Enterprise AI Innovators Reframing Knowledge Work through AI with Houlihan Lokey CIO Allen Fazio
Jan 14, 2026
Allen Fazio, CIO at Houlihan Lokey and former Disney technologist, discusses how AI is reshaping investment banking. He emphasizes the importance of an orchestration layer and the firm's focus on empowering analysts and interns with practical AI use cases. Fazio also highlights the role of culture over tools in driving innovation, recommending that young bankers enhance their AI skills. He envisions a future where routine tasks are simplified, but new challenges will emerge, urging tech leaders to blend technical prowess with storytelling.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
AI Is A Flood, Not A Single Product
- AI adoption is arriving as dozens of tools simultaneously, not a single product, and is flooding into organizations at unprecedented speed.
- Investment banking's core work (analysis, Excel, Word, PowerPoint) aligns directly with AI strengths, making disruption likely.
Seed Adoption With Fun, Useful Tasks
- Start adoption with enjoyable, low-friction use cases to build familiarity and momentum across the firm.
- Use small wins (like humorous weekly summaries) to lead users toward productivity features and create an innovation culture.
Pick One Orchestration Layer
- The central problem is choosing an orchestration layer to host models, agents, and unstructured firm data instead of training across many platforms.
- Houlihan Lokey wants one model trained on its 20-year M&A repository to maintain a single source of truth.
