While many sectors (and companies) in 401(k) and financial services experiment with artificial intelligence (AI), Financial Finesse is diving right in.
The El Segundo, Calif.-based financial wellness firm was an early AI adopter with its pioneering virtual financial coach Aimee, and more recently it launched an AI-based search tool in mid-January.
“We’ve been working on AI since before ChatGPT. It existed, but it wasn’t like what it is today,” Liz Davidson, founder and CEO of Financial Finesse, said at the Viking Cove Institute’s Leaders’ Summit in Phoenix, Ariz., on Thursday. “It points to vetted content written by our certified financial planner (CFP) coaches and is iterative. The AI interprets the question, provides the answer, and offers more context-related questions. It then prompts people to text or speak with a coach. It’s an interesting gateway into chatting with a human and then talking to that human and eventually developing a coaching relationship.”
Referencing the ongoing industry debate about AI and whether it will replace the advisor’s role, Davidson sees it as an entry point to better understanding.
“A lot of people are scared, even at a higher-net-worth level,” she explained. “They don’t know what questions to ask or don’t have enough baseline knowledge even to know how to evaluate the insight they’re provided. AI is something they can feel is totally safe with no judgment, and then they can transition to that coaching relationship.”
It’s a closed system and based on the knowledge of the firm’s financial wellness coaches.
“They get all these phone calls and help clients deal with all these challenging financial circumstances, and they write down what they experience and eventually produce articles on various topics,” Edwin Jongsma, Financial Finesse’s Head of AI, noted. “I get thousands of articles I need to digest or understand for our business. Before GPT became mainstream, I asked myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be great just to search through or even chat with the article?’ It’s great to actually talk to the content, which is the knowledge of our coaches.”
Davidson and Jongsma repeatedly emphasized the need for accuracy, especially when dealing with financial matters.
“You can ask ChatGpT financial questions, but you can get Reddit answers from users who think that you should only invest in cryptocurrency,” Jongsma said. “It’s dangerous. We’re a closed system. We want to use the power of GPT, which is all about contextual understanding at the human level. We understand what humans want and want to answer with our own content. Then, AI studies our content and comes up with the answers. But again, we want to make sure that the answers we derive are safe because we’re working in the financial industry.”
“We can’t have inaccuracies. We can’t give advice because we’re not advisors. We can’t have anything inappropriate, so that’s why it’s a closed system,” Davidson added.
She provided an example on her mobile phone, asking the platform how to save for emergencies. The technology returned an answer, related questions, articles for further reference, and—importantly—prompts to text or speak with a coach.
“We know it’s been written, vetted, fact-checked, and updated by all of our CFPs,” Davidson concluded. “AI is not going to replace humans; it’s going to extend humanity. It’s all about adding to productivity.”
