Type out ten questions to advise ten people.   I can show you how. 

Making recommendations and offering suggestions based on fact finds presented has just got a whole lot easier.   How so?

The answer is AI Chat.  IT is going to change the world as much as google, email and video calls.  And better still, it has already arrived.

Try this. Feed a portfolio in, and out come the recommendations.  It grades risk, dividend yield, shapes portfolio allocations and makes recommendations based on what you ask it to do.  

“Which funds to sell to reduce risk?”

Produce a portfolio of Exchange traded funds for a medium risk investor looking for high yield over 15 years?

And so on….

You ask, it replies.

Reduce risk / increase yield / reduce allocation to USA and more.  No advertising, just nice easy to read plain English.  Phew!  In fact, you can chat away, and the most compelling thing I found is this.  I repeatedly and unconsciously type in the word “Please.”   I mind my P’s and Q’s!  And this to a machine.  How crazy is that?  That is why  CHATAI is going to change retail financial services – it resembles human touch.

How will this change affect IFAs?  Education establishments are worried about marking essays being written by AI, but almost as quickly discovered they could mark the same papers from their sofas using AI.  IFAs too must use the tools for their own benefit.  We deal not just in facts, but in humanity:  reassurance, encouragement and sympathy.  Faced with a machine that encourages us to say thank you, IFAs are clearly going to have to up the ante.  Get in close to your customers, and prove your value to them, as guide, mentor and educator.   They world is not just facts, but I’ve got one more just to make the point – AI produced a very similar article to this one, (lacking in IFAC’s  inimitable style, of course) in just 20 seconds. 

The biggest competitor to IFAs is the DIY investing world.  DIY investing has now just become a whole lot more popular with AI making portfolio suggestions, for free, with us asking “please?”