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Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming industries across the board, and financial advising is no exception. More than half of advisors report using generative AI in their businesses, with four out of 10 citing ChatGPT as their most-used tool, according to a 2026 T3/Inside Information report. 1 Here’s how AI can potentially support your work as an advisor.
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Ways Financial Advisors Can Use ChatGPT
The T3/Inside Information survey didn’t ask advisors how they use ChatGPT and other AI tools, only if they did so. This technology can help financial advisors grow their businesses in a variety of ways, and identifying your core needs can help you determine which AI innovations are best suited to your business.
Here are some of the best potential types and uses of AI tools for financial advisors right now:
Content Creation
One of the most common uses for ChatGPT and other AI tools is content creation. For example, you might use ChatGPT prompts to create outlines for blog posts on your advisor website or brainstorm ideas for your next email newsletter. Other content creation ideas include developing outlines or presentations for virtual and in-person seminars, or drafting social media posts.
Keep in mind that any content you create with AI still requires a human touch to check for spelling and grammatical errors, accuracy and to ensure that the content maintains your brand voice. Compliance is also important; we’ll cover how advisors can use ChatGPT and AI tools compliantly a little later.
Client Outreach
A financial advisor can use AI tools to streamline copy for client outreach, personalizing it for each person. The more data you feed into your chosen AI tool, the more it can help you personalize your own tone and information directly to your client.
More customer relationship management (CRM) platforms are incorporating AI to assist with client outreach and support. For example, Salesforce incorporates autonomous AI agents to provide continuous customer support to help with answering questions or resolving issues.
Risk Management
AI-driven risk management tools can help advisors identify potential risks by digesting large bodies of data nearly instantly. Not only can you benefit from a comprehensive assessment of risk, but you gain back hours of your time.
Machine learning models can conduct risk analysis and stress-test model portfolios to predict how they might react to different market scenarios. AI tools that rely on natural language processing can also scan client messages or activity in their secure account portal to detect changes that might indicate a shift in their normal behavior patterns.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is a core function of AI tools. You can input data and get answers to your questions or identify investments that aren’t a good fit for a specific portfolio. For example, you may use AI to identify which stocks wouldn’t be a good fit for a portfolio focused on ESG investments.
AI tools can also read complex documents to parse out critical information and organize it into a succinct report. Some tools focus on monitoring market trends, while others analyze client profiles for potential life changes that could present an opportunity to expand the services you offer.
Organization
AI tools can help you get organized and stay that way. Some of the tasks AI can help with in this area include recordkeeping, reporting and summarizing important forms, including legal documents. You could also rely on AI for scheduling and calendar management, including keeping track of upcoming seminars or networking events.
Automation
Automation can streamline front and back office processes, leaving you and your staff free to tackle other tasks. For example, AI note-takers can help you record client meetings without taking your attention away from what the client is saying. These tools can generate summaries and craft content for follow-up emails seamlessly, so you can maximize your time.
You might also use AI to automate the client onboarding process, reducing the amount of time it takes to add a new client to the books. AI can assist with sending automated welcome emails, obtaining signatures for required documents and completing Know Your Client (KYC) identity verification checks.
Marketing
The right AI tool can help you with marketing campaigns and lead generation so you can scale your business at a consistent pace. AI lead gen tools can help with marketing content creation, lead analysis to help you identify the most promising prospects and automated list-building.
These tools can also canvass the web to identify prospects who meet your ideal client profile, verify their information, and analyze their online behavior to gauge their likelihood to engage with an advisor. They can assist with prospect outreach by drafting custom cold emails or LinkedIn messages that you can use to make first contact.
Personal Growth
There are tools that can help you grow personally or professionally by analyzing news or articles that you want to stay on top of, giving you the highlights you need. Other AI tools can offer daily journaling prompts for reflection, help with goal-setting and provide strategies for effective habit tracking. These tools can also help you maintain a solid work/life balance.
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Will AI Tools Change the Financial Landscape?
All of this technological advancement raises the question: Where can this technology go next? Specifically, will AI tools change the future of financial advice? To answer this question, SmartAsset reached out to several experts in the field of financial technology. Below are their thoughts on how tools like ChatGPT will apply to the financial advising business.
How AI Can Improve the Client Experience
“Perhaps the greatest impact (of AI) for customers will be seen in financial advisory services,” says Arthur Weissman, co-founder of the firm Industry FinTech. “(It) will yield an improved customer experience, a lowering of overhead costs and (provide) greater access to more options for investors.”
Weissman sees AI as an invaluable tool for improving the customer experience. Chatbots have been proven to work for essential customer interactions, such as scheduling inquiries and administrative questions, he says.
Leaning into a more human-like AI can both reduce a financial advisor’s overhead and improve customer service. That’s because a customer could get questions answered immediately without having to wait for a return phone call.
Clients Still Need a Human Touch
Companies have spent years cycling out customer service in favor of bots. But those automated tools can infuriate customers as easily as engage them. The upshot is that a chat system can provide sophisticated, always-on support for those times when a human representative isn’t available. This is exactly what AI agents, which can route client queries and answer questions, are designed to do.
But fintech leaders are clear that AI tools won’t be limited to just routine questions. Instead, these systems will help firms develop portfolios and research investment opportunities.
A majority of financial advisors already see AI as a powerful tool to help them grow their businesses, says Zoe Barry, CEO of Zingeroo, a retail trading platform. It can help advisors streamline time-intensive tasks such as gathering research, finding potential assets and identifying patterns in the market.
