Advisor | November 2023
With the launch of ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been back in the limelight. ChatGPT is a bot that produces contents seemingly written by a human and has reached 100 million users in only two months from its launch.
What ChatGPT can do in terms of data collection and elaboration is humanly impossible. With one limitation: ChatGPT cannot listen to people or understand their emotions.
Thus, ChatGPT could certainly not be able to replace a financial professional. For example, the bot did not pass the exam to get an EFPA certificate.
However, lately some of the leading financial networks and banks have been using AI and have been investigating its impact on our lives.
FINER has conducted a survey commissioned by EFPA involving 5.570 financial professionals (Financial Advisors, Private bankers, and bank employees) and 9.710 end investors, segmented by financial assets (affluent clients, private/HNWIs) and generational cohort.
The survey revealed that the degree of familiarity with Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT is still low: 17% of financial professionals and 15% of investors claim to know AI well; top professionals and investors under 30 are the most knowledgeable.
The employment of ChatGPT is still in its infancy, however something has been changing. Financial advisors, private bankers, top professionals, and investors under 30 have been opening the way to AI, as direct user experience is not to be ignored (children and colleagues). As for their future employment, both AI and ChatGPT are currently seen as tools suitable for researching generic information to the benefit of financial professionals as well as financial information for end investors.
According to top professionals and investors under 30, the impact of AI and ChatGPT on the relationship between financial advisor/private banker and client is rather obvious and will become more evident over the next two years.
The future of financial consultancy is quite clear: the person at the centre and technology all around.
The main opportunity that comes with the use of Artificial Intelligence in the framework of the relationship between financial advisor and client is generating free time to be dedicated to activities with high added value.
The risks that come with the use of AI within the relationship between financial advisor and client are the depersonalization and homologation of the offer, which may render financial consultancy a luxury for few people.
In a market driven by the optimization of times and costs, ChatGPT and AI are thus not enemies to combat, but rather powerful assistants and allied to be understood and used properly.
The level of proactivity of financial professionals is connected to time management: on average, one third of our time is wasted in accomplishing administrative/bureaucratic tasks.
If currently the contribution of AI is limited to standardized activities (operation and risk management), AI will soon become an extraordinary propellant to manage the proactivity of clients.
Just like the invention of the wheel, AI will make everything much faster and generate a large competitive advantage to the benefit of the first to adopt it in the field of financial consultancy.
The goal is always the same – i.e., client satisfaction – as is the key role of the financial professional: just like a pilot, the professional will be at the helm, but AI will give an important contribution in determining the trajectory and speed.
Nicola Ronchetti