Hot Takes: AI Will Improve Advice Quality Not Scale Says Kitces
Hot Takes: AI Will Improve Advice Quality Not Scale Says Kitces
Publish Date: 2026-06-10 12:59:00
Source Domain: www.wealthmanagement.com
It was a morning packed with spicy wings and spicier takes from Woodgate Financial Senior Partner and Financial Planner Jason Pereira and Michael Kitces, chief financial planning Nerd at Kitces.com, at the Wealth Management EDGE conference at The Boca Raton resort in Boca Raton, Fla.
It was the second bite of the wing for Pereira and Kitces in a morning session modeled after the famous television show “Hot Ones,” in which host Sean Evans interviews celebrities as they down increasingly spicy hot wings.
Kitces and Periera previously tested their luck (and their taste buds) during the first Hot Takes session at Wealth Management EDGE in 2024, and this time didn’t disappoint. Downing milk between wings, Kitces and Periera dished on some of the industry’s hottest topics, including artificial intelligence, organic growth and tech vendor consolidation.
According to Kitces, the industry’s “focused obsession” on how AI can improve efficiency and support scale is “fundamentally wrong,” and will play out differently than advisors expect.
When new tech promises more speed, Kitces believed employees often opt to “go deeper” because they have more time to do so. It could lead to a situation in which the bevy of information and options AI provides will elongate client meetings and prep time, rather than reducing tasks.
Instead of unbridled scale, Kitces felt AI’s greatest promise lay in the quality of advice, believing clients would get better financial planning, investment analyses, relationships and outcomes.
“So, I don’t think this is a net bad at all for the industry,” he said. “But what if the future is not that we have 40% more client loads? What if the future is that we have the exact same client loads and the advice is 40% better?”
As the duo dug into their second wing (doused with “Hot Bergine” sauce), Periera agreed, recalling a meeting with an AI company pitching products…
