Technology experts at the RIA Edge Nashville stressed using artificial intelligence to power advisement for everything from driving organic growth to reminding a client of an important deadline.
“The issue for advisors is not getting replaced by AI, but getting out-competed by other advisors who are using AI better than you are,” Parker Ence, CEO and co-founder of startup Jump, said on the sidelines of sessions regarding using technology for growth at the conference.
Jump, founded in 2023, offers advisors AI-assisted platforms for client notetaking, summarizing and compliance records. During his presentation, Ence showed a picture of Iron Man to emphasize that the future of advice combines technology and humans.
“I think what we all haven’t fully internalized yet is that this most recent generation of AI, generative AI, is different because it can read and write unstructured data extremely well,” he said. “Almost everything that advisors do is unstructured data—it’s emails, it’s conversations, it’s text messages, it’s reports and now computers can finally deal with that.”
Vickie Lewin, the chief growth officer for Amplify, an advisor wealth platform provider, said AI is not changing how advisors work but is increasingly helping them to do things “better, faster, smarter.”
Specifically, she noted AI’s use in client prospecting and onboarding and its ability to maintain a consistent experience for clients.
“Being able to use technology to do what you said you were going to do is a great way to make sure that all of those moments that matter are getting what they are set up to expect to receive,” Lewin said.
Jordan Hutchinson, RFG Advisory’s vice president of technology and operations, said the RIA platform for independent advisors is considering how AI can use its proprietary “data lake” to complete client onboarding and ongoing reports.
“You’ll have AI to fill out all that for [the advisor],” he said. “This is not five years from now …. we are testing it to have AI handling the administrative areas, so all the advisor needs to do is bring a client a DocuSign.”
Hutchinson said if you can create the specific data sets and the right algorithms, the AI can become a teammate for your work with clients.
“We’re drowning in data, but we’re starved for wisdom,” he said, giving an example of an advisor asking when they last spoke to a client about opening an IRA account. “The AI will be able to pull that out and tell you.”
Eden Ovadia, co-founder of FINNY AI, a lead generation startup that leverages AI, said there is a lot of talk in the advisor industry about organic growth but that advisors often still use client lead generation programs that don’t produce it. She sees part of the difficulty coming from a change in how referrals and lead generation work.
“Referrals are king for getting growth, and that is not going to change, but it is decreasing,” she said. “It’s not enough just to rely on referrals, especially as older generations are much more likely to make referrals than younger generations.”
She argued that advisors should leverage AI to mine potential clients in a way that can dig into niche and core client pools.
“Data has become more accessible than ever,” she said. “But how do we action on that data in a scalable way? How do we prioritize who to go after? … You need to target the right groups with your content, be segmented and hyper-specific.”
However, panelists emphasized that the human element of working with people will continue to be vital.
Cary Carbonaro, managing wealth advisor at Ashton Thomas Private Wealth, said she has not relied on technology for her success with clients but on human interaction. She said she has focused on loyalty and high-touch service with clients above all else.
She also has had a specific client area with which she has worked very closely: women. She said women comprise 80% of her client base, with the rest being couples. That focus, she said, has helped her succeed.
“The way I’ve worked my entire career is that I’ve always held myself out as an advisor who helps women, that this is my life’s work and my life’s passion,” she said. “The law of attraction has attracted all of these incredible clients to me.”
Ence of Jump, who came from the tech startup space, agreed that good advisors will thrive. He also believes that as the next generation comes up, their workflows and processes will be fueled by AI, and they’ll use it to work more closely with clients, not less.
