The common reason that financial planners resist using artificial intelligence is that they do not know where to start. Soon, every tech vendor, online service and system will incorporate AI; using it will be unavoidable.
But for now, planners have a choice to start on their own — if they only knew where to dip their toes in the water to make a real difference.
The following three examples can serve as small AI pilot programs that make the argument to use the technology at scale in almost every area of the business. When planners start to use AI in a productive way, they can then see many other use cases for its application to lowering costs, improving sales and ultimately increasing profitability.
Novice: Improved Meeting Notes and Follow-up Items
Possibly the simplest thing to do is to use a note taker for meetings. Transcripts are becoming more and more accurate, as AI processes millions of conversations. It used to take a financial planner 30 minutes to summarize a 90-minute meeting. Now, AI provides the transcript and the summary in no time at all.
In many instances, the summary is all that is needed. With certain AI tools, the summary can be directly integrated into the customer relationship management system. Soon, it will be hard to imagine a platform not having this capability embedded in its technology.
AI can then make recommendations for follow-ups from the meeting. Reminders can be set in a calendar. To-do items can be scheduled. Workflows can begin.
With these simple efficiencies, the planner is already onto the next meeting, saving time with every client interaction. Most importantly, notes are actually captured, where planners might not have gotten to them in the past. This can have a huge service benefit, making sure that to-do items do not fall through the cracks. Having the notes also checks a compliance box.
Beginner: Draft Follow-up Email Communications
Using generative AI is one of the easiest ways to start with the technology. For the next writing project, financial planners using ChatGPT, Google Bard, Microsoft Bing Chat, Claude by Anthropic, Jasper AI, Grok by X or many other options can input as many prompts as possible to get the desired output. A planner might want AI to draft a follow-up email for a client, detailing action items. To do this, the planner can ask the AI to write a communication in a professional and empathetic tone. The last meeting summary can be entered into the AI, asking that it be used to draft the follow-up email with clear to-do items. (Check with compliance about what confidential information can be used.)
Ask AI to close with a paragraph of how important the client relationship is to the business and see what is produced. Keep adding prompts to fine-tune communications. Perhaps feed AI more information about the brand, writing style or services offered.
If using OpenAI without a paid account, record the prompts that worked in a file that is easy to access. Then they can easily be copied and pasted into AI the next time it is used.
Very likely, a first draft of an email is created that would have taken over 20 minutes to write, and more often than not it is written better than most humans can do. While people need to oversee the content, AI can and will learn as improvements are made.
Continue to give AI feedback, add more prompts and feed it more data, and next time the output will be even better.
Intermediate: Create Campaigns
Use AI to segment clients. With every segment, identify commonalities, like how they think, what they have and what they need. How can their problems be solved?
Using those topics, have AI help brainstorm ideas to create articles to share with this audience. Once an idea is chosen, AI can help outline the content. After that, the article can be drafted, keeping the clients in mind.
Once valuable content is created, repurpose it for prospects in this same target market. Offer it on your website in exchange for visitors' contact information. Use AI to write complimentary website copy. It likely can be used to make the site’s content more compelling and perform better.
For prospects in this category, where emails have been already captured, create automated email marketing copy. Consider using AI to create videos that can be sent to make impactful first impressions.
AI can also help create social-media friendly content, tailored to each social network.
Searching for needed imagery can be time-consuming and expensive. Instead, AI can generate original images with the correct dimensions for unlimited use. The technology can even optimize online ad campaigns, if financial planners are using digital advertising.
Just like with client meetings, create follow-up emails for once a prospect is in the system. Develop a lead-funnel process that will take the prospect forward to conversion. Use AI to analyze the pipeline of prospects and make suggestions for future outreach. Watch lead flow and conversion rates improve, with AI providing real-time reporting, data insights and help with decision making.
Mike Byrnes is the owner of Byrnes Consulting, which provides business planning, marketing strategy and management consulting services for advisors.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.