The rapid advances unfolding in artificial intelligence are having significant effects on a variety of industries in the United States and globally — and that includes wealth management and financial services.
However, as explored by a panel of AI experts convened Wednesday in New York by The Wealth Mosaic, few other industries have so many regulatory considerations to navigate when it comes to implementing AI tools. As a result, independent RIAs and wirehouses are generally taking a deliberate and cautious approach to AI.
That said, as the panel emphasized, there is a big difference between caution and disinterest. Firms of all sizes are asking big questions about how to use AI, especially when it comes to boosting advisor efficiency and delivering more personalized experiences to clients.
Among the speakers on the panel were Kabir Sethi, the former LPL and Merrill Lynch technology executive who is a venture partner at Alpha Tech Partners; Patrick Hannon, vice president of software as a service commercialization at Fidelity Labs; and Kaitlin Elliott, who heads Morgan Stanley’s recently launched firmwide AI team. They were joined by technology startup executives Jon Stevenson and David Navama.
The speakers shared the conviction that 2025 is likely to be a banner year for AI's use in wealth management. AI models might not be imminently taking discretion over client portfolios or making big money moves in advisors’ stead, but they are expected to play a bigger role in client meetings and the financial planning process.
It’s All About Efficiency
RIAs are broadly interested in deploying AI in ways that boost advisor efficiency, according to the panel. It’s a twofold interest, since more efficient advisors can serve more clients and thus help to build revenue for their firms.
“Remember, more and more of the RIA space is now owned by private equity, so that just increases the emphasis on efficiency and empowering firms to deliver positive commercial outcomes,” Sethi observed.
Like their counterparts in executive leadership, advisors are also asking how AI can help them reduce the time spent on repetitive or time-consuming tasks in order to focus on higher-value activities like client meetings and business development.
Notably, advisors who aren’t getting good answers from their home offices about AI tools are increasingly willing to vote with their feet and move to a firm that makes their working lives more enjoyable. Among the most sought-after offerings, according to the panel, are accurate and reliable notetaking tools that can help advisors produce insightful reports and next steps after client meetings.
AI-based text and video communication solutions are also of interest, and the same is true for meeting-prep tools and onboarding solutions that can help advisors set up new client accounts more quickly. This includes both account-opening functions and smart document review tools that can be used to analyze and integrate new clients’ existing documents and accounts onto the new advisor’s platform.
What Won’t Be Replaced by AI
Hannon said he has high expectations for AI tools and techniques to remake “a lot” of what financial advisors do, and those firms that choose to ignore the AI boom are setting themselves up for big challenges in a tech-enabled future.
But, Hannon emphasized, there’s little chance that generative AI technologies will displace the importance of the human connection in wealth management.
“There’s something absolutely fundamental here, where advisors and clients have this distinctly unique relationship that technology is not going to touch,” Hannon said. “I’m a technologist, but I still believe that’s going to remain true.”
As the panelists noted, neither advisors nor clients are clamoring to see AI replace everything. What they want is efficiency, responsiveness and personalization.
“You go talk to executives at the big RIAs and they say, I want help with making meetings more efficient, or I need to empower my marketing team to help drive growth,” Hannon said. “They want the human-to-human relationship to be empowered, not replaced, through AI.”
Keeping Humans in the Loop
Elliott, meanwhile, emphasized Morgan Stanley’s conscious strategy of human touch when it comes to AI-based processes.
“This goes back to the governance and regulatory demands in our space,” Elliott said. “At Morgan Stanley, for example, for every single thing that we're building, we are ensuring there is a human in the loop. We’re being really intentional about that.”
Another cornerstone of Morgan Stanley’s strategy is making sure there is always a human professional standing between any AI-generated insights or strategy suggestions and the end client.
“We believe this is important across everything that we are building — that there’s a human involved who is reviewing and authenticating what any AI model is producing,” Elliott noted.
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