It wasn’t long ago when the words “artificial intelligence (AI)” were only associated with movies of sentient robots taking over the world. This was before most of us had any personal experience with AI in our daily lives; before the 2022 launch of ChatGPT catapulted AI to the top of headlines.
Today, AI is impacting almost every industry in some capacity.
Whether you’re excited about AI’s potential or sick of the media buzz, it doesn’t change that AI has arrived in the financial advisory landscape and is here to stay. The question is: How will you embrace it?
An Accenture survey of 500 financial professionals revealed that:
- 97% believe AI can help increase their book of business by more than 20%
- 80% plan to use AI to automate time-consuming tasks
- 55% believe AI will revolutionize the future of financial advice by 2027
Let’s look at how AI is disrupting the industry and explore specific areas where you can implement this technology to transform your practice.
How Financial Professionals Are Adopting AI to Enhance Client Relationships
AI is transforming the financial industry, not by replacing human expertise, but by augmenting it.
One of the simplest and least intimidating ways for financial professionals to begin integrating AI is through automated notetaking. AI-powered transcription tools can capture and organize client meeting notes in real-time, so the financial professional can stay fully engaged in conversations while details are recorded on their behalf.
Beyond notetaking, experts predict that AI will transform client engagement and communication through AI-driven chatbots. These bots, or “co-planners,” would guide clients through preliminary financial questions before meeting with an advisor. The idea is that these virtual assistants would help clients outline their financial goals, assess their risk tolerance, and gather essential documents so that financial professionals could focus on tailoring strategies in their meetings rather than spending time on basic groundwork.
AI can’t replace the value of human face-to-face interaction with clients. Even if AI programs can predict trends and suggest risk-averse investment strategies, only a financial professional can gauge if those suggestions align with the client’s personal objectives, emotions, and long-term goals.
Balancing Professional Roles with Tech Programming
AI isn’t changing how advisors work but is increasingly helping them to do things “better, faster, smarter.” The right AI structure can ensure that advisors work faster and that clients receive the experience they were promised. Consider AI being able to fill in client onboarding and reporting, so all an advisor needs to do is bring a client a DocuSign.
With the right set of data points and algorithms, AI can become a teammate working for you.
Moving past clients, AI will be able to generate quality leads that used to come from client referrals. As the landscape changes, with younger generations less likely to provide referrals, having a tool to make this happen is crucial. Beyond getting the referral, AI will be able to scale your data, organize it into sets, and identify ideal prospects to target.
The Future of Care Planning with AI
Already, AI has made a splash in the long-term care (LTC) space. One innovation includes implanted or worn devices that can track the health and mental status of aging adults with an LTC need, allowing them to live alone at home for as long as possible.
Future technology imagines AI-powered avatars as virtual in-home caregivers. These avatars would help patients safely navigate their daily routines, alleviating some of the burden on family caregivers. However, this technology doesn’t currently exist in the marketplace.
These advancements seek to address the needs of patients already experiencing the early stages of LTC. Now, software is available to help individuals plan for LTC needs before they occur.
This innovative technology wasn’t just created to enhance the client care planning discussion—it was designed for financial professionals to facilitate it.
Reshaping the Care Planning Conversation with Waterlily AI
Waterlily is a client-facing, user-friendly software that uses AI to predict an individual’s potential future LTC needs and costs. By leveraging half a billion data points of healthcare and demographic information, the platform doesn’t just display broad generalizations. It projects specific numbers, including:
- The likelihood percentage of that client needing care
- The age at which it’s predicted to begin
- The timeline of how the need could evolve
- The family burden (in hours)
- The estimated cost of care
Next, the platform walks a client through the process of creating a care plan, naturally progressing into the topic of funding for that care. It models the return on investment for different funding options, including self-funding, long-term care insurance, annuities, hybrid policies, and life insurance riders—and the policy upload features allow a financial professional to upload existing policies into the platform for a client’s plan.
Waterlily is an excellent example of how financial professionals can leverage AI to enhance their businesses and revolutionize their clients’ financial plans. Professionals who have used the platform say it completely flips the care planning conversation with clients on its head—it’s no longer focused on selling a product but instead on finding a solution.
Watch: Revolutionizing LTC Planning: An Interview with Waterlily’s Founder
AI is the Key to Staying Ahead
Embracing AI isn’t about jumping on buzzword trends—it’s about staying ahead in a rapidly evolving industry to improve your practice and provide unparalleled value to clients.
“AI is revolutionizing life insurance by enhancing the customer experience, from the initial application to ongoing policy management and the claims process. By leveraging AI for risk assessment, personalized policies, and operational efficiencies, life insurance companies can offer better products at competitive prices.”
Contact our Care Planning Division if you’d like to take advantage of a two-week free trial to see how Waterlily can transform your care planning business first-hand.
