Betterment surveyed a thousand people who already have a financial advisor and found that 75% of them use AI for financial tasks, including checking whether their advisor's fee is worth it. So if you've ever wondered what clients ask ChatGPT at 11 p.m., one answer is you.
The rest of the week's news should take the sting out. Cerulli found firms are planning to hire more humans because of AI, not fewer, and an AI prospecting tool decided it would rather be paid like a junior partner than like software.
Three stories from this week that matter for your practice.
75% of Advised Clients Use AI. Some of Them Are Asking It About Your Fee.
On Thursday, Betterment Advisor Solutions published its third annual survey, and for the first time it went straight to the clients, 1,001 U.S. investors who have worked with a financial advisor for at least a year, holding between $10,000 and $30 million with that advisor. The headline number is that 75% use AI at least occasionally for financial tasks, everything from looking up a concept they didn't want to admit they'd forgotten to evaluating whether their advisor's fee is worth what they pay. Before that ruins your Sunday, here's the finding Betterment itself called the surprise. AI use isn't a sign that clients are pulling away. The most engaged clients use it the most, and younger clients who lean on AI hardest are also meeting with their advisors more often and asking for more proactive guidance.
Why you should care: These aren't prospects or DIY investors, these are people who already pay an advisor, and three out of four of them have a second opinion in their pocket. The data says that second opinion is making them more curious and better prepared, which raises the bar for what your meetings need to deliver. The fee detail deserves your attention without your panic. When a client asks an AI whether your fee is worth it, the AI answers with generalities about generic advisors, because that's all it knows unless your specific value is easy to find and easy to explain. Your job is making sure nothing about how you describe your value sounds generic, in the meeting and on the public internet where the AI goes looking. This week's exercise below lets you see that AI answer before your clients quote it to you.
Source: Betterment Advisor Solutions
Cerulli Says AI Is Leading Firms to Hire More Humans, Not Fewer.
On Wednesday, Cerulli Associates released a benchmark study with Vista Equity Partners on the state of AI adoption in wealth management, built on 68 RIA firms surveyed between May and July representing about $1.2 trillion in combined assets. The displacement story took a hit. Over the next two years, 73% of the firms plan to add junior advisors, 67% plan to add client service associates, and 56% plan to add senior advisors, because AI is expanding how many clients they can serve well. Meanwhile 64% report AI has already cut their manual and administrative work and 46% say it improved the quality of client communication. The study also sorted firms into maturity tiers, and half are still in the lowest one. Just 12% qualify as leading, and what sets those firms apart is a defined way of operating, someone who owns AI, formal training, and a habit of measuring results. Cerulli was explicit that those choices are available to any firm regardless of assets or technology budget. AI spending is expected to roughly double this year, from 8% to 15% of technology budgets.
Why you should care: The average firm in this study runs $18 billion, so translate before you compare. The finding built for a solo or small RIA is the one about what separates the leaders, operating discipline rather than budget. A firm of one can have every ingredient on Cerulli's list by Friday. You own AI by default, your training is a Saturday morning, and your governance is a one-page AI use policy plus a clean file setup. You can also make decisions in the time it takes an $18 billion firm to schedule the committee meeting. And the hiring numbers hand you a client conversation. When someone asks whether AI is replacing advisors, you can tell them the largest firms in the country looked at AI and decided to hire more advisors, because the technology creates room for more advice, not less of it.
An AI Prospecting Tool Now Wants to Be Paid Like a Rainmaker.
In his September AdvisorTech roundup this week, Michael Kitces covered a pricing move worth a longer look than the tool itself. FINNY, the AI prospecting platform whose engine automates cold outreach on an advisor's behalf, dropped its high upfront subscription for a pay-as-you-grow revenue share. Instead of buying software, the advisor gives up a slice of revenue from clients the tool helps land, and FINNY pitches itself as a business development hire rather than a product. The context Kitces added is the useful part. Per upcoming Kitces Research data, only about 7% of advisors use cold outreach as a primary marketing technique, so FINNY is lowering the barrier for a play very few advisors run at all.
Why you should care: Two reads here, and both matter beyond this one company. First, pricing AI like an employee is a preview of where the whole tool market is heading. As AI tools start doing jobs instead of assisting with them, more of them will ask for a percentage instead of a subscription, and that math always deserves a slow look. A revenue share on a client relationship that could last 20 years is very expensive software, so run the lifetime numbers before signing anything. Second, that 7% figure explains a lot about advisor marketing. Cold outreach stays rare because referrals and being findable keep winning, which is exactly why the automated referral system from last week's cheat sheet is a better use of your setup energy than any cold pipeline. The durable play is being easy to refer and easy to find, for humans and for the AI assistants in the first story.
ONE THING TO TRY THIS WEEK
See the fee answer your clients are getting before one of them reads it to you. This takes about 15 minutes and stings a little in the useful way.
Step 1. Open Claude or ChatGPT and paste this. It will ask you one question and then get to work. "I'm a financial advisor and I want to see my practice the way a client using AI might see it. Before you begin, ask me for my fee structure in plain words, then wait for my answer. Once you have it, do three things. First, give me the answer a general AI assistant would likely give a client who asked whether that fee is worth it, including the common arguments for and against. Second, list the questions that answer would probably put in the client's head before their next meeting with me. Third, help me draft a plain-language explanation of the value behind my fee that could sit next to that AI answer and hold up. Keep the explanation educational, make no promises about outcomes or performance, use no client names or identifying information, and treat everything as a first draft for my own review."
Step 2. Read the client-side answer slowly, especially the questions. Those are the ones already forming in the heads of the 75%, and it's far better to answer them in a review meeting than to have them settled by a chatbot with no idea who you are.
Step 3. Save your value explanation somewhere you'll see it before client meetings, and if any part of it surprised you by being hard to write, that's your homework. The advisors in the best shape for the next few years can explain their fee in plain words without flinching, and now you've practiced.
Clients asking better questions is a good thing for advisors who are ready for them. Now you're one of them.
Sam Farrington, CFP®
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