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The "manual era" of capital allocation is in its final chapter. The firms still relying on manual data extraction and analysis aren’t failing overnight, but they are falling behind one week at a time. While most of the industry continues to "white-knuckle" through 200-page documents and legacy databases, and manual Excel extraction, a new breed of Agentic Allocators is quietly rewriting the rules. They aren’t just using AI to summarize emails; they are leveraging AI-augmented workflows that intelligently automate parts of their investment and operational processes that were previously impossible to automate.
Hosted by Victoria Sienczewski, CEO and Founder of AuumAI, The Agentic Allocator is the "behind-closed-doors" look at how the world's most sophisticated Limited Partners (LPs), allocators and General Partners (GPs) are actually deploying AI, and the hard-won lessons from those building the systems.
This isn't a series about high-level theory or technical gibberish. Each conversation features industry leaders, forward-thinking LPs, GPs and experts who are rewriting the rules of capital allocation through agentic AI. Expect real-world case studies, tactical frameworks you can actually use, and moments that challenge outdated norms. You'll come away with a clearer understanding of the critical questions every allocator must ask - about data privacy, team adoption, integration, and governance - before investing in any AI solution. If you're tired of the "black box" and ready to evolve your investment office for what comes next, you're in the right place.
We want to create using AI and tech a brain within our organization that develops, holds, and creates this bank of truly valuable client data, but also data from around our organization and around the market.
Victoria Sienczewski:Welcome to The Agentic Allocator. Today, we're joined by Paul Fleming, founding partner and CEO of Fleming and Partners, a London and UAE based advisory firm built on a bold conviction that traditional models have failed to adequately serve the unique needs of sophisticated family offices and institutions. With over eighteen years of experience, Paul served as the head of endowments, foundations, and single family offices at Mercer before serving as the CIO of a prominent family office.
Paul Fleming:I spent an amazing career with Mercer. Organizations like that have produced the most incredible tools, the most amazing thinkers. But fundamentally, many of those tools can be democratized now. And being unfettered as an investment advisor and being able to go to the best tools in the market, not just the ones that I have available in house, I think is truly complementary to our client.
Victoria Sienczewski:Today, we are exploring his vision for the AI brain of his organization. How AI integration can deepen rather than dilute the quality of bespoke advice, and what truly independent institutional grade advisory looks like in the era of agentic AI.
Paul Fleming:I truly do believe over time that as we begin to develop our AI processes within the organization, each incremental piece, and again, whether it's governance or data analysis or reporting or just monitoring, there's value added every element.
Victoria Sienczewski:I hope you enjoy the conversation. Paul, thank you so much for joining me today.
Paul Fleming:I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.
Victoria Sienczewski:Before we dive into AI, would love to talk about Fleming and Partners. So I know you're founded on the mission of providing very bespoke tailored services to your underlying clients. Can you tell me a little bit about how that came together?
Paul Fleming:The family offices, endowments, foundations, institutional asset owners that need a strategic investment advisory element, I truly believe require something that is changing with time. As markets change and tools develop, family offices are becoming more sophisticated. And fundamentally, I believe there's going to be some big winners and big losers over the next ten years in investment consulting. The thesis of Fleming and Partners is to deliver independent strategic advice shoulder to shoulder with clients. All right?
Paul Fleming:It's not to create products. It's not to create solutions. It's truly to give rifle shot targeted advice truly where clients need it. And that is tough for small organizations because the question of scalability comes in. And historically, that's where organizations like Fleming and Partners haven't really been able to compete.
Paul Fleming:But truly, I believe times are very different. And we are now operating, and we launched Fleming and Partners knowing that we can still deliver global institutional standards of advice through a completely boutique model. And the reason we can do that fundamentally is the tools that are available in the market and tech. And tech has enabled the best human thinkers to scale their ideas and their strategic thinking for clients.
Victoria Sienczewski:Phenomenal. How do you view AI as complementary to Fleming and Partners' offering?
