AI: Say hello to the newest member of the team

More financial professionals are using AI to help save time, work more efficiently—and connect more often with clients.

And they’re just getting started.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, financial professionals who harness AI can often offer their clients service with a more personal touch.

For example, AI can help a wealth manager increase client touchpoints, improve the client experience and become more productive and efficient, according to an Accenture report.

Successful financial professionals may integrate AI into their practice while continuing to keep their clients at the heart of every interaction. 

The message here is clear:

AI can be a valuable tool that can save you time if you use it carefully, avoid privacy and compliance risks and are prepared to answer client questions.

With that in mind, here are four ways you could use AI to help enhance your practice, along with things to know if you start working with AI. Plus, a few key client questions to anticipate if AI becomes a part of your team.

1. Automate time-consuming tasks. 

Ways you could use AI: A significant part of a financial professional’s time can be spent on tasks like administrative duties that could be delegated. AI can help you recoup some of that time by drafting responses to basic questions and assisting with preparing documents for client meetings. Plus, AI can help you personalize the information you send to clients as well as quickly create engaging charts and graphs.

What to watch out for: It’s imperative you are careful not to share your client’s personal data with an AI platform and violate privacy regulations. Information you share with an AI platform is collected and processed in the cloud, which is a collection of servers accessed through the internet. AI providers state that they do not store the information they collect, but it’s best to be prudent. Ensure that you have reviewed the data privacy features of the AI system that you use.  Major LLMs (large language models) such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard all have data privacy protections.

Be prepared to reassure clients that you will not share their personal information with AI—and ideally, show them clear company policies that back up your best practices.

2. Analyze trends and create presentations.

Ways you could use AI: One of AI’s best qualities is its ability to process large amounts of information. It is designed to spot patterns, and because it’s not human, it doesn’t allow emotion to influence its decision-making (though it can base decisions on inaccurate information). 

Still, financial professionals can use AI to quickly analyze news articles, social media posts and companies’ financial reports to help identify market trends that can be packaged into a presentation. 

What to watch out for: AI is not infallible. Because AI combs the internet for information, its analysis can rely on factually inaccurate and error-filled or biased content. It’s unable to pick up on nuances the way you can. 

In fact, AI could make incorrect predictions or share incomplete information. With anything generated using AI technology, be sure to check that it’s accurate.

3. Develop marketing and client outreach.

Ways you could use AI: Marketing and personalized customer communications can help expand your reach and help you grow your client base, but they can be time-consuming to create. 

Again, that’s where AI can help. It can create first drafts of communications, helping to communicate complicated topics in easy-to-understand language, creating graphics, and tailoring content to different channels, for example social media and emails. You can input your general ideas into ChatGPT and ask it to draft a blog post on a specific topic, for example. Once it does, though, you aren’t yet ready to post.

Instead, view AI content as a first draft that needs to be edited for content, style and accuracy. After editing the post, you also can ask AI to help you write a one-sentence summary that you can post on social media with a link to your blog post.

What to watch out for: Be on the lookout for inaccuracies. It is not unusual for AI to repeat inaccurate or even inappropriate information it has picked up from the information it has been trained on. When using AI, have a solid plan to double-check everything.

4. Create learning and development tools.

Ways you could use AI: There are a number of ways to use AI for learning and development regimens for new—and current—employees. AI excels at routine or tedious tasks that can help free up learning managers to concentrate on other aspects of training. Consider these relatively simple ways to use AI:

• Content creation: AI can create a lesson on a specific topic.
• Translation: This function can be used for international teams that speak a variety of languages.
• Quizzes: AI can build interactive quizzes based on the material the user is learning.
• Outlines: AI can generate an outline to help you structure your training program.

What to watch out for: As is always the case, AI is only as good as your query or your source material. Be as specific as possible when generating content and be sure to review the results with care.

A few final notes:  

In a rapidly changing world, it can be important to understand and learn how to best use AI. More financial professionals (in other words, your competitors) may be using AI to help save time and get more process work done—so they can focus on better serving their clients.

It’s fine to start small—take some time to develop an understanding of the technology, perhaps by trying out GPT4 or other models and getting a feel for their strengths and gaps for various use cases. 

If you’ve done your homework and are ready to jump in, just remember:

• Conduct a few trial runs to decide what AI can—and can’t—do for you.
• Keep your client at the center of every interaction. AI is a powerful tool, but it always requires human oversight.
• Research AI’s limits and shortcomings. As you work with AI, be sure to vet the content it generates for you—so you don’t share inappropriate or inaccurate content.
• Don’t share private client data. Assume that anything you input into an AI platform will be shared with servers across the internet.

Above all, make sure content generated by any AI tools you use is compliant, accurate and aligns with company policies. As the research shows, if used in a smart way, AI may help you grow your business and give your clients better services. 

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