In April 2023, I co-wrote a piece for the World Economic Forum on how to pick a financial advisor. Since then, a new player in who, or what, you can ask advice from has been added: artificial intelligence (even if the chats always caveat that AI doesn’t give advice). 

So today, I want to re-explore the same topic of advice, what to look for in a financial advisor, and add: how should AI fit in?

A review of the data:

In the 2023 piece, a cited study found people with an advisor for 15+ years had 2.7x the assets of comparable people without one. Newer work points the same direction. A TIAA Institute report from April 2026 found:

• 92% of advised people save regularly vs. 75% of those without an advisor.

• Advised individuals report an average net worth of $800,000 vs $388,000 for non-advised peers, even after adjusting for income and demographics. 

You could say surveys tend to show correlation vs. causation and that wealthier people may simply be more likely to hire advisors. But the study showed other benefits, particularly through asset allocation, tax efficiency, and pushing clients to make full use of employer matches.

So the revised advisor checklist:

1. Find a fit with your lifestyle: The spectrum is wider now (human, digital-first, hybrid, and AI assistants), so decide how you actually want to interact before you pick.

2. Confirm expectations: Understanding your own goals and personal tolerances is still key in finding the right advisor that can work with you on them. Who you want to make the decisions and when also still matters—maybe even more as AI tools start to act.

3. Know the fees and costs: There is always a cost, explicit or implicit, so understanding them is important. This still includes management fees and the cost of your own time. A free chatbot still has a cost: you carry the risk that the answer is wrong.

4. Understand the investment approach: There are pros and cons to all of them out there, whether algorithms, AI, or human judgment. Each have blind spots. The best setups I see leverage all.

5. The "what" still matters: Knowing whether you will be invested in stocks, bonds, funds, and/or crypto and why.

When it comes to AI and advice, so far it adds to understanding. 

According to a recent study from Vanguard on the topic of AI and advice, about 1 in 3 investors say they've used AI for help with personal finance, investing, or retirement planning. It also found most AI use is still exploratory: getting started on a topic, learning a concept, testing an idea. Investors were also about 3x as likely to use AI to prepare for a meeting with a professional as to replace one.

But trust is a gap. Among Gen Z, millennial, and Gen X investors, 63% had little or no trust in conversational AI, while between 54% and 63% of every generation highly trusted a human advisor. I believe this is something that will change over time as use of AI expands.

The part I found most interesting in the study, though, is that AI users were roughly 11x as likely to say AI increased the value they place on a human advisor vs. to say it reduced it (32% vs. 2.9%). 

Our own research points the same way. When we’ve talked to investors about how they manage their wealth, they describe AI and a human planner as doing different jobs. AI is the always-on tool that can look at their full picture at any hour. The human is the sounding board they want for the big, complicated decisions, and the reassurance that comes with it. Investors have also told us trust comes down to accuracy, transparency, and control: even small errors in financial answers can lower credibility for an AI assistant. People also want to see the sources and reasoning. 

One note: The Vanguard study also stated that about 4 in 10 AI users said chatbots beat human advisors at avoiding conflicts of interest. This reinforces why fees and incentives still belong on the checklist.

The evidence still favors advice. What's new is that AI is a cheap, always-on way to get smarter before you sit down with anyone. It’s a way, at the least, to learn the vocabulary, pressure-test an idea, and consider better questions for an advisor. It may not, however, be the final word on tax strategy, retirement income, or anything you can't undo. And always ask how you're paying, who is accountable if it's wrong, and what return you're getting after all fees.

I'll be watching how much these tools are asked to do vs. explain, and whether that changes over time.