AI Will Change Financial Planning, But It Won’t Replace the Human Advisor
Recent market news underscored the anxiety some investors have about artificial intelligence. A new AI tool focused on wealth and tax planning triggered a sharp sell-off in wealth manager stocks, as some market participants reacted to the perception that technology poses an existential threat to traditional advisory businesses. That reaction reflects both the exponential pace of innovation and uncertainty about how AI may shape the future of advice.
In my view, however, AI is a powerful enabler that supports human advisors, not a substitute for professional judgment and fiduciary responsibility. For many, AI will just require advisors to run faster. But, for a special few, it has the potential to help increase organic growth, increase operating leverage and efficiency, enhance RIA valuations further, and help enable advisors to provide an enhanced client experience. Which firms lead the race might change, but client and advisor outcomes will improve broadly.
AI Adoption in Financial Planning: Real and Growing
Global research from Financial Planning Standards Board, the global professional standards-setting body for the financial planning profession, shows widespread and accelerating use of AI across the profession. More than two-thirds of financial planners say their firms are already using AI or plan to within the next year. Nearly 80% believe AI will help them better serve clients, and about 60% expect it to improve the quality of financial advice. Common use cases include AI notetaking, client data gathering, risk profiling, email drafting, communication support, advice curation, and operational tasks such as onboarding and documentation.
Importantly, forward-looking and innovative planners view AI as a way to reclaim time for higher-value work. By reducing the administrative burden, advisors can spend more time on strategic planning, education, and conveying wisdom to clients, helping them make more confident and better decisions.
How Savant Is Using AI Today
At Savant, we have already incorporated AI in practical, client-focused ways that support this complementary role. One clear example is meeting documentation. AI-powered notetaking tools enable advisors to capture accurate meeting summaries without diverting attention from client conversations to administrative tasks. AI catches and remembers all the details. It provides rich context and has a long memory. This is a simple example, but one shift that every advisor can already embrace.
That shift matters. When advisors are not focused on typing notes or tracking action items, they can engage more deeply with clients, listen more carefully, and ask better follow-up questions. Technology operates quietly in the background, while the advisor remains fully present in the discussion and is responsible for every recommendation and next step. No more caffeine-enabled hyperactive note scribing! Advisors can shift their focus to helping provide wisdom and experience to clients.
This approach reflects how we think about technology more broadly. AI should enhance accuracy, consistency, and efficiency, while leaving relationship-based advice and accountability firmly in human hands. Agentic agents may soon be able to automate 80% of the advisor’s job that is busy work. It can free advisors to make more friends, create deeper relationships, convey more wise advice, and create more real and perceived value.
Efficiency Tools Are Not Advice Tools
It’s critical to distinguish between efficiency and advice. AI can surface potential tax planning ideas, identify portfolio mismatches, or summarize complex information quickly. What it cannot do is understand how a recent health diagnosis affects retirement timing, how family dynamics influence estate planning decisions, provide human influence that increases confidence, or anticipate how a client will react emotionally during periods of market stress. For example, AI has never experienced losing money in a bear market—its only experience is mega cap CEOs feeding it money!
Delivering truly human advice requires context, experience, patience and empathy. It also requires accountability. Fiduciary advice means someone stands behind every recommendation and is responsible for its impact on a client’s life. AI is right brained. Good advisors embrace both their left and right brain.
Ethics, Oversight, and Accountability Still Matter
CFP Board, has emphasized this distinction in its guidance on the ethical use of generative AI. CFP® professionals may use AI to support their work, but they remain fully accountable for the advice delivered to clients. The guidance stresses transparency, data security, and professional judgment as non-negotiable elements of responsible AI use.
That framework aligns closely with how we approach innovation. Technology should strengthen trust, not erode it. AI should make us better. It should not compete with advisors.
Clients Still Want Human Insight
Research shows that while clients appreciate efficiency and convenience, they are hesitant to rely solely on algorithms for major financial decisions. Many express discomfort with receiving investment or tax recommendations generated without human review. Don’t forget that AI is often not accurate. Clients value advisors not just for information, but for perspective, reassurance, and disciplined decision-making during moments that matter most.
AI can inform those conversations, but it cannot replace them. AI should make advisors bionic, not replace advisors. Humans and chimpanzees share 98.9% of the same DNA. It is the remaining 1.1% that makes humans special. Imagine if humans could focus only on the differentiated 1% because AI does 99% of the busy work. These are the advisors who I believe will succeed over the next five years. These are the advisors that become bionic and disintermediate advisors who grasp onto outdated ways of delivering advice.
Technology is reshaping the financial landscape with AI-driven tools, robo-advisors, and digital assets such as Bitcoin, changing how some investors approach retirement planning. Technology can offer speed and data, but it cannot replace the wisdom, context, and judgment that lead to informed decisions and sound investing principles.
The Path Forward
AI will continue to reshape financial planning, just as digital platforms and online access did before it. Firms that use AI thoughtfully can help improve service, reduce friction, and create more capacity for meaningful client engagement. I predict all advisors will get 10-20% more efficient using AI. This is not special. What will be special is the subset of advisors who could potentially double their efficiency and effectiveness via AI, while meaningfully reducing their costs of delivering such advice.. These are the advisors who I believe will emerge as the winners over the next five years. These will be the 1% who focus on what really matters.
The key question for investors is not whether an advisor uses AI. It’s how they use it, and whether technology supports a relationship built on trust, accountability, and long-term thinking. Which advisors will merely run faster with the pack, and which will embrace AI to take the lead and help deliver better advice, stand out from the competition, and be more profitable?
At Savant, we believe the future of advice is not human versus machine. It is human judgment, supported by the right tools, working on behalf of the people and families we serve. Humans in charge, AI following our lead. We think AI can help provide the secret ingredient that makes us cooler, smarter, and better, with the goal of creating more value for our clients, team, owners and the communities we serve.
Brent Brodeski is the founder and CEO of Savant Wealth Management.
Brent R. Brodeski
Founder / CEO
CPA, CFP®, CFA®, MBA