How useful is ChatGPT for advisers?

Advice firms are already testing the chatbot sensation to see what it can do for them. Sally Lindsay finds out how the new artificial intelligence tool could help advisers.

Auckland-based financialadvice company National Capital has tested ChatGPT’s ability to generate financial information - and found it wanting.

Founder and director Clive Fernandes says while the chatbot is useful in limited circumstances, the main problem is it can’t distinguish between fact and fiction.

KiwiSaver advice is National Capital’s specialty, so Fernandes wanted to see how the AI stacked up against registered financial advisers.

ChatGPT was asked specific questions - and Fernandes says it came as no surprise that it generated some incorrect answers.

To be fair, he says every financial statement made by the chatbot was followed by a reminder to seek professional advice.

Nonetheless, Fernandes says he can see a heightened risk of inaccurate information, despite its dangerously authoritative wording.

“Granted, it is great to summarise heavy content in plain English. [But] there is also a lack of quality depth in the answers generated by ChatGPT.”

He says where ChatGPT can currently be useful is for writing emails to clients.

Advisers can put in the points they want to make and an email will be generated in one minute - with correct spelling and grammar.

“It’s like having a professional writer alongside an adviser.”

AI not yet advice-ready

Fernandes says once AI can provide accurate information, it will eventually free-up an enormous amount of time for advisers, which they can use to answer more complex client queries.

‘Eventually’ is the operative word. While the current iteration of ChatGPT is an impressive piece of AI, Fernandes is emphatic it cannot yet supply Kiwis with relevant advice.

“It is not useful right now for providing client advice, because it can’t give 100% accurate information,” he says.

To fix this, National Capital is working on its own expert tool using ChatGPT’s base development.

In-house development of the product is underway and money will later be poured into testing on a regular basis to make sure it is totally accurate before it hits the market.

Fernandes is hoping it will become the leading tool for the country’s financial advisers.

On whether it will replace advisers,

Fernandes is adamant it won’t.

“At an Auckland University function it was summed up as, ‘AI is not going to replace jobs, people using AI will replace jobs’.”

He says a product launch is years away – not months.

Too unreliable

Financial Advice NZ chief executive Katrina Shanks has spoken to other mortgage and insurance advice firms who have been testing ChatGPT by putting questions into it about their specific sectors: they, too, have been doubting what comes out.

Shanks believes ChatGPT will not be widely adopted in New Zealand any time soon by mortgage and insurance advisers, because it is too unreliable.

“What it produces is not necessarily based on facts.”

However, Shanks, who did not want to name the firms she has spoken to, says it could be useful as a base for published material advisers can use if they are short of ideas, as long as they supplement it with their own more advanced knowledge and shape it to suit their client base.

“Any adviser using ChatGPT has to thoroughly check the information they get from the AI tool.”

Financial Advice is a membershipbased organisation, and Shanks says the advanced AI has not been canvassed at meetings.

“Members have focused on business and making sure they are on the Financial Services Providers Register rather than worrying about new AI tools. It is not an issue of concern.”

Shanks says her the organisation itself will not be adopting ChatGPT, although it produces a lot of published material for its members.

“We want to stay authentic, so we mostly write the material we use ourselves.”

Resimac general manager Luke Jackson says while there has been some play with ChatGPT socially, the company has not explored it for content - and certainly not for mortgage applications.

He says it is inevitable ChatGPT will become widely used, similar to the evolution of Google.

“But how much content do people want?

“While it will be able to generate regular content for mortgage advisers, they will need to ask who wants it and why do they want it?”

People are already overloaded with information, says Jackson, and if content comes from the same source regularly, it just ends up in their spam folder.

He says another question is this: how are companies going to pay to be involved in ChatGPT? Google launched Google Ads for this purpose.

“What will ChatGPT provide so nonbank lenders, for example, can get their name on it?”

As for mortgage applications, Jackson doubts they will ever be automated by a system such as ChatGPT.

“Advisers would be gone if that was the case.”

