How One RIA Is Using AI to Fuel Growth
Savvy Wealth has gone all in with artificial intelligence.
The wealthtech and RIA firm, which is known for its proprietary technology that advisors use to offer bespoke advice and services to clients, announced on Thursday that its advisor platform is now powered by generative AI.
“The typical advisors spend about 70 percent or more of their time doing non-client facing activities,” co-founder and CEO of Savvy Ritik Malhotra told RIA Intel. “We do think that about half of that can actually be automated on an average blended basis, which is huge. That’s half of 70 percent — 35 percent of advisors’ time can actually be given back to them just based on our conservative estimates.”
Savvy rebuilt its existing platform to incorporate generative AI, based on the same large language model that is used by Microsoft’s viral AI chatbot ChatGPT.
“That ChatGPT-based technology is really well suited for a lot of advisor workflows and tasks because it is designed to be very conversational in nature, and a lot of what an advisor is doing is conversing and communicating with clients or prospective clients,” said Malhotra.
While Malhotra said the firm sees a lot of future use cases for generative AI, Savvy started with incorporating the technology in three areas: its in-house customer-relationship manager, client communication and marketing, and its client portal.
The company says the AI technology is already streamlining advisor processes such as new account onboarding, client portfolio recommendations, financial planning, and personalized communications across multiple marketing channels.
“One of the common tasks advisors use CRMs for is knowing when to take action on a client. Typically, the CRM is there to hold that data, but it’s the advisor’s job to actually go and figure out if they need to do anything with this client or that client. [But] we’ve actually integrated our AI technology into the dashboard in a way that automatically surfaces up the most relevant actions,” said Malhotra.
The company’s advisors have also used it to draft client communications and help write content pieces like the best wealth management practices for physicians and medical professionals.
Nearly a third of advisors believe that they don’t have enough time to spend with clients, according to a recent J.D. Power survey. Of those who said they didn’t have enough time, 41 percent said they spend more time each month than their peers on non-value-added tasks, such as compliance and administrative duties — tasks that generative AI can make easier, Malhotra argued.
He said that while advisors resonate the most with the time-saving aspect of AI, a secondary, but equally important benefit is how AI can free up mental space for advisors.
“Advisors want to be using their creative energy with clients thinking of, ‘Hey, how can I be helping a client and really working with them directly and kind of having that personal touch?’” Malhotra said. “The less that you have to spend from a creative energy perspective on these middle- and back-office tasks, the more that you can actually spend on personalized advice and working with clients.”
Since its founding in 2021, Savvy has taken a digital-first approach to financial advice. In just a couple of years, the company has grown from two to 31 employees and is managing well north of $100 million in assets. Malhotra puts down the company’s growth to its focus on technology.
“We grow by enabling the advisors on our team to be doing the best work that they can and also recruiting other top advisors as well. That’s really our primary growth function,” he said. “We believe the best advisors you want to be working with [need] the best support, operations, and technology — and this is another way to really bring them here.”
