How is a leading financial advisory firm using AI?
Artificial intelligence is not just about doing things faster. For financial advisory firms, one of its biggest opportunities may be giving advisors more time to focus on what humans do best: building relationships, serving clients and solving complex problems.
Mike Byrnes, owner of Byrnes Consulting, LLC, explored this opportunity in his latest Rethinking65 article, “Carson Group’s AI Strategy: Freeing Up Advisors.”
He interviewed Sarah Stormberg, SVP of Product Strategy at Carson Group, about how the approximately $60 billion RIA is using artificial intelligence to transform how work gets done.
Here are 13 key takeaways:
- Automate everything outside the client relationship. Carson’s strategy is to automate—and, where appropriate, augment—work that does not involve meeting with clients and building relationships.
- Give advisors more capacity. More free time could allow advisors to serve more relationships and potentially take on larger and more complex clients.
- Use AI to support recruiting and growth. AI capabilities can make a firm more attractive to prospective advisors and support inorganic growth.
- Move beyond integration. Carson is evolving from being primarily a master integrator to using AI to augment virtually everything that happens outside the client relationship.
- Automate repetitive work. AI can assist with research, preparation, analysis, document review and other time-consuming tasks.
- Own and leverage your data. A data-powered technology strategy depends heavily on having control of the firm’s data warehouse.
- Connect AI to the firm’s actual work. The biggest opportunity comes when AI can securely interact with a firm’s data, workflows and systems.
- Build your own AI capabilities. Carson Group created “Steve,” its own AI-powered assistant.
- Put an AI assistant in advisors’ hands. Advisors can use AI to find information, analyze documents, prepare for meetings and navigate workflows more efficiently.
- Secure information. Advisors need to use AI in a secure environment designed for sensitive client and firm information.
- Target the time-consuming preparation work. Advisors spend roughly 30% of their time preparing for client reviews, which creates a significant opportunity for automation.
- Turn repetitive workflows into AI-powered processes. Repeated tasks do not necessarily need to remain manual simply because they have always been done that way.
- Keep humans in the loop. Before information is pushed into a system or sent to a client, human “gates” help ensure that the information is accurate and the action is appropriate.
The overall learning is that a solid AI strategy is bigger than any individual tool.
Firms that successfully redesign their workflows around AI may create significant competitive advantages, while giving their people more time to focus on clients, relationships and higher-value work.
Is Your Firm Ready to Put AI to Work?
AI is moving quickly. The firms that benefit most will not necessarily be the ones using the most AI tools. They will be the ones that develop a thoughtful strategy for where AI can create real business value.
Byrnes Consulting helps financial services firms understand how AI can create competitive advantages.
Mike Byrnes is also available for keynotes, breakout sessions and workshops on AI, business strategy and organic growth.
Interested in bringing Mike Byrnes to your conference or event—or exploring how Byrnes Consulting can help your organization?
Contact Byrnes Consulting today.
Watch the full interview here:
