Doctors have grown accustomed to patients turning to websites like WebMD or, increasingly, AI-driven chatbots for second opinions on their medical decisions.
Now financial advisors are also having to get used to sitting down in meetings with clients who've similarly come armed with a bevy of investment recommendations and other advice provided by OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini and other AI sources. At Morgan Stanley, all this has simply meant advisors have to be better prepared themselves, says Vince Lumia, head of wealth management client segments.
"They're going into that meeting making the assumption that the client has already checked their work, and they're just sort of anticipating that and raising that in many cases before the client even brings it up," Lumia said.
Like many in wealth management, Lumia thinks AI will help make advisors more productive rather than threaten their jobs. It can even help them ensure they're ready for all those AI-derived questions their clients may throw at them.
"We're seeing advisors use AI to pressure-test upcoming client conversations, anticipate questions — certainly be more prepared, because they know clients are doing the exact same thing," Lumia said.
Morgan Stanley was one of the first wealth managers to find uses for artificial intelligence and similar technologies following OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in late 2022. The firm announced the following year it had entered into a partnership with OpenAI and has since been building AI "agents" built after the example of a fictional digital assistant in the "Iron Man" movies capable of undertaking complex tasks with a minimum of human intervention.
Having been at Morgan Stanley since 1999, Lumia is in as good a position as anyone to put the recent changes in perspective. He started the firm as a financial advisor and moved up through a series of promotions giving him ever-greater responsibilities in the wealth management division. Now as head of client segments, a position he has been in since 2024, he oversees 600 branches in the U.S., as well as the firm's E-Trade online brokerage business and Morgan Stanley at Work unit for providing employee benefits and stock plans.
Lumia may not think AI will be taking advisors' jobs any time soon. But he does see it helping firms that are struggling to replace advisors who retire or leave for other reasons.
He recently sat down with Financial Planning to discuss the types of clients AI is likely to take over, why Morgan Stanley advisors will always have a place in the industry and why AI could eventually allow advisors to double or even triple the number of clients they work with.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Financial Planning: How do you see AI changing the advisor-client relationship, and what does that mean for the future of financial planning?
Vince Lumia: First and foremost, AI will absolutely replace some of the work that advisors do for clients. But human insight and long-term relationships, that part of it is irreplaceable.
I think advisors are going to really benefit from all the innovation, all the technology. But they still need to apply their judgment, deem what is suitable for the client from knowing them for many years, or many decades, or through many generations.
FP: What are some examples of how advisors are using AI to ease some of their more-routine tasks?
VL: Examples would include preparation for a quarterly performance review. Particularly for a large family that has a complicated ownership structure, that is something that could take one of our teams several hours to several days to prepare for.
But now because this technology is already embedded in and continues to be embedded in our platform, it's taking what would take hours or days and, in some cases, doing it in minutes.
Also, identifying deficiencies or gaps in portfolio construction or asset allocation.
In many cases, it's work that would require lots of subject-matter expertise and people that have a lot of experience. We're absolutely still using those people, but those people are equipped with a number of AI tools, some of which have existed here a long time.
FP: What do you tell advisors whose clients are maybe using ChatGPT and similar resources to second-guess their recommendations?
VL: I think AI is exposing a lot of the commoditized parts of all industries.
So, for us, it's the advisor models that are built around a very standard portfolio construction, a very basic financial plan for mass-affluent clients. The pressure from AI is greatest when the value proposition is limited to basic things, and where judgment and customization and context are not required.
That is very different from the business that we are in. Our business is about trust, human judgment, accountability. And that is only being amplified as the client's complexity level goes up.
FP: Do you think it's risky for clients to go to ChatGPT and other AI systems for financial advice?
VL: I think we all are realizing that through a few prompts, lots of information is seconds away. But that information does not understand suitability trade-offs for the broader context of the client's life and the history of the family dynamics.
The best advisors are evaluating family dynamics, they're coordinating appropriately with tax professionals, legal professionals, they're understanding liquidity needs, credit needs, long-term goals, real assets, and also philanthropic passions that an individual family may have.
So I think this is where we showcase the value of the Morgan Stanley integrated ecosystem, which allows advisors to identify opportunities earlier, deepen the relationship along the way, put us and them in a better position to capture assets that are held away from us, and reinforcing for us from a business ownership standpoint why we're so upbeat about our ability to continue to grow the business organically.
FP: What are some examples of things AI is likely to miss?
VL: AI doesn't know what's on your mind and other stresses in one's life. It doesn't know the pitch or the tone of the client's voice — when they sound confident and when they sound apprehensive.
That only happens from decades of having a relationship and a friendship with clients. That's what our best advisors really draw on to be effective.
FP: It's widely expected that older advisors will retire at a faster pace than new ones join the industry in the coming decade. Will AI ease some of the pressures from that retirement wave by allowing remaining advisors to work with more clients?
VL: I do think with the smaller clients, on the low-value spectrum of financial services, AI will absolutely be a replacement. But we believe that we are in the people and relationship business.
We don't have a strong expectation around advisor headcount. But what we do know is that our advisors are going to be able to do what they do incredibly well today, with maybe two to three times the amount of clients and assets that they currently serve without adding lots of additional people or support to be able to do that.
When I look back 10, 15, 20 years ago, that was not the case. You needed the arms and legs to grow like that.
