Advisers back AI for admin but favour human oversight of client money – GBST
The survey of 178 advisers found a strong appetite for the high-volume, rules-based tasks.
Financial advisers are open to agentic artificial intelligence (AI) handling administrative work across the advice journey but want human oversight for decisions that affect client money, according to research from GBST and consultancy the lang cat.
The findings follow the recent Mills Review which recommended that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) monitor the shift towards systems making open-ended decisions without a person involved and adapt its regulatory framework accordingly.
The survey of 178 advisers found a strong appetite for the high-volume, rules-based tasks, with eight out of 10 (80%) comfortable with AI collating data for annual reviews and suitability packs, 77% with onboarding and letters of authority, 76% with KYC and anti-money laundering checks and 75% with fees and charges reconciliation.
Comfort declined when AI moved closer to decisions that directly affect client money, though even here more advisers were comfortable or undecided than opposed.
For pension transfers, 43% were comfortable, 29% neutral and 29% uncomfortable, while for CIP switching and rebalancing, 53% are comfortable, 22% neutral and 25% uncomfortable.
The research also found that knowledge gaps remain.
Nearly a third (31%) of advisers were unable to describe what it does, and a similar number (29%) could not identify its core capability of breaking tasks into steps, planning the workflow and carrying it through automatically.
However, when shown a description of agentic AI, nearly two-thirds (62%) said they are comfortable with it being embedded in their platform, with a further 18% neutral.
Rob DeDominicis, CEO of GBST, said: “Rather than resisting AI, advisers have drawn a sensible boundary around it. They are comfortable with agentic AI taking on the high-volume administrative tasks, like reconciliation and collation of data. This is necessary work, but it takes up time without adding visible value for clients.
“Where client money is directly at stake, they want human oversight, but that doesn’t mean doing everything manually. On more involved processes such as transfers, it’s about keeping people at the decision points while the system carries out the firm’s own procedure and records every step.
“The Mills Review makes the same distinction, recommending the FCA monitors this closely. Advisers have effectively drawn that line themselves.”
He added:“Advisers are most comfortable when AI is built into the platform they already use, rather than bolted on the side. That keeps it within the controls and security already in place.
“That’s how we’ve built Composer’s agentic AI and what we’re seeing from clients as these capabilities move from controlled release into live operational processes.”
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