Artificial intelligence shakes up financial advice

After years of resistance to regulatory changes (such as the Retail Investment Strategy), the financial advice industry is now shaking not because of a law, but because of a tangible technological acceleration, namely the tsunami of artificial intelligence. And if Hazel (Altruist) is the 'case of the day' that has shaken the stock market in recent days, Anthropic's Claude has been laying the groundwork for this revolution for months. Hazel presents itself as an end product, for now only intended for advisors as a working tool, but could in time also reach the end savers. Even if this step has to reckon with possible liability profiles in the case of precise investment advice to retail.

Does this definitively undermine the current advisory model? Emanuele Carluccio, professor of economics of financial intermediaries in Verona, explains: 'One cannot fail to recognise that the networks of advisors authorised to offer their services outside their offices have, in recent years, settled on a well-established business model that, over the same period, has seen significant growth in intermediated assets and, therefore, their profitability. Attempts by the European Commission to introduce a different business model have foundered and this, in turn, has helped to ensure that the main market players do not question a model that has been rewarded both by clients and by the economic results that in 2025 and in this very early part of 2026 continue to show record numbers'.

What, then, are the reasons for concern that have led to the fall in the stocks of some important companies in the asset management sector? "The sentiment of uncertainty," Carluccio continues, "is not new to the world of asset management, given that for some years now there has been a debate on the possible role of Robo-advisors, trying to understand whether they can really begin to dialogue directly with end customers or whether they should, more simply, be used by advisors to make more in-depth assessments, more rational choices; this debate has returned to the present day and with even greater force due to the rapid spread of artificial intelligence and the tokenization of financial assets that could lead to a partial disintermediation of traditional market channels. For the professor, therefore, the topic is not new, but current conditions are different from those of 10-15 years ago when financial planning tools began to spread. 'We cannot overlook,' he concludes, 'the fact that the new generations are increasingly digital and that familiarity with such tools has increased in all age groups; it is not certain, therefore, that the time is not ripe for the spread of largely automated and lower cost advisory systems. The onus will increasingly be on advisors to make clients perceive the content of the support they offer, the importance of their skills, and the 'value for money' of the service they provide'.