Worried about an AI bubble? Sign up for The Daily Upside for smart and actionable market news built for investors.
AI agents are here.
For years, the name of the game for AI in wealth management has been focused on efficiency: capturing client data, drafting emails, summarizing meetings, and organizing files. But this has started changing. Wealthtech companies are now pushing artificial intelligence beyond administrative support and into decision-making, using customer data to generate insights and map out potential financial paths.
Both Citi and Savvy Wealth recently announced AI-powered tools aimed at guiding advisors and clients. Although technology is rapidly evolving, the underlying reality has not changed: Advisors who effectively integrate these tools into their workflow will have a significant advantage. “An expert with a tool can create a work of art,” said Jason Pereira, CFP of Woodgate Financial. “An amateur with the same equipment could probably make something valuable, or maybe something that would fall apart.”
Sign up for The Daily Upside at no charge for premium analysis on all your favorite stocks.
Also read: Here are the top active ETFs used by advisors And Bryn Mawr’s Jamie Hopkins weighs in on crypto and retirement plan regulations
reach for the sky
Cities Sky is a customer-facing assistant that summarizes financial data and answers basic planning or market-related questions. It involves an AI avatar (a somewhat alien woman in business attire with a bob haircut) that essentially acts as a chatbot with an optional visual layer. Joe Bonanno, Citi’s head of wealth intelligence, said the system is intentionally limited. “When questions involve micro trades, larger financial changes or require tailored recommendations, City Sky is designed to elevate those moments by encouraging deeper engagement with a financial advisor,” he told Advisor Upside.
One of the most obvious use cases for Sky is to manage customer anxiety:
-
Advisors often spend large portions of fluctuating market days responding to anxious clients, even when the proper advice is simply to stay on course.
-
Devices like Sky can absorb some of that quantity.
“A 70-year-old nervous about portfolio volatility won’t find peace just because an avatar looks friendly,” said Will Trout, director of securities and investments at Dettos Insights. “But they may be willing to ask a question that they would normally hesitate to ask their advisor, and they may ask it in the middle of the night when the advisor is not available.”
Let your garden grow. On the advisor side, Savvy Wealth’s Savvy Intelligence aggregates client data and allows advisors to run what-if scenarios, like, “What if my client retires at age 62 instead of 65 and starts the Roth conversion now?” Or “Show me the tax implications of selling concentrated positions this year versus spreading it out over three years.” Hrithik Malhotra, the company’s founder, said wealth managers aim to behave like a team of analysts with savvy intelligence who already know your client. “The advisor is running the scenario, applying his judgment and deciding what the client will get. The AI handles the technical modeling and assembly,” he told Advisor Upside.