The Soaring Trend Of AI "Co-Pilots" In Wealth Management

Tom Burroughes

19 February 2025

In the blizzard of stories and comments about how AI is burrowing itself into wealth management and financial services, a term that comes up regularly is that of the “co-pilot.”

This aeronautical term is becoming more common. It conveys the idea that AI can “sit” alongside a banker, analyst or RM to perform work such as identifying investment ideas, spotting data “red flags” and handling compliance chores.

Many of the steps for advisors at a private bank and wealth management firm involve pulling together disparate information, often supported by different tech stacks. This then has to be synthesised to generate insights. Generative AI can quickly process all this, saving advisors and others hours of time. And time is money.

As explained in an article on this news service back in 2023 by F-Prime Capital, AI has enabled these co-pilots to emerge and handle routine tasks such as reviewing legal documents, opening accounts, preparing client presentations, adjusting asset allocation, requesting query service, addressing ad hoc questions, and other activities beyond their core role of advising clients, which currently takes up 36 per cent of advisors’ time. The average advisor spends more than two hours “behind the scenes” for every hour they spend with clients.

So far, the main benefits in this context are “productivity enhancement, saving time and costs,” SimCorp’s chief product officer Marc Schröter told this publication. “That is what we see everyone working on, both on the wealth management side and among vendors.”

Schröter spoke to this news service as it is continuing to explore AI use cases in wealth management (see here and here and here for examples of our articles).

The co-pilot image is different from the idea of AI replacing human advisors. Even so, automating parts of the financial sector value chain will probably lead to some jobs vanishing. Global banks will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years as artificial intelligence encroaches on tasks currently carried out by human workers, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence in January this year. Back office, middle office and operations are likely to be most at risk, while customer services could see changes as bots manage client functions, it said. On the upside, changes could boost banks’ earnings. In 2027, banks could see pre-tax profits becoming 12 per cent to 17 per cent higher than they would otherwise have been – adding as much as $180 billion to their combined bottom line – as AI powers an increase in productivity. That, at least, is the hope.

While the noise level around co-pilots is rising, there's still a gap between that talk and what's actually happening. According to Ireland-headquartered compliance technology firm Fenergo, only 1 per cent of the banks which it has surveyed successfully automated the majority of their KYC and onboarding workflows; there is a growing appetite for AI-driven solutions. Some 38 per cent of respondents indicated plans to deploy AI to enhance operational efficiency, while 30 per cent aim to improve data accuracy with AI-powered tools. There is work to be done. Recent is cost-pressure,” Schröter replied.

Clients will see benefits in terms of less upside pressure on costs, as well as having more tools to ask about performance, fees, risk, and improve engagement with firms serving them, he said. Looking ahead, AI will become more autonomous, with “co-pilots” not always needing to be prompted to provide information and flag up issues, Schröter added.

At which point, the co-pilot is going to do a lot more of the flying.