Financial advisors have moved quickly to put artificial intelligence to work. The hours the technology saves, however, are being eaten up by paperwork, more demanding clients and products that take longer to explain, according to a new Morningstar survey released Monday.
Eighty percent of U.S. advisors now use AI in some form, up from 67% a year earlier, the Chicago-based research firm found in its 2026 Morningstar Investor Perspectives Advisor study. Advisors still spend only 53% of their week on client-facing work. That is well short of the 63% they consider ideal, which Morningstar estimates translates into a four-hour time deficit in a 40-hour week.
"AI is helping advisors run faster, but the treadmill is speeding up too," said Joe Agostinelli, senior director of market research at Morningstar. "More documentation, faster service expectations, and more client questions mean AI is absorbing complexity rather than simply freeing up time."
The report draws from an online survey by Morningstar, which garnered 501 online responses between July 21 and Aug. 16. Respondents worked at independent and regional broker-dealers, registered investment advisory firms, wirehouses, insurance broker-dealers and other financial institutions.
The productivity argument is getting easier to make. Forty-eight percent of advisors said AI had significantly or moderately improved their efficiency, up from 36% in 2025. The share of non-AI users has also declined from one-third of advisor respondents last year (33%) to one-fifth of participants in this year's polling (20%).
Most of the AI use is still happening behind the scenes. Forty-three percent of advisors said they use AI for internal tasks such as meeting summaries and email drafts, 36% use it for brainstorming, 35% for research and due diligence, and 33% for client messaging. Asked where AI has helped most, 57% pointed to more efficient client communications, including note summaries and follow-up messages.
Advisors are far more guarded about letting algorithms shape portfolios, Morningstar found, as only 18% rated AI tools as highly reliable for investment recommendations or portfolio decisions.
Sentiment is improving but nonetheless remains split. Forty-two percent of advisors now see AI as a help to their practice, compared with 33% last year. Nineteen percent now view it as a threat, and 39% are on the fence.
The pattern matches separate research from Vanguard in September, which found that most firms are using the technology for administrative work.
The larger obstacle is operational. Fifty-six percent of advisors named administrative and operational work as the top barrier to delivering the service they want, well ahead of a general lack of time at 37%. In an open-ended question about what they would most like to remove from their workload, 26% cited paperwork.
Client-focused work has edged up only slightly, from 51% of the workweek in 2024 to 53% this year, prompting nearly two-thirds of advisors (62%) to say they want more client time. Those advisors want to reclaim 19% of their week on average to reallocate toward clients, Morningstar said.
At least some of that time could be devoted to the more human side of financial advice. More than a third of advisors, 36%, said client behavior and emotional decision-making made it harder to deliver advice. Among them, emotional reactions to market news were the most common problem. The share of advisors who say they add value by offering emotional support during hardship has nearly doubled, from 14% in 2024 to 27% in 2026.
"Advisors are increasingly the people who sort signal from noise and help clients keep moving toward their goals," Agostinelli said.
Read more: Being an emotional support advisor
The Morningstar survey report also touched on how new private investment opportunities also create new demands on advisors. Forty percent of respondents to the poll said they now offer private-market products – up from 35% in 2025 – and another 5% plan to add them.
Mainly, it was due diligence that made life difficult for advisors. Fees and fee transparency were the most-cited challenge, at 46%, followed by limited liquidity at 41% and limited visibility into underlying holdings at 35%.
Satisfaction with manager reporting has also slipped. Only 25% of advisors who offer private investments said they were highly satisfied with manager transparency, down from 38% a year ago.
Those pressures are changing what advisors want from asset managers. Investment performance was still the most-cited source of value in those relationships, but it fell 6 percentage points to 45%. Advisors increasingly emphasized practical support, including an accessible wholesaler or service team (37%), consistent follow-through (29%) and clear communication (27%).
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