AI Wealth Management for Everyone with André Silva (Episode 54)

Episode page and notes: https://buildersinfintech.ai/podcast/episode-54

In this episode, I sit down with André Silva, co-founder and CEO of Quartz.

Quartz is a London-based AI personal banker. It connects users' bank, broker, pension and ISA accounts in one place, and its AI assistant, Charlie, turns that data into personalised insights on their wealth. The company launched in the UK in September 2026 alongside a £2.75M pre-seed round led by Daphni, with participation from Outward VC, K Fund and angels including Philippe Gelis and Gilles BianRosa.

André founded Quartz in 2025 with Mateus Mesquita Alves, former Investment Product Lead at N26. Before that, he spent six years at Revolut as Head of Global Expansion, responsible for new market launches and the group's international P&L. He started his career in M&A at HSBC in London and in equity research at BPI in Portugal. He holds an Economics degree from Porto University and an MSc in Finance from ESADE.

We talk about why financial advice is priced out for most people, why open banking covers only a small share of people's wealth, what UK investors actually hold, raising a pre-seed round, and where human advisors fit once AI does most of the work.

00:00 Intro 00:11 André's background: from investment banking to Revolut 01:00 Why Quartz: advice is priced out for most people 02:53 Three building blocks: visibility, context, advice 07:15 AI and financial advice regulation in the UK 08:38 Open banking vs in-house connectors 11:52 Who invests on Quartz: 4.5 accounts on average 16:08 Finding the first customers 20:10 Raising the pre-seed round 22:51 Working with angels and investors 25:09 International expansion: UK first 28:05 Localising an AI advisor across countries 31:34 How Quartz uses AI internally 35:30 Guardrails: what the AI must not do 38:23 The future of human financial advisors 44:51 Advice for people starting in fintech