"You can train a machine learning model to learn and go through them for you," helping spot any problems that would take a person longer to identify. "That's where you've got this huge productivity improvement."
Another area Cebula is experimenting with is getting a LLM to write some of the more tedious code that would take a human many hours, for example on the systems that create management information, drawing data from advisers' work with clients, and collating corporate data in one place.
"They're writing a lot of code for management information dashboards. Anyone who's writing code and isn't using AI is missing a trick. It's taking all the data we've got into our core client systems and providing that assistance."
He makes sure to check the AI-generated code for bugs after it has been written.
Cebula came to his role via a slightly circuitous route. He had been chief technology officer and chief operating officer at platform provider Multrees, then went into consultancy for a while and ended up working on Ascot Lloyd's new platform Hubwise.
This launched earlier this year, and Cebula was appointed group technology director in early September.
"It's well known in the industry that many traditional platforms are a bit of a black box, they don't have the API [application programming interface] capability – it's difficult to get to that underlying data.
"[With Hubwise], Ascot Lloyd can take control of that data and it's fully API. All of that data is relevant for management reporting."
The API capabilities mean users can link in from other programmes and prevents the need for re-keying in information from other programmes, for example from risk-profilers, which otherwise would be "a really inefficient use of time".
"If you have API, you can do an interrogation between the two of them and it fits very closely in terms of the way they work."
However, advisers at Ascot Lloyd will not be expected to automatically migrate their clients to Hubwise, with all the challenges that presents.
"The IFA makes the best choice. It's our job, having built the platform to make it the best choice for them. The idea is to make that proposition most attractive in terms of customer outcomes – there should be a natural migration across. It's not something that can be mandated, it needs to be better in terms of customer outcomes."
For Ascot Lloyd advisers, they at least have a champion trying to make the best technology available to them.
Melanie Tringham is features editor of FTAdviser
