New AI Tool Aims to Replace Advisors

There’s a divide in the AI financial advice world, and it’s not between Claude and ChatGPT users.

Former PayPal CEO and Evergreen Wealth founder Bill Harris has launched a new direct-to-consumer venture that aims to bring AI financial advice to the masses. The new app, Evergreen.ai, is available now in its beta version for free and uses AI to answer users’ financial questions about everything from taxes to personalized retirement plans. The move is the latest by a major industry player to make artificial intelligence a mainstay and to push the idea that the era of financial advisors — at least for clients with less complex needs — may be waning. While others argue that AI will only ever be a tool, when asked whether he sees his app as eventually replacing advisors, Harris was unequivocal: “Yes.”

“The industry, or at least people who are aggressive in terms of their use of AI within the industry, will be able to give very good financial advice, financial planning, investment management to households of, let’s say anyone with assets of up to $20 million,” Harris said. “I think that’s pretty easy, without the direct impact or the direct participation of a human advisor.”

Putting Up Guardr(AI)ls

It’s no secret that people are already turning to AI for financial advice: One recent survey found that roughly 40% of Americans had asked it for tips, with about a quarter of Gen Z using it in the past year. But usage comes with real risks — the most popular models reportedly get the facts wrong more than half the time. Evergreen.ai seeks to avoid this by citing its sources and relying on a “calculation engine” (rather than a typical large language model) to generate more math-based answers, Harris said.

But that company isn’t alone in trying to bring AI financial advice to people’s phones:

• Earlier this year, ChatGPT began allowing some clients to link their bank accounts to the platform.
• The US crypto exchange Coinbase also rolled out AI investing apps in June that even let users engage in tax-loss harvesting and multi-asset event trading.

Tool or Toolshed? Despite the growing availability of AI financial advice, skeptics doubt it can replace the personal touch. Clients will always value the reassurance that comes with having a real-life advisor to turn to, said Adrian Johnstone, CEO of the AI-based CRM Practifi.

“What [AI] can do is add efficiency to the advisor. It can add richness to the relationship,” he said. “It can do both of those things at a scale that a human advisor can’t do, but AI in and of itself doesn’t really have a memory. It can’t read the unwritten context.”