Can AI help improve access to advice?

Speaking on the ifa Show, Adele Martin, founder of My Money Buddy and The Savings Squad podcast, said emerging technology can be used to reduce time spent on back-office tasks and provide basic advice to increase productivity of advisers.

Speaking on the struggles the industry is currently facing, Martin said technology may be useful in easing some of the pressure caused by a lack of financial advisers.

“The education standards are now so high to get them in, it’s going to be hard. I don’t think we’re going to solve it now,” she said.

“I think what’s going to really help is some of the AI and technology stuff that is still evolving and evolving quite fast. I think that’s going to be how we solve a lot of this.

“I think we could use AI to support advisers.”

Back-office tasks could be handled by AI, Martin said, leaving advisers to focus on face-to-face interactions with clients.

“I think if we could get an adviser’s role to be just seeing clients and not having to hand stuff to paraplanning or chase stuff up from firm managers, if we could just have them seeing clients and that was the only stuff that they did,” she said.

“They’re not doing file notes because we’ve got AI file notes; they’re not filling out back files, so we’ve got all the AI to do that.

“If we could use technology to solve that, that’s going to help a lot.”

By utilising these technologies “they could see a lot of clients a week”, Martin said.

Looking at possible implications for super funds and banks, Martin said they could employ an AI adviser that could give basic advice by utilising financial information the institution already has access to.

“It may be full advice or a little bit of partial advice and say, ‘OK, now I think it’s the point that you need to see a financial adviser’,” she said.

“Because it knows all your bank details, it knows all your super stuff, it’ll be talking to you like a real person.”

Martin added that although the integration of AI could help answer minor queries, the current shortage of advisers will continue to be an issue as there will still be a need for face-to-face consultation and that will take longer to solve.

“Someone that’s 60, they want someone to talk to about life savings, they might want someone to talk to.

“I think as we go on, the younger people might come through more tech savvy and be totally OK with seeing someone online if they just want to ask a quick question.

“But if they’re wanting that, pick up the phone, one-on-one advice, that’s going to be hard to solve, because we have now that very high education hurdle.

“And if they want that personalised advice, that’s going to be hard to solve with just one on one, unless you have some really good tech that comes along and helps as well.”