The financial advisory field is undergoing a fundamental transformation as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes embedded at the heart of advisory decision-making, customer service, and customer decision-making. Contrary to dystopian predictions of human obsolescence, empirical trends indicate a more nuanced evolution: AI does not replace advisors but redefines their cognitive and relational roles. This shift heralds a new paradigm, Advisor 2.0, in which algorithmic precision and human discernment converge to create a more adaptive and ethically grounded financial advice model.
From routine work to strategic value creation. Generative AI and other technologies today have the potential to automate professional activities that consume between 60 and 70% of working time. This acceleration is largely due to the increased capacity of generative AI to understand natural language, combine knowledge and tools, and restore information in this form.
Systemic integration: towards intelligent infrastructure
By automating time-consuming tasks such as document summarization, anomaly detection and compliance processes, AI frees up resources. The result is not a reduction in professional autonomy but its reallocation from administrative maintenance to interpretive and analytical reasoning. The study Investment Management Outlook 2025 of Deloitte finds that AI has become one of the most disruptive forces in the investment management industry.
Investment managers are creating AI-powered platforms to provide personalized portfolio recommendations based on clients’ specific risk tolerance. Around 60% of investment management firms use AI in their distribution initiatives to at least a modest degree. Yet algorithms alone cannot assign meaning or ethical context. Advisors translate quantitative correlations into stories clients can trust, bridging data logic and human intent.
Augmented empathy: technology as a catalyst for connection
The idea that AI depersonalizes advice misunderstands its true function. By outsourcing computational work (data analysis, scenario modeling and compliance validation), AI gives advisors more time for empathy, foresight and building a differentiating offer. The CGP 2024 Barometer from BNP Paribas Cardif and Kantar shows that 82% of wealth managers consider AI to be essential for the future of wealth management. However, only 24% are already using it to automate or facilitate certain tasks, and 66% would be interested in training on the use of AI within their profession.
From market alpha to relational alpha: redefining value
Traditional investment models looked for alpha as a measure of market outperformance. Yet as data democratization and passive investing narrow the alpha frontier, differentiation now comes from relational alpha: trust, loyalty, and behavioral resilience built through personalized, adaptive advice. AI can model uncertainty and automate responses, but it cannot reassure a customer facing volatility. In this emotional space, the human judgment of the advisor becomes the ultimate differentiator. The algorithms predict; humans give meaning and create connections.
Strategic adoption: the new professional divide
The CGP 2024 Barometer reveals that 83% of wealth management advisors believe they have significant development prospects in the next five years, and 67% have noted an increase in their clientele over the last twelve months. The emerging divide in the profession will arise not from access to AI itself but from the ability to integrate it within business practice with ethical governance. Regulatory initiatives such as the European AI Act now classify financial advice algorithms as high-risk systems, requiring auditability and ongoing human oversight.
>> Buy and sell your shares on the stock market at the right time thanks to Momentum, Capital’s premium investment letter based on technical, economic and financial analysis. Our stock selection has done much better than the CAC 40 since its launch in May 2021. If you opt for the annual subscription, 5 months are free.
The horizon of Advisor 2.0: towards cognitive co-production
The maturation of AI signals a redefinition of expertise: machine learning provides probabilistic scaffolding; the human instills ethical coherence and narrative meaning. This synthesis allows a new model of trust, rooted in transparency and interpretability (which, for the moment, generative AI does not yet fully have). In this emerging order, AI elevates through accuracy, while humans elevate through context. Their convergence does not mean the erosion of advisory work, but its intellectual advancement: a finance model that is both more analytical and more human.