He says good mortgage applications are concise and disclose all relevant information.

“We do not need an extra three paragraphs for each part of the application added by ChatGPT.”

He says each loan application is different and adviser input is vital.

Use AI for marketing

Paul Watkins, marketing adviser to the New Zealand financial services industry, says it clear ChatGPT’s immediate value is in the areas of enhancing marketing activity and messages.

He says clients will use the new service to search for information about mortgages, as ChatGPT can create personalised mortgage choices and suggestions based on client input, such as their location, salary, house price and other factors affecting their credit rating.

“The downside here is that the value of using an adviser might become lost to some prospects, particularly Gen Z who are tech savvy,” Wilkins says.

On a positive note, he says chatbots backed by AI have the potential to provide well-informed answers to prospect and client questions, and would be available 24/7.

“This will enhance perceived levels of service, as the answers can often appear to be written by a human.”

Watkins says in his opinion mortgage advisers should embrace ChatGPT as a content aid for social media, blogs and newsletters.

The editor of Sydney-based The Adviser magazine, Annie Kane, says ChatGPT is a powerful tool which should be looked at closely.

“Having experimented with this tool for the past few months, I am convinced it can help many industries, including mortgage advisers –from setting up new businesses, prospecting, connecting and nurturing relationships, to generation of leads, right through to negotiating and successfully obtaining mortgages for clients.

“ChatGPT is a must-have tool in a mortgage adviser’s tool bag.”

Her advice is for mortgage advisers to take the AI tool for a spin, but to tread carefully. Don’t accept the output automatically.

“Like many new tools there are some limitations and initial flaws. The possibilities, though, are encouraging.”

AI can free up time

Peter Vassilis, managing director of Sydney-based Black and White Finance, says Chat GPT could free up mortgage advisers so they can spend more time with their customers.

He says the AI tool could help advisers with tasks such as content for websites or social media posts, and generating generic responses for new-to-industry customers, explaining offsets or redraws.

“Typing in what you think is a wellwritten response or content piece, pasting it into ChatGPT, and asking the software to make this text read in a much simpler form, can also help,” he says.

But he, too, says advisers should exercise caution when using the tools for content creation.

He warns there is still a lot of incorrect or dated information online, which ChatGPT is data-scraping to provide its response.

“It’s also known ChatGPT’s written text or content is likely to lack empathy or the human element, so it might be a good idea to blend its response with your own.”

Given that ChatGPT produces potentially lower-quality content than humans, Vassilis says it could lower an adviser company or individual’s organic Google ranking, which would be detrimental to businesses trying to rank online.

He says while it was likely to be business as usual for advisers for now, ChatGPT will eventually become more widely used, particularly because of the time it takes to create detailed responses to client questions or to create content.

“If this becomes widespread, it will free up advisers and their teams to be empathetic, more in tune with the emotions of clients feeling economic pressure, and to help make the experience even better when providing what’s in a borrower’s best interests.”

Vassilis says there is a layer of inperson relationship – on particular display in the mortgage-advice profession – which AI cannot replicate for now, and that the human connection is still an important element in building those strong customer relationships. ✚

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT represents a branch of artificial intelligence called generative AI.

Across the globe, AI is a rapidly developing field which is poised to revolutionise everything from healthcare to transportation, and entertainment to finance and mortgages.

At its core, AI is about using computer algorithms to mimic human intelligence. This can include everything from recognising patterns in data to making decisions based on that data.

ChatGPT, created by Microsoftbacked company OpenAI, has quickly amassed millions of users, garnering praise from business leaders, including billionaire Elon Musk, one of OpenAI’s original backers.

Musk tweeted, “ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI”. While most of the excitement focuses on its ability to produce text, the major business impact comes from its ability to understand that text.

Michael D. Watkins, professor of leadership and organisational change at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) says what separates ChatGPT from powerful search engines such as Google and knowledge repositories like Wikipedia is its capacity for knowledge synthesis: the ability to identify, appraise, and link information to distil and present arguments.