But even with today’s tools, there are hard limits to how far an AI can go, Barry says. Ultimately, financial advisors still need to provide a personal touch to their client interactions.
While an AI system can act without bias, helping financial advisors check their own tendencies toward emotional investing, that emotional connection is essential to helping a client figure out their needs.
Prospecting and developing new business still require time and energy on your part. While AI can’t do this work for you, other technology can certainly make it easier. For example, SmartAsset AMP is a subscription-based platform that helps fiduciary advisors automate lead generation and marketing. Leads are sent directly to your phone or inbox, allowing you to respond quickly and launch automated email and text campaigns to nurture relationships. Sign up for a free demo today.
AI as a Powerful Data Tool
Financial advisors shouldn’t miss one of the most important features of AI. That’s its ability to analyze enormous amounts of data, says Mina Tadrus, CEO of Tadrus Capital, a quantitative high-frequency trading and fixed-income fund.
“One of the key benefits of using AI tools for financial advice is the ability to provide highly personalized recommendations,” Tadrus says. “AI algorithms are able to analyze vast amounts of data about an individual’s financial situation, including their income, spending habits, investment portfolio and risk tolerance. With this information, AI tools can provide customized recommendations that are tailored to each individual’s unique circumstances.”
This kind of data analysis is often at the heart of financial advising, whether you’re helping a client review their personal finances or you’re combing the market for investments that meet their stated goals. In all cases, the first step is to go over reams of data and look for patterns. This involves doing what technologists refer to as “high-routine” tasks. That means that while the process may be difficult, it requires essentially the same analysis every time. Advisors may be able to have an AI find those patterns for them.
“This allows financial advisors to focus on more complex tasks that require a human touch, such as developing long-term financial plans and providing guidance during major life events like retirement or divorce,” Tadrus says.
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What Chatbots Can and Can’t Do
Chatbots like ChatGPT are powered by large language models (LLMs), which are trained on large amounts of data to recognize patterns in language and generate responses based on context.
These tools can summarize information, explain concepts, draft content and identify patterns in data. Some can also search the web or access connected data sources. However, they do not simply search a database for existing answers.
AI-generated responses can still be inaccurate, incomplete or entirely made up, and they may fall short in situations that call for professional judgment or a nuanced understanding of a client’s circumstances.
That’s what makes human oversight essential for financial advisors. ChatGPT and similar tools work best as support for research, organization, content creation and routine tasks, not as a replacement for professional expertise.
AI Tools and Compliance for Financial Advisors
Compliance is a core focus for advisors. While AI tools could make running your business less stressful, improper use could create headaches. Advisors who use AI must use the same approach to ensuring compliance as they do in any other area of their business.
Here are some examples of how advisors can use AI in compliance with SEC and FINRA rules:
| Content Creation | Verify that any AI-generated content does not include false, inaccurate or misleading statements, in accordance with the SEC’s marketing rule. Submit all AI-generated content to your chief compliance officer for review before publication. |
| Data Input | Regulation S-P requires advisors to secure non-public personal information. To remain compliant, verify that personally identifiable information is stripped from any documents or files that are accessed by AI tools. |
| Recordkeeping | If using AI notetakers, maintain duplicate copies of the original transcript and the conversation summary in a write once, read many (WORM) format, in accordance with recordkeeping requirements established under Rule 206(4)-2). Also keep records of prompts you enter into ChatGPT or other AI tools. |
| Policies and Procedures | Include acceptable use policies for AI tools in your firm’s written compliance policy. Perform required due diligence for all third-party vendors you work with, including AI platforms, as third-party vendor oversight is currently on the list of SEC exam priorities. |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are some good ChatGPT prompts for financial advisors?
Advisors can use ChatGPT prompts to create scripts for email marketing, including cold emails, client introduction letters, newsletter updates, drip campaigns and blast sequences. They can also enter prompts to brainstorm ideas for content marketing, including blog posts and social media posts, seminars or client events. Whatever prompt you enter, specificity matters. For example, you might write a prompt like this: Create a list of 10 blog posts that cover different facets of the retirement planning process, tailored to an audience of 40-something professionals who are married with children, earn a combined income of $200,000 per year and hope to retire in their mid-50s.
What are the limitations of ChatGPT for advisors?
ChatGPT is not a substitute for human oversight, nor does it carry the same fiduciary duty that an advisor may be subject to. AI tools like ChatGPT are incapable of providing true personalization and there can be significant risks associated with data privacy and accuracy.
Can ChatGPT replace human advisors?
ChatGPT and other AI tools offer consumers an alternative to traditional advisory services, but they can’t replace human advisors altogether. Advisors who are concerned about how disruptive AI might be to the industry may gain a competitive edge by learning how these tools work and integrating them into their business in strategic ways.
Bottom Line
Artificial intelligence may revolutionize how financial advisors do business, from fielding customer interactions to analyzing financial information. Some experts believe that it will become an essential tool in the years to come. Exploring the possibilities of AI for your business and what gaps you may be able to use it to fill can help you decide if it belongs in your operations strategy.
Tips for Growing Your Financial Advisory Business
- AI can help with your emails and in creating ideas but it won’t send new client leads your way. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
- Great financial advisors know that there is still work to be done before it is left behind. And that work is around taxes. Here are seven pitfalls financial advisors can avoid as they work their way through the tax-filing season.
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Article Sources
All articles are reviewed and updated by SmartAsset’s fact-checkers for accuracy. Visit our Editorial Policy for more details on our overall journalistic standards.
- Veres , Bob, and Joel Bruckenstein. T3/Inside Information Software Survey. T3 Technology Hub/Inside Information, 2026.