Paul Fleming:We're in a really unique position. We're relatively young as an organization. We're relatively lean, like many small businesses that start out. And so we don't need to dismantle anything, right? And this isn't to throw shade on global consulting.
Paul Fleming:I spent an amazing career with Mercer, the world's largest investment consultancy. And organizations like that have produced the most incredible tools, the most amazing thinkers. But fundamentally, many of those tools can be democratized now. And being unfettered as an investment advisor and being able to go to the best tools in the market, not just the ones that I have available in house, I think is truly complementary to our client. So fundamentally, what we think about is what is the best use of our time spent on client work, and how can we leverage the tools available in the market to deliver that?
Paul Fleming:So we're in build mode, not dismantle and rebuild. So with AI and how we think as a small business, but truly a global institutional advisory mindset, our human capital comes from the largest global advisors in the world. And they have the governance and the mindset and the discipline from truly institutionalized global consulting. But where we are different is we can remain lean and nimble as a small organization and, again, have that rifle shot approach to picking the best solutions. And whether that's reporting, whether that's manager selection, whether that's investment due diligence, we can scale using tech and AI.
Paul Fleming:And I am absolutely no authority on tech. But what I want to do is build a business where I give my team the independence of thinking and the curiosity to say, is this tool the best tool that we can find for the client or is there something better?
Victoria Sienczewski:Such an interesting observation around being in build mode versus dismantle mode. It is unfortunate, right, state of the industry that large organizations have legacy solutions that they've potentially built in house, they've partnered with, and it's very hard to move away from. Data is siloed across organizations, data is unstructured, and it lives in people's heads. So And when you're thinking about building something from the bottom up, what are the components that you're kind of thinking about bringing into the organization?
Paul Fleming:I think this is the core strategic value add for us, and build not break down and rebuild. We're developing a brain, all right? And again, I speak very positively of my experience with my former employer. But to your point, there was small nuggets of information from investment managers, from macro strategy, from client information, from a privacy perspective, these were locked away with different teams in different departments. And of course, they could be accessed some more easily than others, but there was no brain.
Paul Fleming:And what we think about at Fleming and Partners is when we're developing our business and our business is truly developing every day there is no set model. That would ruin the contextual contextual framework of what we're trying to create here for clients. We want to create using AI and tech a brain within our organization that develops, holds, and creates this bank of truly valuable client data, but also data from around our organization and around the market. And it will remain to be seen how we use that going forward, But the critical element is every piece of client data should be recorded. Privacy is key.
Paul Fleming:And I think that is a huge, huge question going forward, because there are so many tools. You know, the large models in AI now, you know, for our clients, particularly family offices and in diamonds and foundations, discretion and privacy is central to what they do and how they behave, and how we act for them. So having this brain and this nucleus within our organization, where anyone at any point can dip into and enable to then be well informed about a scenario, about a set of statistics, about a data set that historically, perhaps in larger organizations, might have even walked out the door in some previous employee's head. And so we are trying to create, and I think we're doing a pretty good job so far of creating this super sophisticated brain within our organization.
Victoria Sienczewski:It's absolutely incredible. And when we met Paul, I was so excited because you're using the same language that I use around this brain of the organization. And when I've spoken and worked with a variety of different LPs and allocators, one of the fundamental issues that they have is that they can't leverage AI yet fully because their data, as you mentioned, is unstructured. It's all over the place. And so that's the foundational element is developing this brain highly sophisticated, highly tailored to your organization and to your clients.
Victoria Sienczewski:But then you can leverage AI on top for the variety of different use cases that you mentioned, right, in terms of across your end to end process. And curious, in terms of the kind of ROI you're expecting from the brain, how would you think about kind of quantifying that or defining it?
Paul Fleming:Yeah, the immediate answer to that question, and I think from an investment perspective, right, you know, what are our clients trying to achieve? Now, it doesn't matter which angle you look. Most clients, unless it's an impactful mission, a better risk adjusted return. But for me, the standard answer to that is, are we going to increase client returns and reduce their risk using AI? Well, yeah, I really think we are.
