Future wealthy clients visiting a Morgan Stanley financial advisor to talk about their assets might encounter a different kind of interaction: a chatbot that listens in on their conversation.
The bank will launch a generative artificial intelligence bot this month after testing it with 1,000 financial advisors for a few months. The bot was created in collaboration with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Rather than trawling through millions of records, bankers can utilize the virtual assistant to find information or forms quickly.
The bank is also creating technology that will eventually, with clients’ permission, be able to draught a meeting summary of the conversation, update the bank’s sales database, schedule a follow-up appointment, and learn how to assist advisers in managing clients’ finances in areas like taxes, retirement savings, and inheritances. The program’s specifics have not yet been revealed.
Sal Cucchiara, chief information officer of wealth and investment management at Morgan Stanley and one of the executives leading the bank’s drive into AI, predicted that “the impact (of AI) will be very significant,” possibly equal to the arrival of the internet.
Before the rapidly expanding program ChatGPT became widely used, Cucchiara, who was entrusted with constantly scouring Silicon Valley for possible software vendors, met OpenAI executives in 2022.
They were well ahead of everyone else, so it became obvious right away that we needed to work with them, he added.
After that, Boris Power, a technical employee at the business, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman traveled to California to talk about cooperation with Andy Saperstein, co-president and head of wealth management at Morgan Stanley.
They agreed to a deal last summer, and Morgan Stanley now has first dibs on wealth management product development. The two companies’ executives celebrated over a dinner sponsored by Saperstein, a potential CEO contender for the bank.
OpenAI chose not to respond.
While the bot will provide financial advisors with administrative help and insights, giving investing advice will still be left to humans.
“The adviser is still at the center,” Cucchiara declared. According to him, staff currently see technology as a useful tool and aren’t concerned about being replaced by robots.
POVERTY RACE
The AI program is a component of Morgan Stanley’s plan to advance its wealth division, whose second-quarter net revenue rose 16% to a record high and saw a $90 billion increase in new customer assets.
James Gorman, the CEO, aspires to manage $10 trillion in assets after driving several significant mergers that increased funding for the wealth industry.
In its AI endeavors, Morgan Stanley is not acting alone. Banks currently employ AI to crunch figures, spot fraud, and examine client transactions, but Wall Street behemoths are pursuing more complex applications of generative AI, which can produce text, images, and other types of data.
Teresa Heitsenrether was appointed chief data and analytics officer at JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) in June to spearhead the deployment of AI across the largest U.S. lender. Since its debut in 2018, the virtual assistant Erica from rival Bank of America (BAC.N) has interacted with customers more than one billion times.
According to Nick Reed, chief product officer at Moody’s Analytics, the company is also collaborating with OpenAI and Microsoft to create a research assistant that clients may utilize.
According to Michael Abbott, global banking lead at consulting firm Accenture, large banks are the most advanced among financial firms in their adoption of AI, but asset managers, dealers, and insurers are also using it.
The top banks are starting to adopt client services driven by artificial intelligence, according to Abbott, who is working on hundreds of case studies with lenders interested in using AI.
