AI saves advisors 200-plus hours a year, but the real race is integration

Artificial intelligence has crossed the adoption threshold in the financial advice industry, with more than half of advisors who have embraced the technology now reclaiming at least four hours every week.

That’s the equivalent of more than 200 hours, or 26 full working days, over the course of a year, according to the AssetMark's 2026 Advisor Insights: Artificial Intelligence Report which surveyed 400 U.S.-based financial advisors and was released on September 15, 2026.

It found that 85 percent have adopted AI-integrated solutions to some degree, with 80 percent expecting their use to deepen over the next 12 months. The findings suggest the industry has moved past the question of whether advisors will use AI and arrived at a more consequential one: how thoroughly they will weave it into how they work.

"The AI conversation in wealth management is moving past adoption," said Alex Pape, chief product and technology officer at AssetMark, based in Concord, California. "The question now is whether AI is actually making advisors better at their jobs. Giving an advisor four or more hours back each week is meaningful, but the real opportunity is what they can do with that capacity: spend more time with clients, apply their judgment to more complex problems and focus on the work where human expertise matters most."

Where AI is doing the work

Among advisors who have adopted AI, 45 percent use it to generate meeting notes or summaries, the most common application. Automated performance reports or dashboards follow at 43 percent, research summarization at 42 percent, risk analysis at 42 percent, and workflow and scheduling automation at 40 percent.

The breadth of those use cases is significant. Rather than clustering around a single defining application, AI appears to be entering advisor practices through the tasks advisors already perform, reducing friction across a wide range of analytical, operational and communications work.

The value advisors perceive extends beyond efficiency. Half identify improved work quality as a primary benefit of AI, while 43 percent cite business growth, 41 percent point to improved client experience, and 40 percent credit increased firm revenue. Separately, 85 percent of surveyed advisors say AI has helped them expand the types of clients they serve.

"Advisors are under increasing pressure to deliver more personalized service while managing greater complexity," said Michael Kim, chief executive officer of AssetMark. "This research reinforces the importance of technology that creates meaningful capacity, fits naturally into the way advisors work and keeps their judgment at the center of the client experience."

RIAs pulling ahead

The report reveals a notable divergence between registered investment advisors and independent advisors affiliated with broker-dealers.

Ninety-one percent of RIAs have adopted AI-integrated solutions, compared with 81 percent of broker-dealer-affiliated independents. RIAs are also more likely to anticipate deepening their use - 87 percent expect their AI usage to grow over the next 12 months, against 75 percent of BD-affiliated advisors.

That gap extends into day-to-day applications. Among AI adopters, 49 percent of RIAs use the technology to draft client communications, compared with 30 percent of BD-affiliated advisors. For workflow and scheduling automation, the split is 48 percent to 35 percent. On portfolio stress testing, RIAs lead 41 percent to 25 percent.

The pattern aligns with a broader shift in how advisors are evaluating the firms that support their businesses. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they would consider switching firms if their current firm's AI capabilities fell behind competitors.

That figure climbs to 78 percent among advisors managing $500 million or more in assets,  a segment where the competitive stakes of falling behind on technology are highest. InvestmentNews has tracked how AI is reshaping advisor technology expectations across the wealth management industry.

Human judgment stays at the center

Enthusiasm for AI does not translate into a willingness to delegate consequential decisions. Half of surveyed advisors said they would not trust AI to handle client-facing work. Forty-five percent would not trust it with portfolio decisions, and 43 percent flagged compliance as an area that should remain outside AI's scope.

The emerging model, the report concludes, is one of broader AI use in the background (summarizing, analyzing and automating) combined with continued advisor ownership of advice, judgment and client relationships. AssetMark's own Talk Tracks product reflects that logic: the AI tool generates client portfolio talking points while leaving advisors to review, refine and lead the conversation.

Among the 15 percent of advisors who have not adopted AI, cost is the least-cited concern. The leading barriers are client confidentiality and data privacy, flagged by 46 percent, followed by the time required to learn and implement new tools, cited by 43 percent. The implication, the report argues, is that making AI available is not sufficient; firms need to provide governance, education and workflow integration to support meaningful adoption.

AssetMark's research on how outsourcing and technology investments drive advisor growth has consistently pointed to capacity creation as the central lever. The 2026 AI findings reinforce that conclusion, positioning the technology not as a replacement for advisor judgment but as the infrastructure that makes more of it possible.