With every passing decade, not solely does expertise evolve at an ever extra dramatic tempo, however every new wave comes quicker than the final. From the arrival of the pc chip within the Nineteen Fifties to the rise of the private pc almost 25 years later within the early Eighties, to the emergence of the web simply 15 years thereafter within the late Nineties, to cellular smartphones solely 10 years after that within the late 2000s, to ‘robos’ lower than a decade later within the 2010s, and most just lately to AI, which ‘all of a sudden’ went mainstream in late 2022 when ChatGPT burst onto the scene – the tempo of technological change appears to be accelerating inexorably. And with the arrival of AI particularly, questions have emerged about whether or not expertise will substitute many human jobs, together with monetary advisors.
But now, two years later, AI has not pushed a mass wave of unemployment. As a substitute, it is being allotted to way more particular – however nonetheless very related and useful – use instances that do not substitute skilled service suppliers and as a substitute merely leverage their time to be much more environment friendly. Within the case of economic advisors particularly, this has included all the things from utilizing ChatGPT as a brainstorming buddy for growing an advisor advertising and marketing plan, to producing a primary draft of a shopper e-newsletter (as it’s miles simpler to edit one thing already there than to write down on a clean slate), to adopting what has rapidly turn into the most well liked AI-driven answer in advisor expertise: AI Notetakers to assist the shopper assembly.
In observe, fast adoption of AI Notetakers has been expedited each by the media’s fixation on Synthetic Intelligence (which has highlighted a variety of AI options like Fathom, Fireflies, and Otter) and by the rollout of AI Notetakers inside present platforms (from Microsoft’s CoPilot to Zoom’s AI Companion). However on the subject of monetary advisors, our personal Kitces Analysis on Advisor Productiveness reveals that whereas among the “generic” options have gained market share the quickest, it seems that the industry-specific options like Leap and Zocks lead in advisor satisfaction (whereas satirically, #1-adopted Zoom AI Companion really ranks the lowest!). That is largely as a result of, for monetary advisors, it isn’t ‘simply’ about capturing notes from the shopper assembly itself, but in addition about managing all the things that follows: recording assembly notes in the CRM for compliance functions, assigning post-meeting duties to the group, and sending the shopper a post-meeting recap e-mail. For which industry-specific suppliers are constructing your entire advisor-CRM-integrated workflow.
But the irony is that for a lot of advisors, saving time on shopper assembly notetaking is tough when these duties have already been delegated – to the group’s Affiliate Advisor. In actual fact, as our Kitces Analysis knowledge reveals, adoption of AI Assembly Notes instruments has been most typical amongst “pure solo” advisors, who’ve nobody to delegate to (and as a substitute discover nice leverage in delegating to an AI Notetaker). Nonetheless, AI Notetakers will not be only for solo advisors; as a substitute, they’re additionally more and more in style amongst bigger (e.g., 4 to 5 individual) groups, the place it is simpler to share out the AI’s post-meeting notes to get everybody on the group (who might not have been within the assembly) in control. As well as, AI Notetakers are more and more in style as advisors’ monetary plans get more and more complete; not surprisingly, the extra detailed monetary planning conversations occur in shopper conferences, the extra there’s to seize and share out.
On the identical time, AI Assembly Notes instruments themselves proceed to evolve quickly. What wasn’t even a class of software program simply two years in the past has now raised tens of tens of millions of {dollars} in simply the AdvisorTech area alone, for what will not be solely nominally “notetaking” software program, however more and more protecting your entire shopper assembly lifecycle (assembly notes → document notes in CRM → queue up post-meeting duties → draft post-meeting recap e-mail →→→ pre-meeting agenda for the following shopper assembly), after which leveraging the cumulative knowledge to supply much more recall particulars for advisors about what occurred in prior conferences.
In the long term, it appears clear that AI Assembly Notes instruments are right here to remain. In actual fact, with their more and more complete protection of your entire shopper relationship, maybe the largest query is just whether or not they’ll stay standalone instruments or, as a substitute, if CRM techniques for monetary advisors will ultimately provide their very own built-in variations (since that is the place the remainder of the info about shopper relationships already resides!?).
Both manner, the panorama of AI in advisor expertise continues to evolve quick. And we’re dedicated to protecting monitor of it with our Kitces Analysis. Which is why we’re additionally launching our newest Kitces AdvisorTech survey, to gather knowledge on the most recent in how advisors are literally utilizing expertise. So when you’ve got a couple of minutes, please take our AdvisorTech survey linked on the finish of this text!
