The FPA is launching a new educational initiative, the FPAi Authority, featuring curated informational content about AI and product demos. The library of AI-related material will be available to the public on the FPA website for a limited time, then will be restricted to FPA members.

“We want to provide members with the resources they need to evaluate AI tools and incorporate what they feel is appropriate for their practice and clients,” FPA’s chief executive officer Dennis Moore said.

To date, AI adoption by RIAs has been limited, primarily evidenced by notetaking apps that summarize client meetings and generative language models that write blogs and communicate with clients.

But veteran tech guru Joel Bruckenstein, president of Technology Tools for Today , sponsor of the annual T3 Advisor & Enterprise Conference that showcases new fintech products and developments, expects that to “totally change” this year. “You’re going to see adoption across the board,” Bruckenstein predicted.

Advisors’ willingness to adopt AI is high, agreed Matt Reiner, managing partner of Capital Investment Advisors, which is partnering with the FPA on the FPAi Authority initiative. “We now have this amazing tool that allows us the ability to rethink how we serve our clients every day,” Reiner said. “Much of our industry is focused on AI notetakers, but I believe there is an appetite to drive forward even more with AI.”

Regulation uncertainty
Advisors have hesitated to adopt AI more widely to date because there has been “a ton of uncertainty around how AI utilization will be regulated,” Reiner said. “AI is moving extremely fast and it is a very tough challenge for regulations to keep up with how quickly the technology is evolving. I believe that we will see clearer direction, but I don’t think we will see rampant, widespread adoption until we get more clarity on where regulation is going.”

Bruckenstein of T3 doesn’t think AI adoption will be impeded by excessive regulation, given the laissez-faire agenda of the Trump administration. “The SEC wants the US to be a world leader in AI,” he said. “I think they’re going to encourage experimentation and not stand in the way of adoption.”

While it’s concerning that the SEC hasn’t provided much regulatory guidance to date, industry consultant John O’Connell, CEO of the Oasis Group, urged advisory firms not to stand pat. “Firms should continue putting together their AI infrastructure along with an AI use policy,” O’Connell said. “The key is to get a policy in place now.”

New use cases
Vendors are expected to offer RIAs a plethora of customized AI tools and data structuring this year. Bruckenstein expects to see AI adoption for lead generation and prospecting tools, financial plan creation, estate planning and portfolio construction. AI prospecting will be “front and center” in 2026, O’Connell said.

AI agents that can plan and execute tasks on their own across multiple data sources and applications should proliferate this year, according to Reiner.

“How we prepare for meetings and how we analyze actions that need to be taken on client accounts will drastically evolve,” he explained. “We will have agents that work on our behalf to deliver meeting preparation and financial plans a day before our meeting. We will have drafts of agendas to review and then send to clients prior to meetings. We will spend our time applying our expertise to the output of our AI agents.”

Roadblocks
To be sure, problems remain.

Artificial intelligence can still “hallucinate” and provide erroneous answers and facts to prompts. No one is sure how many jobs will be lost as a result of AI implementation. Vendors complain about an advisor “education gap” that complicates effective rollout. Many RIAs continue to “struggle to see the ROI with AI, ” Reiner said, which he characterized as “is a constant theme when a new innovation is introduced into an industry.”

Merrill Lynch cited AI problems in a recent SEC filing. “AI tools are highly complex and may be flawed, hallucinate, reflect biases included in the data on which such tools are trained, be of poor quality, or be otherwise harmful, which therefore requires supervision and oversight,” the filing stated.

FINRA, the primary regulator for more than 3,000 brokerage firms, also warned companies about AI in its annual regulatory overview.

When using AI, firms should test for accuracy and bias, log prompts and outputs, and make sure that existing rules on supervision, communications, recordkeeping and fair dealing are in effect, FINRA cautioned.

AI agents should also be closely monitored, FINRA said. While the agents can accelerate automation and cut costs, they can also act without human sign-off, execute beyond their intended authority, be hard to audit and mishandle sensitive data.

"AI University"
Given AI’s promised productivity gains and cost savings, no one expects interest in the technology to wane. This year’s T3 conference, the annual industry fintech showcase, is a prime example. The conference, which will be held in New Orleans from March 9 to 12, will open with a full day of artificial intelligence tutorials billed as “AI University.”

“There will be one-hour classes where we teach you how to do something with AI,” Bruckenstein said. “For example, we’re going to build a prospecting app that you can bring back to the office and use in your business. It will be very hands on.”

One of the tutorials conducted will show advisors how they can create an AI proposal based on financial planning “live on stage,” O’Connell, who will oversee the session, said. “We want to show how AI can be leveraged today and applied to day-to-day operations.”