#091 - AI Financial Literacy: Better Lives, Bigger Economy with Allvesta CEO Tamara Kostova

Forrester technology and innovation forums (Austin, London, New York). Promo code "GAEATECH" for 10% off. Visit https://forrester.com/events/#tech to book your place.This week on GAEA Talks, Graeme Scott sits down with Tamara Kostova, founder and CEO of Allvesta, one of the most compelling new voices in wealth technology and a long-standing advocate for global financial literacy.Tamara's career started young. She joined Reuters as a teenager, grew up on the trading floors of some of Europe's largest banks, and spent over a decade in capital markets and wealth management. Somewhere along the way she realised something strange. Despite an MSc in finance and banking and ten years on the trading floor, she had never invested her own capital. Neither, when she asked, had most of her colleagues. That gap between financial expertise and personal financial confidence became the founding insight for her first startup, and for Allvesta, the wealthtech business she launched in early 2026 and is now scaling from London.Filmed in our new London studio, this is one of the most human and useful conversations on money, behaviour and AI that GAEA Talks has recorded. Tamara's argument is that the wealth industry has spent decades building products and technology to sell to people, without ever properly understanding the person behind the money. The result is a global financial confidence gap that leaves ten trillion euros sitting idle in European bank deposits, two and a half trillion pounds sitting in UK savings, and only nine percent of UK households receiving any form of financial advice. The bigger scandal, and the line that gives this episode its title, is that women on average do not start actively managing their own finances until they are fifty two, and usually only because of divorce or the death of a partner.Tamara's thesis is that human-centric AI is the only realistic path to closing this gap at scale. She walks Graeme through the OECD's three pillars of financial literacy, the three behavioural blockers that keep most people out of the markets, the concept of "investor DNA", and the six-to-nine month journey required to turn a saver into a confident investor. She also lays out why the UK is now in a "perfect storm" moment for retail capital - government agenda, an FCA open to AI, and consumers who already trust AI to help them manage money. Essential listening for any founder, policy maker or financial services leader.• Why women on average only start managing their finances at 52 - and what has to change• The OECD's three pillars of financial literacy: knowledge, behaviour, attitude• The three behavioural blockers that keep most people out of the markets• Why the industry has been solving the wrong problem for decades• The "investor DNA" concept and why personalisation is the missing layer• Why compounding is Einstein's "eighth wonder of the world" - and the £5,000 to £500,000 example• The six-to-nine month journey to turn a saver into a confident investor• The trillions of pounds and euros sitting idle in European savings accounts• Why only 9% of UK households receive financial advice• The Lloyd's statistic - 50% of Brits are already using ChatGPT for money questions• The Brazil story - how digital banking access without literacy sent stimulus into gambling• The perfect storm the UK is now sitting on for retail capital•Financial health as an extension of the World Health Organization's definition of health• Why working mums consume financial content in 30-second morning and evening windows• Why sovereign AI in finance is really a human-centred design problem