From writing assistance to presentation builders: Top AI tools picked by wealth leaders

July 5, 2024 5:44 PM

The days when most advisors feared AI would take their jobs are mostly in the rearview mirror.

Most leaders in the wealth management space are testing some form of AI, whether it be playing with ChatGPT to frame marketing content or an email; or using a scheduling app like Calendly. This experimenting — often done outside of any massive tech platform integration at their firm — has led to more practical uses of AI to help improve workflow, rather than simply taking the work away from an advisor.

According to a recent Financial Planning survey, 70% of respondents in the wealth management industry said it was likely that new tech like AI will change the skills employees need to function successfully at their firms. Practical AI tools for advisors will be a key topic at Financial Planning's first ADVISE AI conference in October.

Financial Planning asked a handful of industry leaders in wealthtech about their favorite AI tools — outside of anything they've created internally — and why. Here are their responses:

ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0

ChatGPT was among the first large language models to hit the public in late 2022 as a free, conversational, AI-powered tool. It has since exploded to roughly 200 million monthly users globally by June 2024. It's also widely known to hallucinate with perfectly written but inaccurate statements as well as security risks due to it being a public, open system. In response, OpenAI launched Chat GPT4, and then a GPT4.o update in May, as an advanced version that can consume more data, though it's a paid subscription service.

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Interestingly, several leaders in the wealth management space said their favorite AI tool is now ChatGPT because it has gotten smarter and easier to use as the public has been feeding it more information to learn from.

"My favorite AI tool, at the moment, is ChatGPT, model 3.5. It has been trained in public content the most and has shown more consistent results than model 4.0," said Henry Zelikovsky, CEO of financial software engineering firm Softlab360 in New York. "As a solution provider, we apply OpenAI API ChatGPT Model 3.5 and 4.0 to develop context for professional recommendations in the wealth management and insurance industries supported by historical data over five to seven years."

Somewhat for similar reasons, Joel Bruckenstein, producer of the Technology Tools for Today (T3) Conference, said he favors the GPT-4.0 version.

"My favorite AI tool at the moment is Chat GPT 4.0. I recently participated in an all-day brainstorming session, and we were constantly using Chat GPT to look up information, add to a list of things we were working on, suggest language for a marketing phrase we were trying to come up with, and much more," he said. "In a sense, it was like having another talented collaborator in the room with us."

Jasper.ai

Another large language model that's becoming more popular with advisors is Jasper. The AI-powered writing assistant is a subscription-based service, but it offers some more advanced features like inputs specific to the user's voice to help build content or marketing materials. It's also seen as more secure than the free open model, ChatGPT.

"Jasper.ai's brand voice allows wealth management firms to load positioning and strategy documents and automatically uses them to create more strategic alignment to your firm's brand in every output," said John O'Connell, founder and CEO of The Oasis Group, a technology consultant for wealth managers and financial technology firms based in Monroe Township, New Jersey. "Upload your company information, brand positioning, competitive analysis and product information as examples. This avoids the generic sounding responses typically generated by AI tools."

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft is a household name for nearly any business, but it garnered more attention when it launched its AI-powered assistant, Microsoft 360 Copilot, last year. The large language model offers writing assistance, but it can also cross over into different Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams, making it an incredibly vast and useful tool.

"We are finding great leverage with Microsoft Co-pilot across the organization — especially with summarization of information and refinement of communication. Code assist has shown excellent promise," said Jeff Marsden, chief product officer at Toronto-based PureFacts Financial Solutions, a revenue management platform for asset managers. "Additionally, we built a proprietary tool called PureGPT in collaboration with Microsoft tools. Our team uses it extensively for research, marketing and ideation. Amazing stuff."

Perplexity.ai

Perplexity.ai is a free chatbot search engine that answers queries conversationally and provides sources for that information immediately above the answer in real time.

"I love Perplexity.ai. It's become my go-to search engine as it creates a hybrid of search results and narrative responses," said Adam Dell, CEO at Domain Money, a fixed-fee financial planning app based in New York. "Their data set is recent, and it's basically replaced Google outside of where they have an information advantage like Google Maps and Street View."

Calendly

Scheduling with clients can be time-consuming when it takes back-and-forth calls or emails to set one meeting. Some industry leaders have turned to AI-powered apps like OnceHub and Calendly, where the user sends a link to their entire calendar and the receiver can book a time that works, get updates and reschedule without playing phone tag.

"That's been one of the biggest game changers for me," said Randy Carver, president and CEO of Carver Financial Services and registered principal at Raymond James Financial. "It's probably one of the top three pieces of software we use."

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Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai is a subscription-based software that helps users quickly build presentations like decks and slideshows. It also offers an AI-powered designer bot to guide the user through the creation.

Jason Early, founder and CEO of Philadelphia-based RISR, a cloud-based advisor platform specifically built for business owner clients, said he's used beautiful.ai for five years without actively picking it because it was an AI tool — it was just seamless.

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"If someone said, 'Jason, build me a board deck in Microsoft PowerPoint,' I'd curl up into a ball and cry. I couldn't do it. But with Beautiful.ai, I can build a deck in no time. It's incredible," he said. "It just makes it look great. It makes it easy to pull everything in. It's an incredible tool, and I love it."