How advice firms can use emerging tech to create efficiencies

Speaking in a seminar at the SMSF Association National Conference 2024 last week, Andrew Braun, general manager marketing at Netwealth, said that AI could be used to reduce time spent on back-of-office tasks.

As back-end tasks increasingly take up more time, many advisers are looking for ways to increase efficiency and spend more time consulting with clients.

“Technology has always been a helper of the back office. It’s always been about creating efficiencies and making you more productive and AI certainly is poised to help that even more,” Mr Braun said.

He provided an example of a process in which Netwealth did a mock meeting and then uploaded the transcript for the audio file to Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI.

“We then gave it some prompts and then it created [a record of advice],” Mr Braun said.

“Now clearly, this is not the final document but as a draft, to save time and create efficiency based off a meeting, this is all doable today.”

Another way financial advice firms can utilise AI is by providing investment-related reporting to clients.

According to results from the Netwealth AdviceTech report, clients wanted to receive reports from their financial adviser related to their investments much more frequently than they are receiving them.

“Wealthy Millennials, aged between 18 and 45, they want something around monthly from you, 65 per cent of them. I don’t know how many people in the room are providing monthly reports to clients. But this is the need of the client,” Mr Braun said.

“The older affluent clients, established affluent, at least want it quarterly. Established mass, that mass market, wants it less regularly.

“When we asked advisers, how often do you provide reports of this nature to clients? Only 30 per cent provide it on a quarterly basis to their clients. There’s a massive disconnect between need and actual outcomes.”

Firms can fill this void, he said, with the help of advice tech that can make generating these reports easier.

“The role of advice tech is to solve these problems; companies like Netwealth and other businesses provide a whole lot of reporting suites out of the box that compare portfolios against benchmarks and create a whole lot of simple-to-understand tools,” Mr Braun said.

“You can even create your own reports with a number of these different tools. And with the benefit of generative AI, over time, you’ll actually be able to create short summaries of all of these charts and tables.”

Despite the positives, Mr Braun warned that it is still important to “keep it human”.

“Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to keep it human,” he said.

“Your role is to look at the intersection between technology, your clients, your staff. What role does it play? You need to make sure that technology is gender neutral, cultural neutral. So, keep it human.”