As artificial intelligence tools push deeper into personal finance, wealth advisors are being asked the same uncomfortable question with growing urgency: are you next? Two experienced practitioners say the answer depends less on the technology and more on the advisor.
Adam Spiegelman, a wealth advisor at Spiegelman Wealth Management, and Joshua Landsman, a senior wealth strategist at Wilmington Trust, both sat down with InvestmentNews to offer their read on AI's role in the advisor-client relationship.
Their verdict: AI is a powerful informational tool, but the transformational work of financial coaching and strategic planning remains stubbornly, irreplaceably human.
Spiegelman draws a clean line between what AI can and cannot do. "AI is really, really good at the informational layer," he said. "It's weak at the transformational layer."
For him, that distinction carries real weight in day-to-day practice. Spiegelman has seen firsthand how AI can quickly and accurately calculate a required minimum distribution, model a Roth conversion, evaluate a tax return for harvesting opportunities, or flag a budget inefficiency. But what it can't do is sit with a frightened client amid falling markets, or put together a college funding strategy for a family that did not expect their child to get into a particular school.
"AI can tell you kind of what to do," Spiegelman said, "but it doesn't sit with you when you're scared because the market is crashing or because you need to pull money out for an expense that you hadn't planned for."
Landsman, who devoted a decade of his professional life to private estate planning law before joining Wilmington Trust, sees it from a slightly different angle. As clients increasingly arrive at advisor meetings having already run their personal financial questions through an AI prompt, he says the name of the game is validation – a second opinion from a human who knows their complete picture.
"AI provides good concept summaries, but clients aren't 'issue spotters,'" Landsman said. "They may not reveal critical details like family members with special needs, net worth figures, or how assets are titled."
Read more: Half of investors now turning to AI for financial decisions as autonomy accelerates, study finds
Neither advisor is writing AI tools off totally. After breaking away from Commonwealth to launch his own RIA, Spiegelman, a second-generation advisor, said he has been using AI software – including conversation intelligence platform Zocks – for the past several months.
"I walk into every single meeting better prepared than I ever could have been, literally because of AI," he said.
As Spiegelman tells it, Zocks flags when he is speaking too much, surfaces conversational nuances he might have missed, and can detect behavioral signals – such as a client logging into their account 23 times during a furiously volatile trading session.
"Maybe that warrants a call," Spiegelman said. "The AI says, this client has this holding, they've logged in this way. ... If meetings were basketball games, the AI would get credit for making a huge assist."
Jump's 2026 Financial Advisor Insights Report, which drew from thousands of anonymized advisor-client meetings, analyzed the topics that were discussed, how clients felt during those discussions, and the overlapping pain points weighing on their minds. Based on talk-time balance, the use of open-ended questions, and emotional check-ins, Jump was able to generate an Advisor Emotional Intelligence Score, with the highest scorers reportedly lifting their clients' spirits by an average of 17.5% during meetings.
Landsman points to a more structural use case: having AI organize the raw financial data that clients struggle to compile themselves. He points to budgets, cash flow summaries, and balance sheets – which clients rarely have neatly prepared – as the fundamental pieces advisors need to do their best work.
"AI can serve as a productivity tool by interpreting personal financial data," he said. "Having AI organize client data in a useful format is a time-saving technique that makes it easier for advisors to evaluate situations."
Spiegelman is blunt about where AI poses a real threat to advisors.
"Transactional advisors are at risk," he said, pointing to those who''ve written their calling card around trade execution, fund selection, or basic data retrieval.
As tools that are able to do those things faster, cheaper, and without appointment permeate the market, Spiegelman says advisors who have built genuine coaching relationships are poised to not only survive but also thrive.
"Advisors won't be replaced by AI," he said. "They'll be replaced by advisors who use AI better."
From his perch on the higher end of the wealth spectrum, Landsman said that while high-net-worth and ultra-high net worth clients are already using AI as a fact-checking mechanism, he doesn't see any risk of trusted professional advisors getting fired.
"Advisors who truly provide advice and interpret data rather than just receive it won't be outpaced by AI," he said. "Those at risk are professionals with 'advisor' titles who don't actually provide advisory value."
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