The Fiduciary Duty to Reject AI
As a fiduciary, I have a legal responsibility to put my clients’ interests ahead of my own. Is integrating AI into my practice consistent with this duty?
The AI products I heard repeatedly pitched at financial conferences this year include various tools for completing tasks that, only a few months ago, only a real human could accomplish. These tools actually hook into your email and client systems, read them, and respond to clients on your behalf. From a client meeting, email or phone call, they can automatically fill out forms and reply to email and pull the latest data from past conversations, contacts, emails, and financial planning systems.
Why am I, as an advisor, being sold (err…”encouraged”) to adopt these tools?
Efficiency! So we can spend less time documenting the conversation and more time having it.
Streamlining! So we can carry more households per advisor without hiring another human being.
Compliance! So we can hand our regulator documentation of a conversation we did not write down ourselves.
Presence! So we can look the client in the eye instead of down at a legal pad.
Notice a trend? All the benefits touted are for the advisor, enabling the advisor to grow more rapidly or serve more clients more easily. How does integrating AI into a financial practice benefit anyone other than the business leader (beyond a few seconds more eye contact, which, come one, is that really an issue?)
Indeed, AI would enable me to take more meetings and conceivably make more money, or spend less time making the same amount of money. But how does any of this help my clients?
Beyond not clearly helping, the presenters at the major conferences I have attended seem unconcerned with how it could hurt clients. In fact, at the three-day conference I just returned from, I heard only one presenter (leave it to the lawyer on the stage) even acknowledge a potential pitfall: the creation by AI note taking of making written records you may not actually want to have.
From the overwhelming presence of AI tools at industry conferences as sponsors and presenters, there seems to be a shocking interest by the leaders of the industry, or at least of these conferences, to facilitate advisor transition to the AI future. “You just have to do it or you’ll be left behind!” Is that what the industry leaders really think, or are they just happy to have companies sponsoring their conferences again after the long post-COVID sponsorship drought?
But AI does indeed pose great downside risks as we all now know. AI creators themselves admit they can’t control their AI because they don’t fully understand it or what it’s truly capable of.
How can I share my client information with a tool we know we don’t know enough about…just for additional increments of efficiency…or even, in the best-use scenario, better eye contact?
Please do not think me a Luddite (at least not for my stance on AI). I do appreciate the incredible positive potential, already leading to things like better breast cancer detection and breakthroughs in understanding antibiotic resistance. In my own little world, AI makes it easier for me to do general research, create funny graphics of capybaras reading books on hammocks and, most importantly, brainstorm Father’s Day gift ideas (sorry, dad). But I draw the line at allowing AI agents access to my client information in any way. I have yet to be convinced integrating AI into this data would benefit anyone but me and the companies selling the products, with downside risks for all. As such, I believe it is my fiduciary duty to reject AI in client integration.
Unfortunately for clients who share my AI concerns, based on the resoundingly positive AI vibe at recent financial advisor conferences, I seem relatively unique in my opposition to these tools. This means that many people are probably already being served by them, although they may not be aware of it. After all, there are no requirements that advisors disclose when or how they are using this technology. But, in fact, your last e-mail from your advisor, asking whether your mom has recovered from surgery or whether your daughter heard back from any colleges yet, may very well have been written by a bot. Which is fine, if it’s more eye contact you crave. And if that bot doesn’t go rogue.
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