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  5. According to a Recent Oliver Wyman Survey Consumers Are Likely to use GenAI for Financial Advice

According to a Recent Oliver Wyman Survey Consumers Are Likely to use GenAI for Financial Advice

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28 May 2024
Jean Sullivan

A recent survey conducted by Oliver Wyman indicates that retail investors have grown more comfortable with using generative AI (GenAI) for financial advice and insights. The Oliver Wyman survey captured responses from 25,000 consumers across 16 countries on a multitude of topics including wealth management. In fact, the topic of financial advice yielded some of the most compelling research findings.

According to Oliver Wyman, “Consumers are more likely to say that AI fulfills their needs of connection, self-expression, and learning in financial advisory scenarios more than a human advisor.” In addition, survey results indicated that 86% of consumers are interested in using GenAI for financial planning and advising, and 42% are already doing so. A significant percentage of consumers are also interested in using GenAI to support major financial decisions such as college, retirement, buying a home, etc. These findings represent a fundamental shift in consumer preferences which have profound implications for wealth management engagement and delivery models. A deeper dive analysis clarifies the results.

See our latest research reports “The New Wealth Management Paradigm: From Apps to Agents – Part 1 & Part 2” which explore the increasingly vital role of GenAI in the delivery of financial advice.

Celent speculates that the value consumers place on personalization and objectivity—along with an increasingly more digitally savvy population—are keys to unlocking the survey results. GenAI can facilitate a highly personalized, real-time experience for investors, who are free to ask all sorts of questions, when they want and without fear of judgment. Investors can also use GenAI for unlimited scenario and what-if testing. Some investors may also perceive greater objectivity associated with GenAI applications as GenAI tools can (hypothetically) access an unlimited number of financial products and solutions. In comparison, financial advisors are often wed to a finite set of products and services within their often-siloed businesses. Finally, wealth is shifting into the hands of Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z, and these generations are more comfortable using technology to assist with important life decisions.

But successful client engagement is not just about delivering real time, conversational, seemingly objective responses to investor questions or problems. It is also about emotions. In 2022, Vanguard conducted research that found investors’ emotions have a big impact on their perceived value of financial advice. Emotional connection is paramount even when there is no human interface. The implication of this is that any GenAI application or AI agent should first establish that it is a trustworthy provider of financial information and advice. They can do this by providing complete transparency and ensuring accuracy.

But ensuring accuracy and eliminating hallucinations continue to be one of the biggest obstacles for GenAI applications. Until these issues are resolved, some of which involve complex data quality issues, consumers will continue to turn to “trusted” advisors for their financial needs (at least in the short term.) In the longer term, as GenAI applications become increasingly more accurate (which is already happening with the implementation of applications such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation or RAG) wealth management firms will need to reimagine the delivery of financial advice and the role of the advisor to accommodate shifting consumer preferences and stay ahead of the technology curve.