Everything, everywhere, all at once. That’s where AI is going.
Actually, that’s where AI has went, and for every neat new tool available in the highly regulated financial industry, there are probably dozens available to the general public. What’s more, there’s evidence that the general public is using those artificial intelligence tools to ask financial questions.
Are advisors running into clients and prospects using those tools to check their work? There’s only one way to find out – We asked!
We talk a lot about wealth management around here, but probably not as much as we should to wealth managers themselves.
There’s really nothing quite like talking to an engaged financial advisor—and that’s why the profession will probably survive in some form for as long as there are people with wealth.
From an editorial perspective, we recognize that the voice of the advisor is something that has sometimes been lacking from our content, yet it is critical to any discussion of wealthtech—so we’re continuing our “We Asked” column to inject more wealth management voices into our coverage. Each week, we’ll ask a new wealthtech- or AI-related question directly to financial advisors using the FPA’s MediaSource and other tools at our disposal. We will always try to offer as many advisor responses to our questions as possible, with as little editing of those responses as possible.
This week, we asked “”Are your clients verifying your work with AI? Are you? Why or why not?”
Here are our responses, in alphabetical order:
Josh Brooks
Exponential Advisors LLC
Weatherford, TX
Are my clients using AI to review my work? Not yet, but I expect it’s only a matter of time. These tools are getting better, and a curious client could easily run my recommendations through ChatGPT or Claude for a second opinion. I think that’s a positive development. If my analysis can’t withstand scrutiny from a sophisticated tool, it’s a sign I need to refine it.
Am I using AI to review my own work? Absolutely. I rely on AI tools to verify key calculations and logic, especially in intricate cases involving multiple income sources, tax brackets, and coordinating benefits. It’s like having a tireless junior analyst who can catch errors I might overlook after a long day. That said, I don’t rely on AI for judgment. It doesn’t know my clients, their risk profiles, or the personal nuances that inform a sound financial plan. For me, it’s a resource, not a substitute.
Why? Because the cost of missing something is just too high. Military families transitioning to civilian life face a complex mix of decisions—SBP elections, TSP rollovers, new employer benefits—all happening at once. A single error could cost them tens of thousands of dollars over their retirement. If AI can help me catch a mistake before it affects the client, I’m going to use it.
Mike Casey
AE Advisors, LLC
Alexandria, VA
AI has fundamentally changed the way clients engage with financial advice, and I view that as a positive development. Increasingly, clients are using AI to validate recommendations, understand unfamiliar concepts, or prepare better questions before meetings. Rather than seeing that as a challenge to an advisor’s expertise, I see it as evidence that clients are becoming more informed and engaged.
That said, AI is an exceptional research assistant but an imperfect financial advisor. It excels at summarizing information and explaining concepts, but it lacks the judgment, fiduciary responsibility, and personalized context required to make prudent financial decisions. It doesn’t know a client’s family dynamics, tax situation, behavioral tendencies, estate plan, concentrated stock positions, or long-term goals unless those details are explicitly provided and even then, it cannot assume accountability for the advice it generates.
We also use AI extensively within our practice. It helps us synthesize research, monitor market developments, analyze documents, and improve operational efficiency. However, every recommendation that reaches a client is reviewed through the lens of professional experience, fiduciary duty, and individualized planning. AI is a powerful copilot, not an autopilot. The firms that thrive over the next decade won’t compete against AI, they’ll combine human judgment, empathy, and accountability with AI’s speed and analytical capabilities to deliver better outcomes. I hope this helps.
Matt Chancey
Winter Park, FL
Yes on my clients. On my end, it is more nuanced. My team uses AI as a stress-test layer on our work. I don’t, personally, and that split is deliberate. The clients doing the verifying aren’t the risk. The advisors who can be verified with a chat prompt are. If a client pastes a recommendation into a general-purpose model and gets back the same answer, that recommendation wasn’t situation-specific. It was industry-standard.
That gap is about to price this profession correctly for the first time in forty years. This isn’t about advisors being bad at their jobs. Most are doing exactly what the profession taught them to do. The training rewarded pattern-matching the standard answer, and for a long time that was enough, because the client couldn’t check. The client can check now. And the advisors who were always more than that, the deeply curious ones, the ones borderline obsessed with the seam between the CPA, the attorney, and the tax structure, they don’t have anything to worry about. They were always earning it.
Now the client can tell. Here’s the metaphor I think the profession keeps getting wrong. AI isn’t a new seat at the client’s table. It’s sitting behind every seat that was already there. The client’s AI. My team’s AI. The CPA’s AI. The attorney’s AI. Everyone has one now. What I’m being paid for hasn’t changed. When a client, a CPA, or an attorney calls me in, they’re calling in the tax strategist. Not another tool. The judgment layer is still human. The stakes are still human. The trust at the moment of crisis is still human.
That’s also why I don’t sit down with AI myself. My team stress-tests behind me. My job at the table is to be the strategist. If I let the tool into my seat, I’ve moved from strategist to operator. Nobody’s paying me to be the operator. For advisors worried about client verification, the honest question is worth asking out loud. If my recommendation reads like a chatbot’s, was I ever the reason it worked? The business model of selling the industry-standard answer is done. The business model of watching the seam nobody else is watching looks, for the first time, priced correctly.
Robert Persichitte
Delagify Financial
Arvada, CO
ChatGPT started recommending me. I’m very flattered and can only guess why I’m in its good graces. Once that happened, I get A LOT of doublechecking from ChatGPT. It often gives incomplete or contextually wrong information. I have to spend extra time in my meetings explaining my analysis and how I got there. In general, it makes people feel more confident about their finances, which I like. We want to avoid false confidence, but the mix of a well-informed client, ChatGPT, and an experienced advisor can yield some very productive results.
