of $4 billion, scale is what makes that position possible.
Eliza: AI with a Name of Its Own
Just a few weeks after the launch of ChatGPT, BNY made an early decision: to invest before the industry had fully assessed the phenomenon. The result is Eliza—named after Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, the wife of the bank’s founder—a multi-agent platform connected to all the major models on the market, operating on three levels: individual productivity for nearly 50,000 employees, automation of complex operational processes, and AI solutions offered directly to clients. “You don’t need to build your own AI. We will build the right one for you within our platform,” Vince explained.
His warning about autonomy was equally explicit. “With the most advanced technologies, we’ve seen that they can develop a bit of a mind of their own. Handing full control of your assets over to an agent does not seem realistic to me for now,” he said.
In another part of his presentation, Vince flatly rejected comparisons with robo-advisors. “In the business all of you manage, three things need to converge: good advice, good technology, and the human magic that comes from relationships. Trust is a human concept. Will you trust AI in the same way you trust the person who has been looking after your wealth for years and knows your family?” he asked. What AI will do, he argued, is multiply advisors’ capabilities. “It’s going to give us superpowers to provide smarter advice and make things seem effortless because AI is working behind the scenes,” he noted.
The Clients’ Voice
Vince’s assessment resonated immediately among attendees at the Summit. Pershing clients with more than a decade-long relationship with the platform agreed that it has evolved from its role as a custodian into something closer to a technology integrator.
“I’ve been coming to INSITE for more than twenty years, and Pershing is the largest custodian we have. For offshore clients, there is no other custodian that can compare,” said Rocío Harb, Branch Manager in Miami at IPG, a firm currently growing with a focus on alternative products.
Sebastián Ballester Molina, Partner at Insigneo, described a relationship that began in 2013 and witnessed Pershing’s growth into an undisputed industry leader. “Today it is number one in LatAm, number one internationally. And what we are seeing now is that Pershing is also seeking to become a technology leader,” he stated. Ariel Kay, Managing Partner at Safebay Capital Partners, added the integration dimension: “It has established itself as an integrator of technologies and services. The undisputed leader in custody in Latin America, and globally as well,” he added.
Carlos Martín, CEO of Bci Securities, illustrated how that architecture enables the creation of new business opportunities: “We are scaling our relationships in SMAs (Separately Managed Accounts) through Canvas. The idea is to use the expertise we have in Chile to build customized products here for offshore clients,” he explained. Martín also noted that he is exploring a broader collaboration with BNY for local custody services in Chile and Peru: “It makes a lot of sense to partner with the oldest bank in the U.S. and the largest custodian in the world,” he said.
José Andrés Martínez, Global Wealth Advisor at BBVA in the United States, provided the institutional perspective: “Pershing BNY Mellon is our banking institution where our clients’ assets are held in custody. PAS is the broker-dealer that provides the platform so clients can view their positions and execute trades, always with our guidance as an RIA (Registered Investment Advisor).”
