In an article for SmartAsset, Eric Reed discussed how artificial intelligence tools will affect financial advisors. Clearly, it’s hard to definitively predict how the technology will evolve, but it will have the most immediate impact on improving the customer experience. Already, chatbots are capable of engaging with customers, booking appointments, and dealing with administrative issues. For instance, advisors could use a chatbot to immediately respond to customers to low-level inquiries. This would result in more time for advisors to spend on higher-value issues. 

Beyond customer service, AI tools can also be an asset in terms of portfolio construction and research. AI will allow advisors to leverage considerable computing power to discover opportunities in the market and provide more insight to clients. 

For instance, AI can allow advisors to scrape and process massive amounts of data to deliver customized recommendations. This type of analysis can also be applied to a clients’ financial situation, inputting such items like income, spending habits, demographics, and risk tolerance. 

AI tools are bound to disrupt nearly every industry on the planet. Financial advice is no different. As of now, the main benefit is that it will provide additional value to clients, while allowing advisors to focus on higher-value work.

Finsum: AI is a disruptive force, and advisors need to embrace it. Currently, these tools can help with low-level tasks, data analysis, and enable advisors to spend more time on high-value tasks.