Lisa Salvi, managing director of business consulting and education for Schwab Advisor Services
Schwab’s new RIA Benchmarking Study reveals AI tendencies for firms, including new data on how artificial intelligence is being used in hiring and recruiting.
Almost half (47%) of surveyed RIAs with at least $250 million in assets under management said they were using AI to write job descriptions, and 35% of RIAs said they were using AI to develop interview questions for job candidates. AI is also being used by 23% of firms to create training and onboarding material, 12% to screen resumes and sourcing candidates, and 10% said they’re using AI to help develop compensation packages.
“I am very surprised by how quickly we've gotten to more firms getting to agentic experimentation and agentic workflow redesign,” Lisa Salvi, managing director of business consulting and education for Schwab Advisor Services, told InvestmentNews. Agentic AI refers to systems that can autonomously execute multi-step workflows without human intervention at each stage.
RIA uses AI to save 8,000 hours
Responses for the report were fielded between January and March 2026 from 1,236 RIAs that custody assets with Schwab, marking the 20th edition of the annual Benchmarking survey. Usage has increased to 83% of surveyed RIAs saying they use some form of AI — most commonly for administrative tasks (65%), developing client correspondence (49%), generating marketing content (48%), conducting research (45%), and 26% of firms saying they use AI to answer client questions or chat messages.
Salvi said that Schwab recently did a webcast with an RIA that has used AI to redesign its preparation process for client meetings. “That is a very laborious process within a firm. You're pulling data from different systems, pulling together very beautiful presentation. And it takes a lot of people to get that process and package together,” said Salvi.
“This firm has done it agentically now, and they're saving 8,000 hours a year by redesigning it in a process that now is very streamlined,” said Salvi. “Humans are still looking it over,you've got that human in the loop; they're still making sure everything is correct.”
AI's impact on the workforce
Client retention remained at a 97% for the 10th straight year of Schwab’s Benchmarking study. Hiring rates have also remained consistent since 2021, with 75% of firms saying they hired in 2025 and the same number saying they plan to hire in 2026.
“We don't know if that means they're hiring as many roles yet though, and that's something I'm watching very closely,” Salvi said, referring to plans to monitor how AI deployment could impact hiring at RIAs or “AI productivity gains” as the Schwab study describes.
Over the next four years, Schwab projects the median firm will need to hire four new roles, while median top-performing firms will need to hire seven new roles. Based on current growth rates, Schwab maintains its projection that RIAs will need to hire more than 70,000 new staff over the next five years. However, that estimated number does not account for any attrition, retirements, new firms, or AI productivity gains.
“I hear a lot of advisors hoping that they're going to get help from the AI boost, that they won't need as much hiring,” said Salvi. “I talked to one firm last week that said because of what they've gained from AI they've already implemented, they don't think they'll need to hire for the next 18 months.”
