AI won't replace advisors but it will separate the ones who survive

I'll be straightforward about something: I am not deep in the weeds on artificial intelligence. What I do know — after 35 years in wealth management — is how to recognize a shift that changes the competitive landscape permanently. And this is one of them. 

We started building in earnest a few months ago. We brought on an AI specialist, someone who had been leading AI initiatives at Amazon. Within his first three weeks, we were already doing groundwork — scrubbing data, aligning systems, building the infrastructure that good AI outcomes require. Because the first lesson I've taken from this process is simple: Garbage in, garbage out the unglamorous work of getting your data house in order is where this actually begins. 

Start with the low-hanging fruit 

My advice to any firm that hasn't meaningfully adopted AI yet is to start with something. The tendency is to wait until you have a comprehensive strategy, a full implementation of roadmap, and a clear sense of where it's all going. That instinct will cost you time you don't have. 

What we did instead was work backwards from our business goals. Where are the biggest drains on time and energy inside the practice? What are the repetitive, process-driven tasks that consume hours without creating meaningful value for clients? Start there. Get wins. Build comfort with the technology and how it performs. Then move to more complex applications. 

What we are not doing right now — though it is a goal — is anything client-facing. Every initial use case is internal. That discipline matters, because the stakes of getting it wrong externally are much higher than the cost of moving carefully at the start. 

The digital twin and what it actually does 

One of the first things our AI specialist built was a digital version of me. He pulled everything publicly available — every interview, article, video, and podcast — and fed it into the system. The resulting model has a working knowledge of how I think, how I communicate, and how I approach client situations. 

What struck me most wasn't the output. It was the timeline. He told me that six months ago, building what he had just built in nine hours would have taken him and two other people from his Amazon team three weeks. That compression illustrates better than any statistic just how fast this technology is moving. The firms building now and the firms sitting on the sidelines are not standing still relative to each other — the gap is widening in real time. 

We're developing three primary applications for digital twins. The first is internal advisor support. We have roughly 10 advisors in the firm. When someone needs to know how I'd approach a particular client scenario, the digital agent will respond. We'll track everything closely early on, but the goal is to scale my thinking across the team without scaling my time. 

The second is email management. I receive around 200 emails a day. Our AI specialist believes the digital twin will reduce the time I spend on email by 70%. That's not a rounding error — it's a meaningful recapture of hours that can be redirected toward client relationships and higher-order work. 

The third is a prospect-facing application. We do significant direct investment work, and we're building a landing page with an "Ask Tom" feature. The digital twin handles the initial interaction and is trained to escalate to a live conversation when appropriate. I want to be clear about the boundaries here: I don't see clients interacting with a digital version of me in any deep or ongoing way. The understanding and empathy that define strong advisory relationships aren't replicable. But for initial prospect engagement, it's a meaningful tool. 

What this means for the advisor's role 

The existential question people keep asking is whether AI will replace financial advisors. I think that's the wrong frame. The more useful question is: what does an advisor who is properly utilizing AI look like — and how does that compare to one who isn't? 

The answer I keep coming back to is that AI frees advisors to do what only advisors can do. Managing investment assets is, candidly, the easiest part of my job. The hardest part — and the most meaningful — is being a problem solver. Clients don't call to discuss what their portfolio did this week. They're calling about the big picture: their business, their estate, their family, their anxiety. A great advisor is fundamentally a problem solver operating across every dimension of a client's financial life. 

AI makes it possible to spend more time on exactly that. Less time on process. More time on people. 

We've been through a version of this conversation before. Around 2005 and 2006, the dominant narrative was that Robo Advisors would make financial advisors obsolete. Then 2008 arrived, the market crashed, and that narrative largely collapsed. Robo Advisors still exist and serve certain investors well. But when markets move violently and fear takes over, the clients who need a human voice — someone who can cut through the noise and help them make rational decisions — outnumber those who don't. That dynamic isn't going away. 

The advisors who will struggle in an AI-enabled environment are the ones whose primary value proposition is portfolio management. That has been commoditizing for 20 years, starting with the ETF revolution. AI accelerates it further. The advisors who will thrive are those whose value is irreducibly human — the relationship, the judgment, the trust built over years of delivering on hard promises. 

The cost of waiting 

Firms that use AI well are going to outperform those that don't. The efficiencies are too significant, and the compounding effect of those efficiencies over time is too powerful to dismiss. 

Here is how I think about urgency: every firm that is sitting on the sidelines right now is accumulating a debt. Not a financial one — a readiness debt. Building an AI culture takes time. Upskilling employees takes time. Getting the data infrastructure right takes time. Selecting and integrating the right tools takes time. 

Given how fast this technology is moving, falling behind by a full year could be monumental. Not in a theoretical sense — in a real, competitive, will-your-business-be-positioned-to-grow sense. The window isn't closed. But it is moving. 

_{Thomas H. Ruggie, ChFC, CFP, is the founder and CEO of Ruggie Wealth Management, a multifamily office and wealth management firm serving ultra-high-net-worth families.}