As recently as a few months ago, spending heavily on artificial intelligence was a badge of honor in corporate America. But that mood has flipped, in part due to findings like the ones in a recent
That leaves U.S. firms in general — and RIAs in particular — asking the question that should have come first: Is AI actually making us more money?
True, Schwab's
Which is not the same thing as revenue generation.
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Don't translate AI time savings into mismanaged time
Although wealth management firms are still racing to adopt AI, it's difficult to find evidence that the spend has translated into more revenue or fatter margins. This has big implications for the financial advisors who work RIAs.
The bottom line: Either figure out how to use the time you save with AI to generate more AUM, clients and revenue, or the firm will pull the plug on its AI spend, which will cause you to fall behind.
Sure, a note-taking tool saves you 45 minutes after each client review meeting. But unless you convert that three-quarters of an hour into another client meeting, another prospecting call or the capacity to serve more households, it won't show up on your or the firm's P&L.
That's exactly what I've been hearing in my conversations with advisors across the country. One financial planner told me she uses that 45 minutes to do deeper prep for her next client meeting rather than generate fresh AUM from existing clients or prospects. It made me wonder how she managed to prepare for client reviews in the pre-AI days, but the point is that she's not using her newly found time to increase her book or revenue.
Better yet was the advisor who bragged about how powerful he's found AI to be as a productivity tool. Now, he told me, he's able to quit working by 2 p.m. The result: He's playing a lot more golf. And because his AUM and client satisfaction scores are stable, his firm hasn't noticed that his "AI-induced productivity enhancements" have served only to improve his handicap.
Or should I say, the firm isn't aware yet?
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Convert time to capacity — or else
It won't be much longer before firms start noticing your failure to post material improvements in your book. The smart RIAs are already starting to use AI to analyze the data in order to compare your practice to every other advisor in the firm and to the industry as a whole: How many meetings of new and current clients are you holding each day and per week? How long is each meeting? What were the follow-ups, and how much new AUM was generated in the weeks that followed? How many referrals did you generate?
Your smart move is to start tracking your own numbers. Set aside qualitative notions of "efficiency" or "better client experience." Instead, use AI to help you track your time in front of clients and prospects and identify opportunities to increase and confirm your close rates.
And be sure you're using AI to its best advantage. Sure, let the tech draft the meeting notes and routine emails. But keep the
Most importantly, convert all the time that AI saves you into capacity. If AI frees up an hour for you, figure out where to put that hour — whether into another client, another prospect or another piece of business development.
But don't let that hour just disappear. Because if you do, eventually you'll be the one who vanishes.
