It’s getting rarer and rarer to sit through a meeting with wealth managers without somebody chatting about AI and all its potential uses.
A new study shows it’s not all talk. Financial advisors are using AI more and more - and they have no plan to stop anytime soon.
The 2025 T3/Inside Information Software Survey released this week found that 41 percent of advisors are using one or more search or generative AI tools. The tools with the largest market share include ChatGPT (35.71 percent), Microsoft Copilot (12.12 percent), and Google Gemini (6.86 percent), while those with the highest advisor ratings are Perplexity (8.26/10), Anthropic (8.10/10), and ChatGPT (8.07/10).
The 2,128 survey participants, exclusively members of the financial planning and investment advisory community, provided answers to questions about 45 fintech categories, focusing on AI.
Dave Alison, president and founding partner of Prosperity Capital Advisors, for one, is already using AI on a daily basis, having implemented Zocks as an AI notetaking and administrative assistant that is integrated with his tech stack. He is also using general platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Claude to help curate content such as blog posts and information to provide to clients around topics that might be of interest to them.
“We are also using services like ChatGPT as a thought partner and assistant to help our team members be more productive,” Alison said. “For example, we are using them to help analyze our business and growth plan, help create items such as job descriptions and job scorecards for each team member, and utilize custom GPTs to help automate routine task tasks.”
As to ways that AI will enhance the financial advisor business in the future, Alison said it will be helpful in organizing client data, as well as analyzing client holdings to help an advisor offer solutions tailored to that specific client in a faster and more efficient manner.
“This means advisors are going to be a lot more productive in the future,” Alison said. “Advisors who leverage AI are going to be able to serve a lot more clients while still keeping a high degree of personalization.”
Meanwhile, Adam Dell, CEO of Domain Money, said he is using AI more than simply as a research tool.
“Domain Money has made a significant investment in AI by building a holistic platform capable of generating financial planning insights that leapfrog traditional vendors in the marketplace,” Dell said. “We’ve made this bet because AI is uniquely well suited to distill mountains of data into actionable insights for clients.”
Elsewhere, Jordan Hutchison, vice president of technology and operations at RFG Advisory, said he employs AI in various ways, including meeting assistants, compliance, and various other domains. He views AI as the "teammate" to the firm’s advisors to help them leverage their abilities and time.
“I genuinely think that AI will be a key player in advisor performance and will ride sidecar with them,” Hutchison said. “At RFG, we are actively building AI in multiple facets of advisor technology that will rapidly change the advisor-client experience.”
Moving on, Amanda Butler, chief technology officer at Nepsis, is currently planning an AI rollout aimed at enhancing client experience and engagement, starting with a focus on data quality to ensure their tools rely on the most accurate information.
“Our initial step involves exploring Salesforce’s Agentforce to automate advisors’ and client service team’s daily tasks, driving our ambitious growth,” Butler said. “Yet, our clients will always enjoy a personal touch, often unaware of the sophisticated tech quietly powering their exceptional experience.”
Naming names, Ryan George, chief marketing officer at Docupace, thinks the AI note takers Pulse360, Jump, Zocks, and Finmate have successfully seized the “first-mover advantage” and have seen rapid growth of adoption and interest.
In addition to those specific notetakers, George said both Holistiplan and FP Alpha have recently released tax and estate planning AI tools worth watching.
“Help with marketing and content generation is a natural fit to dip your toes in the AI waters, and FMG has some useful AI-based tools that help tweak messages based on the audience and doesn’t take much AI expertise to get a valuable return,” George added.
Mohan Gurupackiam, chief information officer at Steward Partners, currently utilizes AI in multiple areas within his enterprise. First and foremost, they are using LLM (Large Language Models), including GPT-4o Mini for assistant bots. Moreover, they frequently use Gen AI within their development stack to convert FIGMA mockups into react code, and also to prevent cyberattacks by having sophisticated defense mechanisms during the login process.
“We are also evaluating models like Lang Graph to provide UX-based responses for agents. In addition, we are also using AI in specific use cases like intelligent statement extraction within our proposal tools. These statement extraction routines save hours on every proposal,” Gurupackiam said.
Rory O’Hara, founder and senior managing partner of Ausperity Private Wealth, a partner firm of Sanctuary Wealth, said he is actively integrating AI into the firm’s workflow to enhance efficiency and improve client service. O’Hara said AI will ultimately become an essential tool for advisors, streamlining research, automating administrative tasks, and enhancing client interactions with personalized insights.
Nevertheless, while AI will handle data-heavy tasks with precision, O’Hara said the role of the advisor will remain centered on providing strategic guidance tailored to each client’s unique needs and goals.
“I believe the future is a hybrid model where AI enhances decision-making, but human expertise remains irreplaceable in navigating complex financial and life planning conversations,” O’Hara said.
Lastly, Craig Bolanos, financial advisor with VestGen Wealth Partners, exhorts financial advisors not to fear AI but embrace it. In his view, choosing to “ignore the inevitable” will place those advisors and advisory firms that fail to adopt AI behind the curve and at a net disadvantage.
“Very few innovations have disrupted industries as rapidly as AI,” Bolanos said. “Whether it is an enhancement to productivity that comes from the streamlining of operation or increasing the efficacy of decision-making, AI has already and will continue to impact and disrupt industries.”
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