Everyone is familiar with the classic financial advice of today: investment clients make an appointment with their advisor to discuss their personal financial future either on-site or via video conference. But the desire for change and digitization, especially in the investment sector, is growing. Onboarding processes now take place almost predominantly digitally and in many cases without human support.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in investment advice will also become increasingly important and also raises many questions. Probably the most sensitive question is whether the use of AI in investment consulting will pose a threat to advisors by replacing them or whether humans and technology will ultimately complement each other.
The term virtual assistant refers to software that interacts with humans and supports them in their daily work thanks to artificial intelligence, machine learning and speech recognition technology. In investment consulting for wealthy clients, virtual assistants can be used by financial advisors to handle predominantly more complex tasks. They are also able to handle more specific and personalized requests, for example, by understanding text and voice-based queries. In the following sections, we will show you selected case studies.
Keyword-based advice in investment consulting
Imagine you have an appointment with an investment client to discuss and, if necessary, adjust the future investment strategy. During the consultation, buzzwords come up, such as: "Tesla stock".
Nowadays, the financial advisor is usually knowledgeable and able to comment, to educate the client extensively on all the concerns of the strategy at hand. But the investment world is fast-paced and ever-changing. Virtual assistants can support advisors in this respect by recognizing individual keywords and displaying up-to-date information during the consultation. In our example, a pop-up window could open with all relevant information on the keyword "Tesla share". This contains all relevant information such as the business model, value development, analysts' forecasts, current news, or other important KPIs for the stock under discussion. This information supports the consultant to be directly informative about the company and its assets to directly convince with expertise.
Automating background processes in investment consulting
After you have advised your clients about the future investment strategy and have decided together on the appropriate strategy, the next step is to set up and fill in all relevant documents, such as protocols, advisory documents, order orders, etc.
Often, these documents are still filled out manually in order to implement the adopted strategy. In this process step, too, a virtual assistant can record relevant information from the conversation in the background and, at the same time, automatically fill in protocols, consulting documents, or order orders. This eliminates the need for labor-intensive manual steps, and at the end of the meeting, the advisor only has to check the data input and confirm the execution of the investment strategy. In the end, financial advisors save valuable time that they can invest in personal customer care.
Virtual Assistant & Proposal Generation
The meeting with your client was a few weeks ago, but the market never sleeps and is constantly on the move; your investment clients also want to be kept up to date.
Here, a virtual assistant can act as intelligence in the "background" and support the advisors in updating the investment strategy. Based on the risk profile and personal investment preferences (sectors, asset classes, sustainability profile, etc.) of the customer, the virtual assistant can collect information and forward it to the advisor. For example, the advisor is informed about relevant changes and information in the invested markets or assets of his clients and can keep them up to date at all times. In this way, the virtual assistant ensures that all customer advisors always receive new market impulses, which are recorded for the benefit of the customers in order to initiate appropriate action.
Behavioral Proposal Generation with Virtual Assistants
Even with an intensive customer relationship, investment advisors cannot of course be informed about all of their customers' investment preferences. Virtual assistants can be a valuable bridge between advisor and client by connecting the client portal, current account, social media profile, and much more to obtain information about individual preferences (interests, buying behavior, etc.) and derive possible interests in instruments and assets.
Once Likes and comments are analyzed and interpreted, conclusions can be drawn about the client's lifestyle and interests. These insights can be useful for investment advisors to create customized investment proposals. Alternatively, the virtual assistant can derive investment proposals from the information obtained, which then only need to be confirmed or, if necessary, adjusted by the advisor.
Conclusion
In order to maintain their position in the market in the long term and to inspire investment customers with digital services, financial institutions must invest in innovative and modern financial advice. Although today's digital assistants are often already an integral part of the advisory service, tomorrow's possibilities will improve the quality of the advice and make it more targeted. However, these possibilities will also reach their legal and ethical limits, so that the human financial advisor will remain an integral part of financial advice in the long term. Private banking in particular will create a new generation of financial advice through the combination of advisors and software.
The future of private banking may not belong to the virtual assistant, but it will not take place without digital helpers either. Financial institutions that are already willing to test innovative advisory concepts today can build their future advisory services on these results and thus secure valuable market share.