"Artificial intelligence is having a tremendous impact on the sector already. It is the greatest opportunity for financial advice and at the same time, the biggest threat."
- an McKenna, founder of AdviserSoftware.com
At its inaugural Artificial Intelligence in Financial Advice (AIFA) conference, AdviserSoftware.com polled its 100+ adviser attendees on current and future adoption of AI.
Two years on from ChatGTP launching to the public, most advisers (65.8%) view the future of advice as a service that will be primarily delivered via an online client portal, with virtual access to the adviser via an online service. This will be to provide clients with the benefit of accessing personal information about their finances when they wish.
Highlighting the significance of the trend towards a more holistic hybrid advice model following the infiltration of AI across many sectors, including advice, in-person client contact will remain important with almost a third (32.9%) expecting to maintain client contact on a quarterly or annual basis.
To achieve this hybrid model, AI will play a pivotal role. However, to fully integrate AI into the on-going advice journey, over half of advisers (57%) polled said they’d like to enhance their compliance processes to use AI for the provision of suitable advice in the future.
This would allow advisers to use AI beyond the on-boarding process (where many advisers are already using AI), with most value delivered across the collation of client information from data sources to prepopulate fact finds (named by 38%), the generation of suitability reports and other recommendations (32%) and to automate meeting notes (22%).
When asked about the future use of AI in the advice journey, 97.4% said they plan to use AI more in the future.
Ian McKenna, founder of AdviserSoftware.com, part of FTRC, said: “Artificial intelligence is having a tremendous impact on the sector already. It is the greatest opportunity for financial advice and at the same time, the biggest threat.
“It presents an enormous opportunity to close the advice gap and will, without doubt, mean technical financial advice will be available for free 10 years from now.
“Today, it supports advisers and allows them to free up the time needed to hone their skills that will ensure they remain relevant in the future. Advisers need to focus on the psychology and behavioural science elements of advice to remain relevant.”
