How AI is making financial advice smarter and scalable | Stu Breyer, mallowstreet

In his latest blog for IFA Magazine, Stu Breyer, CEO of mallowstreet, the B-Corp insights network behind SOFI, a proprietary AI tool designed specifically for wealth managers, pension funds, trustees and asset managers, explores how Artificial Intelligence can transform financial advice. By alleviating administrative burdens and enhancing client engagement, Stu tells us why and how AI has the potential to make advice smarter, more scalable, and more accessible, while helping advisers focus on what really matters: delivering better outcomes for clients.

Broadly, every financial adviser I meet joined the industry for the same reason: they want to help people make great decisions that will have a positive meaningful impact on their lives. I have yet to meet the adviser who loves taking notes, updating a CRM, completing compliance forms, and writing up meeting notes and suitability letters. However, more and more advisers find themselves stuck in a world of administration and paperwork, and not spending time they need to with the clients they want to help. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly change this – for the better. 

Pain points lead to use cases 

When it comes to adopting and implementing AI solutions across the wealth industry, the first question that must be identified is ‘what is the pain point?’. That is, what is the task or hurdle that requires the most continued repeated effort and takes up the most time. Each pain point can then be turned into a ‘use case’, which is the specific task that AI needs to alleviate. With this information clearly defined it is then possible to find the AI solution or agent that is best placed to handle the specific task. It is important to note that quite often different AI agents are required to help solve distinct, specific tasks, so having more than one working alongside your internal business processes is likely the best solution. 

Starting with the meeting 

Building SOFI, we started with the use case of the meeting. Meetings with clients and prospects are incredibly valuable and a huge amount of information is exchanged. Far too often, an adviser finds themselves taking copious notes, passively listening, and trying to remember everything that the client told them.  

SOFI enables advisers to actively listen to clients and ask the detailed questions to get to the heart of concerns, while simultaneously knowing they have an AI agent in the background that is going to produce incredibly accurate minutes, action points, and next steps.  

Off the back of this initial analysis, we created a number of follow-up agents in SOFI that fold into our clients’ internal business processes, helping to minimise manual effort and data entry – allowing more time and energy to be focused on the client. 

Engineering for better client outcomes 

With more time, energy, and resources available to focus on end client outcomes, the entire client experience of getting financial advice can be transformed. Follow-up is delivered the next (or same!) day while it is still fresh in your head. Internal processes and record-keeping can be automated, giving support staff the freedom and time to support expanding wealth management businesses without increasing the need for additional resources.  

Continuous learning and professional development 

SOFI provides users with meeting metric dashboards that help identify sentiment, but also performance measure – both in individual meetings and in aggregate. Users can clearly spot and identify trends, understand where questions are not being answered, as well as if there are specific topics that are consistently not being understood by clients. This process allows advisers to become better communicators, giving them the training and tools required to deliver articulate, concise, and accurate guidance when it comes to financial advice. 

Thinking through the potential impact 

Imagine the scenario where a young woman in her early twenties gets in touch with a financial adviser to ask where she should invest £10,000 pounds today, for a fifty-year period. All too often, most financial advisers will regrettably turn down taking on this young woman as a client simply because the unit cost of servicing and supporting her will be uneconomical and generate a loss for them or their firm.  

However, in a world where an AI agent is deployed to help in the background, these economics could change. Imagine the outcome of giving her great advice and the difference that can occur if this money is invested for the very long-term. 

The impact and importance of regulation 

Regulation and Consumer Duty are designed to protect consumers and ensure their best interests are truly taken into account when advice is given. It requires evidence to be provided and detailed client records to be maintained. In a world of manual notes and clunky business processes, regulation has the potential to overwhelm advisers and create a box-ticking compliance exercise that moves further away from the intention of the policy. Not the outcome anyone is looking for. 

By deploying AI into the process, not only can regulation be fully adhered to, but the true spirit of the piece can be deployed in practice, every day. Financial advisers can spend more time with clients, ask more probing and questions, and ensure that the client does truly understand not only the advice that is being given, but the rationale and reasoning that supports it. 

Remember the reason financial advisers joined the industry in the first place: better informed clients will make better decisions, resulting in a better outcome for them and their families in the longer term. Adopting and implementing AI solutions is a clear way forward to help achieve these goals, helping raise the bar of advice across the industry; potentially allow millions more individuals across the UK access to advice. The impact could be profoundly beneficial. My advice to everyone is the same – start trialling and exploring AI solutions as quickly as you can – I think you will be amazed and excited at the possibilities.