Written by Stu Breyer of Mallowstreet
The conversation about Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved on significantly over the past six months. More and more people now ask, ‘how can I actually use AI in my job?’ and not ‘how can I avoid being left behind and replaced by AI?’
It is my experience that answering the first question effectively can also address the fear that sits behind the second. I strongly believe that when it comes to implementing AI solutions one must bend the technology around the individual, not the other way around.
Always identify your ‘use case’
When it comes to thinking about how to apply AI in your job, it is very important to identify the exact ‘use case’ or problem you are looking to solve. Different tools solve different problems, so it’s important to experiment and find the right tool for you. Be as specific as you can, and don’t try to solve everything at once. That will likely end in frustration and tears before bedtime.
When we built SOFI, we were trying to solve the use case of the meeting. Specifically, a client meeting. An hour meeting can see almost 10,000 words exchanged between parties – that is a lot of data. As humans, we are exceptional at engaging with other people, reading body language, understanding tone of voice, and reading the energy in a room. It is almost impossible to do all this this if one is also trying to take copious notes, actively listen, and ask questions. A financial advisor is faced with doing this day in and day out.
SOFI is a tool that attends your meetings with you to provide an accurate record of what was said, produce bespoke output and analysis, and save a meaningful amount of time on follow-up. Over time, a user builds up a library of meetings that can be further analysed to provide meaningful real time intelligence on trends, identify patters and common themes, and ultimately become a training tool to ensure best practice across a business.
Thinking about regulation
Our users tell us that SOFI allows them to spend more time with their clients and ultimately have more productive meetings and deeper conversations. This is incredibly important when it comes to the highly regulated industry in which we operate. For starters, the UK Treasury Committee’s AI inquiry is looking to shed more light on how AI tools can and should be used across the financial services industry.
On top of this, Consumer Duty has increased the responsibility on the industry to ensure that a client actually understands the advice they have been given. If you can deploy AI tools in the background and in your business workflow that allows financial advisors to increase the amount of time they spend engaging with and listening to their clients, you can also ensure that compliance requirements are being automatically logged and accounted for.
Addressing the advice gap
Partly because of the onerous regulatory requirements and therefore cost to service a client, today too many people don’t meet a financial advisor’s criteria for becoming a client (i.e. not enough savings). Imagine the impact on a 20-year-old with £10,000 of savings who had access to advice on where to invest their money for the next 50 years. It would potentially be transformational for that 20-year-old. Therefore, we want to help play our small part in helping to reduce the unit cost of providing advice to a client. Imagine a world where millions more individuals have access to financial advice at a much younger age. This would benefit everyone.
Taking action one step at a time
Every financial advisor needs to solve the same equation – how can one reduce the unit cost of servicing each client. In fact, every business is in some way working to address this fundamental question.
AI has changed the game, not only because of its sheer power, but because of its accessibility. It isn’t reserved for large corporates or sprawling conglomerates – anyone can use it. The next twelve to twenty-four months are going to be a race as everyone works to integrate AI into their business processes.
My advice is don’t try and find one AI-driven solution that is going to solve all the pain points in your business at once. Rather, I think that those that are going to excel in the next twelve to twenty-four months are the ones who identify each use case they want to solve and then find the appropriate tool to solve it. The best part about taking this approach is that the immediate time saved by automating tasks and processes can be allocated to focus on thinking about how to solve the more difficult problems.
AI isn’t coming for our jobs (not yet, I don’t think) – but the people who adopt AI best will be the next wave of industry leaders. Working step-by-step and creating efficiencies will allow businesses to scale and grow at sustainable rate and ultimately allow financial advisors to spend more time with clients – doing the meaningful work which motivated everyone to join the industry in the first place.
