Use AI and robo-advice to enhance services
Forward-thinking financial advice and accounting firms are harnessing the capabilities of robo-advice and artificial intelligence tools to focus on providing financial guidance and the human touch to clients, according to Count Financial.
The firm's chief executive, David Lane, said in a commentary that the financial technology (fintech) wave would be propelled by the superannuation industry, and cited research which said wealth management solutions would comprise up to 35 per cent of the fintech market by 2020.
In the near future, robo-advice and artificial intelligence tools would be able to perform tasks such as answering a client's finance-related questions, processing and analysing online text, providing insight into key drivers and behaviours, developing predictive models, running life-event simulations, and tracking a client's spending and saving patterns.
"This opens up the opportunity for accountants and advisers to harness the capabilities of these tools for the benefit of their business," Lane wrote in the blog.
"Not only can robo-advice and AI help you deliver basic advice more efficiently and economically, they can also provide accurate data reports and predictive modelling."
While robo-advice does not have the brain power to learn from clients' past experiences, artificial intelligence can provide a broader range of services such as predictive modelling and data analysis.
The tools could provide fresh insight into clients' needs and behaviours which would open opportunities for advisers and accountants to provide enhanced services.
Advisers and accountants needed to question who their potential robo-advice clients were and how they would use market segmentation and analytics to identify them, whether they would offer a stand-along robo-advice product, a full service financial advice package or both, and whether they would develop the technology in-house or with an external provider.
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