Peony Bridge
Peony Bridge
Peony Bridge
The connective layer that brings your firm's systems into one intelligent view.
Peony Bridge is the integration foundation behind Peony Personal. It securely connects your CRM, custodial and portfolio systems, and calendar into a single, continuously updated source of truth — so your advisors never have to piece together a client's full picture by hand.
How it works
Rather than duplicating your data or forcing a migration, Peony Bridge connects directly to the systems you already use, respecting the permissions and access controls already in place. Client information stays where it lives — Peony Bridge simply brings the right pieces together, in real time, when your advisors need them.
Built for how advisory firms actually operate
- Works with your existing stack. No rip-and-replace. Peony Bridge is designed to connect to leading CRM and custodial platforms as they become available, with new integrations added over time.
- Security by design. Every connection is scoped, authenticated, and auditable. Access follows your firm's existing permission structure — nothing is exposed beyond what's already approved.
- Built for compliance from the ground up. Every piece of data that flows through Peony Bridge is logged, traceable, and reviewable — giving your compliance team full visibility into what was accessed and when.
- Grows with your firm. As new systems are added to your technology stack, Peony Bridge extends to include them, so your data foundation stays complete without additional engineering work on your end.
Why it matters
Most advisory teams lose time — and insight — because client information is scattered across five or six different systems. Peony Bridge closes that gap quietly, in the background, so the intelligence layer above it (Peony Personal) always has a complete, current, and compliant picture of every client relationship.
Peony Bridge doesn't just connect your systems. It makes them work as one.
MCP is actually the right architectural answer to the biggest cost line item from the last breakdown: integrations. Instead of building custom point-to-point connectors to every CRM and custodian (the $1.2M+ driver), you build Peony as an MCP client that talks to MCP servers for each data source. Here's how that reshapes the solution.
What moves to MCP servers
| Data source | MCP server exposes | Why this is the natural fit |
|---|---|---|
| CRM (Salesforce, Wealthbox, Redtail) |
get_client_notes, get_household_relationships, create_task, create_agenda
|
CRM data changes constantly — an MCP server lets Peony query live data instead of syncing/caching a stale copy |
| Custodian/portfolio(Schwab, Fidelity, Orion) |
get_portfolio_positions, get_recent_transactions, get_cash_position
|
Read-only, well-defined queries — ideal for a thin MCP wrapper rather than a deep data pipeline |
| Calendar/email |
get_upcoming_meetings, draft_email, get_thread_history
|
Standard MCP pattern already — several of these servers likely already exist |
| Compliance/audit log |
log_recommendation, get_disclosure_template, record_approval
|
Keeping this as its own server means every other server's output passes through one consistent compliance gate before reaching the advisor |
Why this is the right call, specifically for Peony
- Cost shift: instead of Peony's engineering team building and maintaining 6+ custom integrations, each data source owner (or a third party) maintains one MCP server. Firms already on Salesforce or Schwab may eventually get official MCP servers from those vendors — Peony just needs to be a good MCP client, not own the integration long-term.
- Compliance boundary is cleaner: an MCP server per data source is a natural place to enforce "approved data only" — the custodian MCP server can be scoped to expose only the fields compliance has signed off on, rather than Peony's core engine needing to filter everything centrally.
-
Advisor-side control: MCP's tool-call model naturally supports the "human review before send" requirement — Peony proposes a tool call (e.g.,
draft_email), the advisor approves, then the call executes. That maps directly to the compliance/oversight requirement in the spec rather than fighting against it.
What this changes in the cost breakdown from before
| Line item | Before | With MCP |
|---|---|---|
| Integration engineering | 3–5 months, 2–3 engineers | 1–2 months to build Peony as an MCP client + wrap 1-2 priority data sources as MCP servers if none exist yet |
| Ongoing integration maintenance | 1.5–2 FTE | Lower — maintenance burden shifts toward whoever owns each MCP server (increasingly vendors themselves) |
| New risk | — | You're now dependent on MCP server availability/quality per data source — worth confirming which of your target custodians/CRMs already have one before committing to this architecture |
One caveat worth being upfront about: MCP server availability for CRMs and custodians in wealth management is still early — you may need to build the first-party MCP wrapper yourself for at least one CRM and one custodian to prove the pattern, rather than assuming they already exist. Worth checking current server availability before this goes into a build plan.
Since Peony Bridge is the integration/connector layer underneath Peony Personal (not a sold-separately AI feature), the cost structure skews even harder toward integration engineering, security, and compliance — the AI cost here is close to zero, since Bridge itself doesn't generate recommendations, it just moves and merges data.
Part 1 — Build & Run Cost Estimate
| Cost category | Details | Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| AI/LLM API costs | None directly — Bridge merges and routes data; it doesn't generate content. Minimal usage only if you add smart field-mapping/reconciliation logic. | ~$0 – negligible |
| Core engineering (MCP client) | Peony's MCP client, tool-call orchestration, context merge logic | 2–3 months, 2–3 engineers |
| CRM server integration | Build/configure MCP connection to Salesforce (hosted MCP servers are GA, so this is mostly configuration) or a third-party wrapper for other CRMs | 3–6 weeks per CRM — Salesforce is fast; smaller CRMs (Redtail, Wealthbox) require building the MCP wrapper from scratch since none are confirmed to exist yet |
| Custodian server integration | No public MCP servers exist yet for Schwab, Fidelity, Orion — you're building this from scratch | 2–4 months, 2 engineers, the largest single line item |
| Compliance/audit server | Access logging, approval gating, audit-ref generation (the layer shown in the sequence diagram) | 1–2 months, 1–2 engineers + compliance SME |
| Security certification | SOC 2 Type II — required to move client PII through Bridge at all | $30K–$80K + 3–6 months, mostly external cost |
| Infrastructure | MCP gateway hosting (or a managed gateway like MintMCP), encrypted transport, monitoring | $1K–$5K/month, scales with call volume |
| Ongoing maintenance | Custodian APIs change, new CRM connectors added over time | 1–1.5 FTE ongoing |
Rough total to a sellable v1: $500K–$1M, mostly the custodian integration and compliance layer — noticeably cheaper than the full Peony Personal build ($1.2M–$2.5M) because Bridge carries none of the AI reasoning cost, but it's still not cheap, since custodian integrations are the hard part regardless of which product they're attached to.
One efficiency worth flagging: if you're building Peony Personal and Peony Bridge together rather than sequentially, this cost mostly overlaps with what's already budgeted in the "integrations" line from the original Peony Personal estimate — Bridge isn't new spend, it's the same spend, named and packaged as its own layer. Budget it separately only if you intend to sell or license it independently of Peony Personal.
Part 2 — Pricing Model Options
| Model | Structure | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Bundled into Peony Personal | No separate line item — Bridge is invisible infrastructure | Simplest, matches how it's positioned publicly ("the layer behind Peony Personal") |
| Per-connection fee | $500–$2,000/month per connected system (CRM, custodian, etc.) | If sold as a standalone integration product to firms not using Peony Personal |
| Platform fee, firm-wide | Flat $3K–$10K/month regardless of connection count | Simpler for enterprise buyers, protects margin as connection count grows |
| Licensed to other AI vendors | Usage-based fee if other advisor-AI tools want to use your custodian MCP servers | Only viable if your custodian wrapper becomes genuinely best-in-class — this is the "become infrastructure" moat scenario discussed earlier |