FINNY, the Y Combinator-backed fintech that has raised over $20 million from institutional investors—including a $17 million Series A in December 2024—has unveiled a new autonomous AI agent called Hunter. The tool, described by the company as a virtual chief growth officer, is designed to generate marketing content across multiple channels, run outreach campaigns, and refine client targeting without requiring deep marketing expertise from advisors.
The launch comes as organic growth remains a critical challenge for independent advisory firms. According to the latest Schwab RIA Benchmarking Study, organic growth contributed just 9.2% to overall AUM expansion for firms under $250 million in 2024, and only 5% for larger firms. However, top-performing firms achieved 12.5% organic growth, underscoring the impact of marketing infrastructure on outcomes.
The same Schwab study found that firms with a documented marketing plan, an ideal client persona, and a defined value proposition gained 67% more new clients and 68% more new client assets in 2024 compared to firms lacking these elements. Despite this, fewer than one-third of firms under $250 million had a documented marketing plan, and only 47% had a written client value proposition.
FINNY co-founder and CEO Eden Ovadia said that over two years of observing advisors on the platform, a clear pattern emerged: those who succeeded either had a marketing expert on staff or were marketing experts themselves. “What Hunter finally does is remove the need to be a pro marketer yourself,” Ovadia said. “Hunter actually becomes your marketing partner.”
Hunter builds a profile of each advisor by pulling data from their website, LinkedIn presence, past email content, and a live onboarding session. The transcript of that session is used as training data. The agent then generates content in the advisor’s voice, analyzes campaign performance, and identifies which client niches are producing results—sometimes revealing insights that diverge from the advisor’s initial assumptions.
While FINNY positions Hunter as a “chief growth officer,” Ovadia emphasized that the tool is not meant to replace human professionals in that role. She argued that their incentives—driving AUM growth—are aligned with adopting tools that multiply team capabilities. “We do have tools and functionality specifically for growth teams,” she said, calling it “a massive force multiplier.”
Ovadia also challenged the reliance on referrals as a growth strategy, calling them “the least scalable growth lever that firms can pull.” Schwab’s research shows that client referrals ranked as the top strategic priority for advisors in 2025 for the fourth time in five years, and firms with documented referral plans generated 1.4 times more new clients from those channels. However, Ovadia argued that the soft-dollar cost of maintaining a referral network—particularly advisor time—is often overlooked. “The number one thing that breakaway advisors should be looking at is customer acquisition costs,” she said, “including not just hard dollar spend but also time.”
The launch coincides with accelerating AI adoption across the industry. Schwab’s study found that 68% of advisory firms now use AI in some capacity, with generating marketing content ranking as the second most common application among larger firms at 38%. Twenty percent of all firms surveyed reported using AI specifically for digital marketing content. FINNY is positioning Hunter as purpose-built for that function, rather than a general-purpose AI tool adapted for advisory workflows.
Schwab’s data also shows that top-performing firms gained 2.5 times more assets from new clients than all other firms in 2024 and carried a five-year revenue compound annual growth rate roughly double that of their peers. Hunter is currently available to members of FINNY’s Product Advisory Board, with a broader rollout planned through the rest of April.
For more on organic growth trends, see Mercer Advisors Hits $110B in Client Assets, Organic Growth Outpaces M&A. On AI in wealth management, read Salesforce Deploys Agentic AI Suite and Zocks Debuts Agentic AI Tool for Advisors.
