\n The pressure to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) can obscure a more basic question about where advisers actually lose time. At the Hubbis Digital Wealth Forum in Singapore on 21 October 2026, Ronnie Chan, Senior Manager at Finalix, presented research suggesting that administrative work and fragmented information deserve particular attention.
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\nDrawing on a productivity survey of over 200 wealth management professionals across Europe and Asia, Ronnie argued that onboarding, know-your-customer (KYC) processes and periodic reviews are promising starting points. His case rested on the combination of substantial manual effort and a willingness among advisers to use AI for selected supporting activities.\n <\/p>\n
Key Takeaways<\/p>\n
Finalix’s survey examined productivity frustrations across the advisory journey, rather than asking respondents whether they liked AI.<\/p>\n
Administrative work and information gathering featured prominently, even though the research focused on wealth advisers.<\/p>\n
Trust in AI was selective, with respondents more receptive to support for repeatable information tasks.<\/p>\n
Ronnie proposed prioritising activities where high manual effort overlaps with a willingness to adopt AI.<\/p>\n
Starting With the Work Advisers Find Difficult<\/p>\n
Ronnie said Finalix had examined the full advisory journey, including onboarding, through four familiar stages: understanding the client, advising, executing and monitoring. The aim was to locate the bottlenecks and understand their causes before selecting a technical solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn’t ask, \u2018Do you like AI?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe asked, \u2018Where are your biggest frustrations?\u2019\u201d That distinction shaped both the findings and his proposed approach to implementation.<\/p>\n
The survey findings he presented placed KYC data capture at the top of the effort ranking, identified by 52% of respondents. Onboarding followed at 45%, with periodic reviews at 38%. Respondents could identify more than one activity. More broadly, 76% felt administration occupied too much of their time, while 62% highlighted information gathering.<\/p>\n
For Ronnie, these results mattered because a survey of advisers might be expected to put investment ideas or portfolio construction first. Instead, the most prominent frustrations concerned the information work needed to support the relationship. Time spent finding, entering and documenting information reduces the time available for clients.<\/p>\n
Fragmentation Creates the Burden<\/p>\n
Ronnie argued that the difficulty was not a shortage of data or a lack of adviser capability. Information was unstructured, dispersed across systems and tied to complicated operational processes.<\/p>\n
He identified regulatory requirements, manual entry and repetitive activities among the sources of the workload. Each becomes more demanding when an adviser must gather material from several places before a review or onboarding task can proceed.<\/p>\n
That diagnosis changes the purpose of an AI project. Its immediate contribution can be to reduce the repetitive information handling around advice, allowing the adviser to concentrate on the relationship and decisions that require judgement. It need not begin by attempting to automate the investment recommendation itself.<\/p>\n
Understanding Where Advisers Will Trust AI<\/p>\n
The research also challenged a blanket assumption that advisers are unwilling to trust AI. Ronnie said 48% of respondents would be ready to trust it to support a KYC review.<\/p>\n
Other activities attracting meaningful acceptance included portfolio risk management, data consolidation, research and regulatory document handling. Ronnie stressed that this was selective trust, rather than approval for every form of automation.<\/p>\n
The common features, in his account, were information-intensive tasks with clear rules and repeated steps. Advisers could see a role for AI in processing the material while retaining human judgement over its use.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are generally willing to trust AI where it augments your judgement rather than replaces it,\u201d he said. The distinction helps explain why a tool aimed at administrative relief may be more welcome than one presented as taking over the advisory role.<\/p>\n
Prioritising Effort and Adoption Together<\/p>\n
Ronnie brought the findings together through two dimensions: the effort a task requires and the trust advisers are prepared to place in AI support. Activities scoring highly on both offer a practical place to begin.<\/p>\n
KYC capture, periodic reviews and research or information gathering featured prominently in that comparison. They combine repeatable manual work with an identifiable user appetite for assistance. Ronnie argued that this overlap offers institutions some of their strongest opportunities for a return on investment.<\/p>\n
For wealth managers, the implication is to define the operational problem before commissioning the tool. A project that removes document gathering or duplicate entry from a specific client lifecycle process gives the institution a clearer task to improve and gives advisers an immediate reason to use it.<\/p>\n
The opportunity is not to use AI everywhere, but to apply it where it matters most. Start with the right problems, deliver tangible value and give advisers more time for what matters most \u2013 their clients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pressure to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) can obscure a more basic question about where advisers actually lose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,174,175],"class_list":["post-680190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}