NEW YORK and OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — July 14, 2026 — Humanity Labs, the AI Workforce company, and Mariner, a national financial services firm, today announced a five-year partnership to scale an AI Workforce to more than 700 full-time equivalents (FTEs) inside Mariner. Unlike traditional AI tools that assist employees with individual tasks, an AI Workforce functions as an embedded team that operates within a firm's existing systems and workflows, handling operational work alongside Mariner associates so people can focus on the work only humans can do.
The partnership marks the largest AI Workforce partnership in the RIA industry to date and positions Mariner as the first wealth management firm to adopt the model at enterprise scale. It also reflects a broader shift in wealth management from AI experimentation to production use cases embedded directly into the core operations of a national advisory firm, delivering value at scale. As demand for financial advice continues to grow, the partnership establishes a new model for how wealth management firms can expand capacity without sacrificing the personal relationships that define the client experience.
The AI Workforce spans the back office, where high volume operational work is concentrated, while extending into middle and front office functions to accelerate efficiency, growth, and scale. Operating within the systems Mariner teams already use, it completes work across critical workflows including client onboarding, account opening, compliance reviews, client reporting, billing, prospect onboarding, and cross-serve opportunity identification.
As work is completed, the AI Workforce captures every action in a shared memory layer, continuously building Mariner Organizational General Intelligence (OGI), a proprietary operational intelligence that becomes more valuable over time. This evolving intelligence enables the AI Workforce to learn from every interaction, continuously strengthening Mariner's processes and driving greater efficiency across the enterprise.
For Mariner, the partnership represents an operating model decision. In a people-based business, growth has historically required firms to add headcount as they onboard clients. By assigning routine, repeatable work to the AI Workforce, Mariner expects to expand capacity, increase operating leverage and allow its existing teams to focus on higher-value work that strengthens advisor-client relationships, ultimately leading to more growth and scale.
"Just about every firm in our industry has grown the same way: serve more clients, hire more people," said Marty Bicknell, CEO and president of Mariner. "That model has a ceiling, and we decided to break it. For more than 20 years, Mariner has been guided by a simple belief: put clients first and positively impact the lives of many. This is the next evolution of that commitment. This is about giving our advisors and associates more capacity to do what they do best: serve clients. As the AI Workforce takes on more of the work beneath the work, our people can spend more time building relationships, establishing trust, delivering thoughtful advice and helping clients navigate life's biggest financial decisions."
For Mariner's associates, the partnership shifts manual processing toward the AI Workforce and creates more capacity for higher-value roles. The firm will organize work across an experience layer, where people own client relationships, judgment and outcomes, and an execution layer, where the AI Workforce handles the routine, repeatable work at scale. Mariner is introducing the workforce firmwide with associate sessions, published career paths and new roles focused on directing and quality-checking the AI Workforce.
"This partnership is a commitment to our people," said Cheryl Bicknell, COO and chief strategy officer of Mariner. "The future of our firm depends on helping our associates spend more time doing the work only people can do. By moving work to the AI Workforce, we're creating more opportunities for our teams to build relationships, solve complex problems and deliver the thoughtful guidance our clients expect. As our firm grows, we're committed to ensuring our people grow with it, and every associate will have a clear path to the new opportunities this creates. The workforce does the work. Our people make every client interaction more meaningful."
"Most organizations today are using AI to make individual employees more productive," said Andrei Pop, founder and CEO of Humanity Labs. "Mariner is taking the next step by leveraging an AI Workforce that expands the capacity of the entire organization. That's the difference between adding another tool and fundamentally rethinking how work gets done. We believe every major professional services firm will eventually have an AI Workforce working alongside its people, and Mariner is helping define what that future looks like."
To learn more about Humanity Labs and its AI Workforce, visit humanitylabs.ai.