Fintech Insider · Nov 11, 2026 · 39m · 31m saved
With Samantha McBride, Founder and CEO of Ani Tech
Photo via fintechprofile.com
Ani Tech tore down its entire app and tech stack and rebuilt it for AI agents rather than human users. Samantha McBride, founder and CEO of Ani Tech, told David Brear on Fintech Insider why most financial firms are still only scratching the surface of what those agents can do.
The industry's usual move has been to relabel existing software as AI. Samantha admits her company did the same at first, then started over.
"We completely burnt down our whole app and tech stack. We rebuilt it from the ground up and tried to make everything as AI native as possible." — Samantha McBride
Samantha worked in investment banking and wealth management, taught herself to code, and turned tools she built for herself into a company whose first clients were also its first investors.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 39 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Being both the finance expert and the engineer removes the slowest gap in building software
Most "AI" products were relabeled overnight, Ani Tech's included, before it rebuilt from scratch
Real agentic AI decides and acts on its own, handling edge cases and handing off to other agents
Timid pilots hold AI agents back, so most firms never see the full benefit
AI lets compliance check every advice file, not a risk-based sample
Samantha expects AI to grow the market for financial advice, not shrink it
Regulation is a reason to adopt AI, because every decision can be audited
1. Coding as a Resolution
Samantha's route into tech started with a family pact. She, her mother and her aunt each made learning to code their New Year's resolution.
Samantha McBride learned to code through a free online course
"The three of us set up a little WhatsApp group just for a New Year's resolution... I just started a Coursera course, a free course online, and just totally got the bug. I loved it." — Samantha McBride
Her day job in wealth management gave her a reason to keep going.
"Anyone that's ever worked in wealth management knows that you're kind of drowning in Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations. So the idea of kind of building little tools for myself on the side was just something that had always interested me." — Samantha McBride
Former colleagues working at multi-family offices asked her to build the same tools for them. They became her first customers and then her first investors, and Samantha founded Ani Tech about six years ago, just before COVID.
