AI to see advisers transition to financial strategists

“In an average adviser’s job, there’s probably about 40 per cent of just mundane, admin, routine tasks that could in fact be done by an artificially intelligent machine software,” the executive director of the Gradient Institute, Adjunct Professor at the Australian Graduate School of Management, and the founder of the Responsible Metaverse Alliance said on a recent ifa podcast.

According to Dr Catriona Wallace, AI should not be feared. Instead, it can come in as almost a subject matter expert to provide information to advisers that they need to do their job.

Conversely, AI is expected to help clients become more self-sufficient, freeing up advisers to execute those higher-level strategies that can really reshape a client’s financial future.

In essence, Dr Wallace said, advisers could become financial strategists.

“What we really want to see is not just that financial services organisations and business gets really well equipped with AI and smart technology. We also want to make sure that customers are actually well-provided and supported with their own AI and their own way of researching and becoming more self-sufficient,” Dr Wallace explained.

“We will see more apps and capability offered to customers to help them navigate research of financial services, to do comparators, to do all sorts of things that they would normally have relied perhaps on an adviser to do that they should be able to do themselves, and then come to the adviser again for those higher-level reasoning strategy,” she added.

Dr Wallace believes that by elevating a client’s education and capability, AI will essentially allow the adviser to execute more sophisticated future planning. This, in turn, would take the entire advice experience up a level.

“We would expect the whole level of discussion and advice to become a more sophisticated level,” Dr Wallace said.  

“We'd love to see advisers really step into being strategists. So not just giving tactical, basic financial advice, but really what is the strategy for this person's life?

“How does this financial model support this person's goals, but in perhaps more creative ways than just a traditional way and traditional products? I think that advisers becoming financial strategists for their clients would be a beautiful thing.”

A recent survey revealed that as many as 70 per cent of Aussies under 40 believe their financial decisions would be smarter with the assistance of AI tools.

The research based on a survey of 752 investors by CoreData, on behalf of online trading platform Moomoo, also found that as many as 47 per cent of investors aged over 60 now source their investment information online, overtaking the 38 per cent who use a traditional adviser.

“There is a whole generation of Australians who are very comfortable using AI to augment everyday decision making — from surfacing new movie, song or shopping recommendations to autofilling email replies or diary prompts,” Moomoo marketing director Andrew Rogan said.

“It makes sense that Aussies would be interested in similar tools for their investment decisions.”

Overall, 77 per cent of the Aussie investors surveyed indicated that they would probably use personalised stock recommendations.

To hear more from Dr Wallace click here.