Paul Fleming:But this isn't about adding alpha to client returns using AI. This is using, you know, we're institutional strategic advisors. The power of the human brain still must absolutely be central to our strategic thinking. AI will augment and will scale that thinking. And we've selected some seriously credible people from the market.
Paul Fleming:I think over time I truly do believe over time that as we begin to develop our AI processes within the organization, each incremental piece and again, whether it's governance or data analysis or reporting or just monitoring there's value added to every element. Now, of course, we can pick better investments using AI because we can cover huge data sets in a far more efficient time scale and in more detail perhaps with less human error. But we still need the human overlay, and that is critical. I truly believe that investment consulting that will be successful going forward will do so with AI. Those truly I believe that won't are the ones that don't embrace AI into their processes.
Paul Fleming:And there's this huge gap in the middle happening where we can adopt super cool new tools that are being developed by very, very smart people in the market. We can adopt these very quickly, and we've had that conversation. And we don't have to dismantle processes and human behaviors and disciplines that, quite frankly are not as helpful as we might have thought it'd been.
Victoria Sienczewski:And would love to dive into culture, right? Culture is everything at a firm like yours and across this industry. And you've built such a unique culture at Fleming and Partners focused around also obviously AI innovation and your bespoke tailored model. How do you think about building that culture that is forward thinking on entrepreneurship and innovation?
Paul Fleming:Yeah, we are, we have this really interesting mindset and culture as a business because, know, from an outside in, we're large global investment consultants, you know, that kind of fit in a box and like, yeah. But we think like, and I'll use the term entrepreneurs, okay? Entrepreneur gets bam and about. It's not my favorite term. In fact, it's one of the worst words I think that can be knocked on someone's head.
Paul Fleming:But truly, when we brought the team together, each individual within the organization is critically important, and they are enablers. And what I ask of each of the team members, irrespective of whether Bill Moyskin with thirty two years experience or Christina with ten or eleven years experience, what I ask of them is to be curious about how AI can develop their mindset and knowledge, and how AI can add value. From a culture perspective, that allows the human capital to remain curious. And that is a term I really like. When I started in investments, I started long, bottom up equities and equity analysis.
Paul Fleming:I was never going to be Warren Buffett. I think any of my historic bosses probably know that. But I think it was a great discipline. And the organization I started at, one of the investment leads used to say curiosity in investments is critical, the curious mind. And I truly believe that, and I've carried that in what I've tried to do in the investment markets in my career.
Paul Fleming:Now we have the ability to be curious as strategic thinkers, as process creators, as client reporters. We could be curious. And so the culture within the organization, to truly answer your question, is look, global mindset delivered by partner minds, Okay? And that is what I believe is missing. There's a gap in the market for that.
Paul Fleming:And the culture that we have now is one where, you know, when I speak to the team, you can do whatever you think is the right thing to do. The organizational swim lanes will keep you in check, but test the boundaries, ensure that we're always pushing the boundaries for our clients. Human culture, we have a pretty open mindset, right? We're all professionals. We're all grown up people.
Paul Fleming:We have a really relaxed culture within the office. Because we've got such cool tech available to us now, actually human culture has become more important. Because we can beg, borrow, and steal cool tech to create the systems and processes, but they're applied and the practitioners are humans. So I don't just want to create a business where we have the best thinkers, but I want to create a business where we've got some really, really great people to work with. And for me that is so important.
Victoria Sienczewski:Incredible. And obviously you're on a journey, right? Like the whole industry is on a journey from an AI adoption perspective. What is your vision for Fleming and Partners with the development of the brain over the next let's say four or five years? Where do you think you'll get to?
Paul Fleming:That's a good question. That's a good question. Shoot for the moon, right? Again, again, I think I know if I was we were sitting here ten years earlier, This opportunity that we have at Fleming and Partners creating what we've created, it would be far, far more difficult to execute. And that's why the big institutional advisors have become so big.
