The Arkin Group, a world danger consulting and intelligence agency, has launched TAG Intel, which is able to present non-partisan geopolitical intelligence to the wealth administration neighborhood. TAG Intel is led by Jack Devine, a 32-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Company, who goals to democratize the knowledge he’s been bringing to international company shoppers since 2000.
Devine created The Arkin Group in Might 2000, together with New York lawyer Stanley Arkin, who handed away in 2023. The agency makes a speciality of worldwide disaster administration, strategic intelligence, investigative analysis and enterprise problem-solving.
Devine has fairly a fame within the intelligence neighborhood; he led the CIA’s Counternarcotics Heart when drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was taken down. He was accountable for this system that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan within the late Nineteen Eighties. He was in Chile when Salvador Allende was overthrown in 1973. He was head of Iranian operations in the midst of the Iran-Contra affair, which he’s been outspoken about saying was not a good suggestion.
He stated the human sources and community he’s constructed over time differentiate his intelligence.
“World wide, I’ve folks which can be indigenous and are very educated about their international locations,” he stated. “They usually construct up a really spectacular, for my part, community.”
A 12 months and a half in the past, Devine began to fulfill with wealth and asset managers.
“Most of the asset managers specifically stated, ‘We have all the time checked out geopolitical issues around the globe. And we had fashions. However now these fashions aren’t working for us. It’s a rather more complicated world. And although AI gives lots of data that’s standard knowledge, it’s filled with what everyone else thinks,'” he stated.
There’s additionally lots of disinformation round geopolitical occasions, so these firms have been on the lookout for a supply of intelligence they may belief. Devine stated his content material doesn’t lean towards one social gathering or one other, and it’s primarily based on data he’s receiving from sources on the bottom in these international locations.
TAG Intel will present this identical intelligence in a shortened model for wealth managers to cut back uncertainty round international crises and different occasions shoppers could ask about.
This may embody a turnkey subscription-based content material service, The Intel Director’s Temporary, which begins at $10,000 a 12 months. That subscription features a weekly evaluation of geopolitical points and their impacts, a disaster report on fast-breaking international occasions and potential market impression, a quarterly report that gives deeper intelligence into industries and sectors, month-to-month reside Q&A classes with analysts, entry to Devine’s podcast, and in-person occasions with Devine for choose shoppers. For $299 a 12 months, advisors can get entry to the weekly reviews, and for $500 a 12 months, they’ll get the disaster reviews, based on TAG Intel’s web site.
“What I hear from asset managers or wealth is, ‘the world is complicated, and it is unsure, and we do not know the place to go to search out the reply,’” Devine stated.
“They’ll move it on to their shoppers; they are often sensible. And it relieves lots of that pressure about, ‘I’ve this individual’s cash, however is there going to be a conflict subsequent week?’ Or, ‘Is Putin going to really use a nuclear weapon?’ And I’ve solutions primarily based on a reasonably laborious assortment on all these points,” he stated.
For instance, his content material may discover the danger of a full-blown conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, given current developments. He’ll discuss the place the conflict in Russia goes and the way that conflict could be advantageous. He’ll take a look at how steady issues are in Brazil and Argentina.
“The whole lot on this planet is interlocked at present,” he stated. “When you’re taking a look at Russia, they have their hand within the Center East. When you’re taking a look at Iran, they have their arms in Russia and the North Koreans. In different phrases, all the pieces’s interconnected. The cash’s interconnected.”