Advisers are open to using agentic AI to handle administrative tasks across the advice journey but are more reticent around its use for decisions that affect client money, new research has revealed.
According to a study by technology provider GBST and the lang cat, eight out of 10 (80%) advisers are comfortable with AI collating data for annual reviews and suitability packs.
A similar proportion (77%) are comfortable using the technology for onboarding and letters of authority, 76% with KYC and anti-money laundering checks and 75% with fees and charges reconciliation.
However, confidence tails off when it comes to decisions that directly affect client money. For pension transfers, less than half (43%) of advisers said they are comfortable using AI, while 29% are neutral and 29% feel uncomfortable. For CIP switching and rebalancing, 53% are comfortable, 22% are neutral and 25% said they are uncomfortable.
The responses also show where advisers want the boundary to sit. Several said they wanted the ability to supervise and check outputs before anything is actioned, singling out tasks that directly affect a client as the ones they would not hand over without oversight.
Rob DeDominicis, CEO of GBST, said: “Rather than resisting AI, advisers have drawn a sensible boundary around it. They are comfortable with agentic AI taking on the high-volume administrative tasks, like reconciliation and collation of data. This is necessary work, but it takes up time without adding visible value for clients.
“Where client money is directly at stake, they want human oversight, but that doesn’t mean doing everything manually. On more involved processes such as transfers, it’s about keeping people at the decision points while the system carries out the firm’s own procedure and records every step.”
The research also found familiarity with agentic AI is patchy. Nearly a third (31%) of advisers are unable to describe what it does and a similar number (29%) cannot identify its core capability of breaking tasks into steps, planning the workflow and carrying it through automatically. However, when shown a description of agentic AI, nearly two thirds (62%) say they are comfortable with it being embedded in their platform, with a further 18% neutral.
“Advisers are most comfortable when AI is built into the platform they already use, rather than bolted on the side. That keeps it within the controls and security already in place. That’s how we’ve built Composer’s agentic AI and what we’re seeing from clients as these capabilities move from controlled release into live operational processes,” DeDominicis added.
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