Paul Fleming:Big is not necessarily beautiful in investment consulting, and particularly for single family offices. It would have been incredibly difficult for me to compete against the global investment consultants, dollars 16,000,000,000,000 globally under advice. Those are huge organizations with massive reach and huge workforces. The scale of that is amazing. We can scale our business to compete at that level using tech and AI and having some of the best thinkers to then deliver that.
Paul Fleming:And again, swim lanes come in. As long as we stick to what we fundamentally have been trained as investment consultants and add our human value to this brain, then it's just an augmented, curious, and accelerated investment consultant experience for clients. Single family offices, I've said it many times, if you've met one, you've met one. And so we mustn't forget the investment landscape globally, particularly in the West, has been built by structures to serve the biggest asset owners. Because of course, that's where the look, it's commercial.
Paul Fleming:That's where the fees are. And if you can serve the big asset owners and do a great job for them, there's great rewards in that. Fantastic. Everyone wins. But fundamentally, a lot of that framework has been borrowed, dismantled, repackaged, and pushed into this $6,000,000,000,000 market, which is family office capital.
Paul Fleming:And again, I say this regularly. This is the same size of market as the global hedge fund market. And it's going to be $10,000,000,000,000 by 2030, that market is using the same tools that the global pensions market developed. And that's great. Let's scale that and let's borrow that.
Paul Fleming:But fundamentally many of those tools aren't fit for purpose and so single family offices particularly are becoming more sophisticated. They require deeper knowledge of what they truly want rather than fitting into a box of what the market can deliver. And so as investment consultants, our job is to find those amazing tools in the market, find the bits that have been built that we really like, retain the human capital, the knowledge, and the discipline, and democratize all of that and deliver it in a truly boutique and cost effective fashion and completely unconflicted, right? If we can do that and sit on the same side of the table as clients, and a principal can walk in the room and say, the guys at Fleming and Partners are giving me true, independent, strategic advice shoulder to shoulder, I'll sleep well at night. That's the objective.
Victoria Sienczewski:And wanted to wrap up with one final question. So as you mentioned, single family offices are becoming more and more sophisticated. They also have a variety of different needs across different sizes and scales. If you were to advise a single family office who is kind of early on in their AI adoption journey, what would you say to them?
Paul Fleming:It's a good question. Look, I'm no Silicon Valley programmer, right? Just to caveat this. And many single family offices and many of our clients can teach us about AI, right? So it's a partnership.
Paul Fleming:But to answer your question, what I would say is don't think too big. Don't try and recreate something that is going to deliver something on a scale that is probably unrealistic in the short term. There's, you know, as we discussed when we met, there's so many cool new ideas and projects and development pieces being made. Test them, bring them in. Even if it's just processes, even if it's just data management, even if it's just covering research, use the tools that are available and embed them into your systems and get comfortable using AI.
Paul Fleming:Again, like sometimes my beautiful two children come into my office at home, and they'll tell me something that they've found out on chat GBT or and I learned from them. And I think, do you know, that is super cool because their little minds work in a different way. So let's try and learn as a community, but fundamentally I'd say, let's not try and reinvent the wheel. Baby steps. Lean on the true practitioners in the market.
Paul Fleming:And that might not be us. That might be the tech guys. That might be the true tech people. Ask questions. Curiosity.
Paul Fleming:Can we develop this? Is there something in the market? What human capital is needed? What data sets are needed? Is this too much, or could we achieve this?
Paul Fleming:And is it going to cost us a lot? Or just outsource it, right? Ask people that truly know. That's what I would say. Baby steps.
Victoria Sienczewski:Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. What a fantastic conversation.
Paul Fleming:You're very welcome. I've loved it. Thank you so much, Victoria.
Victoria Sienczewski:That's a wrap for this episode of The Agentic Allocator. If today's conversation gave you a clearer vision of where the industry is headed or helped you pinpoint exactly where your own process is stuck, go ahead and follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Your firm's judgment took years to build. Stop letting it reset every time a team member leaves. Visit auumai.com to discover the structured digital intelligence foundation your team needs to leverage Agentic AI to its full potential.
Victoria Sienczewski:Until next time.