'There's no going back … it's too transformational'

Since it broke onto the scene in December, ChatGPT has been applied in countless use cases, from computer programming to reviewing contracts and even writing articles for news sites (Disclaimer: no ChatGPT was used in the writing of this story). And for one Abbotsford, B.C.-based advisor, the technology has what it takes to be a truly revolutionary force in the wealth space.

“I saw everyone posting their screenshots of what it was doing on Twitter and said to myself ‘This is interesting … I need to play around with it,” says Steve Willems, wealth advisor with the Willems Wealth Planning Group at Assante Financial Management Ltd.

“It felt like there’s no going back. … It’s too transformational for it not to be deemed by the market as a more efficient and better way of doing things.”

The low-hanging fruit

For many of its adopters so far, ChatGPT has proven to be a game-changer, so much so that the likes of Slack, Microsoft, and even Bloomberg have incorporated it into their respective products and businesses in some form. Willems compares his initial experience with ChatGPT to his first time using a smartphone, or the internet.

Much can be said about the potential applications of ChatGPT in advisors’ practices. In Willems’ case, the low-hanging fruit has been in developing content for financial education. Whether it’s for blog posts, email campaigns, or other forms of educational engagement, he’s found the software can provide “a massive assist.”

“It’s as though I have an editorial team sitting right beside me who can think when I’m hitting a roadblock,” Willems says.

While the topic of financial literacy will never go out of style, some slices of it might feel stale: basic concepts like diversification, the compounding effect, and active versus passive investing have been covered in hundreds if not thousands of ways. By leveraging ChatGPT for brainstorming, idea curation, and analogy development, Willems is able to look at timeless lessons and find fresh angles to approach them from.

“A lot of the output is junk, to be honest. It's not going to prove to be valuable in the sense of an end piece,” he says. “But it does turn up a lot of pieces that you can grab onto and push further into thinking through yourself.”

From 10 minutes to two

Another area where he’s able to put ChatGPT to work is for client interactions. The software isn’t up to the level where it can assist with client meetings in real time, but it’s useful for email exchanges that Willems couldn’t delegate to another member of his team.

“I could be launching into a financial-planning process with a client, and there are eight steps we would typically run through for that. And they might ask me to explain what those are,” he says. “I could ask ChatGPT to flesh out the eight steps and explain them in more detail, then review and make sure the explanation is accurate … It would normally take me about 10 minutes to write that email, and I can complete it in probably two minutes now.”

Having ChatGPT in the communication toolbox can also help advisors avoid one of their many blind spots. As experts in their field, investment and planning professionals run the risk of answering clients’ questions at a level that they can’t understand; those who ask “Am I ok?” may end up getting an answer that’s too complicated to be reassuring. By prompting ChatGPT to create a response that’s set to a specific language literacy level, Willems says he’s able to produce answers that are a better fit for a given client.

In the months since its launch, users have seen ChatGPT’s ability to answer users’ queries level up by leaps and bounds. Willems has also experienced improvements in his experience with ChatGPT, though for him it’s been more about learning how to use it.

“The biggest help for me has been learning how to prompt the software. If you hoped for it to do an entire task in one shot, you’re probably not going to get as great of an output as if you gave it context, and broke the task down into several steps,” he says. “If you approach the prompting process in a more iterative way, the output is much, much better.”