People are turning to AI chat tools for financial advice because expectations have changed—people don’t just want generic information anymore. They want answers that reflect their real goals, constraints, and day-to-day realities: “What’s right for me?” Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkLynn, it’s great to see you. Thanks for making time for us this morning.Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsThank you. Glad to be here.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkArtificial intelligence chat, GPT. A lot of people are accessing these artificial intelligence tools and seeking personal finance advice. I want to get your reaction to why people are doing that.Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsPeople are expecting something different from their money these days. People know that, you know, chat GPT has fundamentally changed, you know, how we experience the world and the kind of information that we get and the level of intelligence offered back to us. We don’t want just general knowledge anymore.We want to know what’s right for me. And now people are turning to, you know, LLMs and things like that for, you know, really detailed personal financial guidance. What’s right for me?Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo I think some of the questions have been, can I afford this? Am I saving enough? But let me ask you, because I just did a show recently on social media for influencers.Are people getting the right answers from these tools?Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsCertainly you’re getting, you’re getting answers and education. You’re getting, you know, is it more than you would have gotten, you know, from a webinar or from a TikTok video? Probably, right.It’s, it’s able to search farther, deeper and put more, more information together. Is it able to really answer what’s right for me though? Probably not, right.You haven’t, you have to really upload all your financial statements, you know, all your benefits, your 401k, you’ve got to put your entire financial picture together for somebody to really help you understand what’s right for me. So take it with a grain of salt, you know, you’ve got some knowledge and some good content and education in front of you, but you know, it’s not really going to help you understand or answer the question what’s right for me. And I’m not sure that I would put all my financial information into, you know, into chat GPT, into anything that’s sort of open source LLM out there.I would, I would be a little wary of doing that.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkThat’s a, that’s a really good point. I don’t want to cover that in a few minutes, but let me ask you in your estimation. So people are accessing these two tools.They clearly are yearning for factual information. In your estimation, what’s missing from the experience?Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsYeah, I think, you know, really getting into the detail in somebody’s life, right. You know there’s probably still a role for a, you know, financial advisor and certainly a single family office that knows, you know, all the components and all the details of a very wealthy person’s life. You know, for those of us who are not so lucky to have that, you know, we’re trying to get that from chat GPT, but without all the nuance and all the details, adding in also what are my goals, adding in, you know, what are all my, you know, am I on the, do I have an HSA?Do I have, am I on the high deductible plan? All of these pieces are part of your financial picture. And, you know, if you’re not putting all that together, then you’re not getting a full picture, not getting a real answer, what’s right for me.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo it sounds like, you know, and this is a common theme here in the retirement industry, personalization. It sounds like you used the word what’s right for me, meaning you, but we’re different. I mean, Lynn is different than Jeff.Jeff is different than Jody, my wife. We all have needs. That personalization is really important.Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsI mean, Lynn is different from Lynn 10 years ago too, by the way. True, true. Free children, free mortgage, you know, all of that stuff.So, I mean, I remember going in and we were on my husband’s healthcare plan for some time, and then we switched to mine. And it was the first time I had to go in since I had had children and all this stuff to try to figure out, you know, what plan to take. And, and I took the high deductible with the HSA, because I love that product, but then, you know, how do I, wait a minute, now I’ve got to fund that HSA.And if you don’t get it in place right away, and suddenly you’re out and you’ve got two kids in town, you know, intact and like, you know, bring them to the doctor’s office all the time, suddenly you’re broke. And so, yeah, really getting into, you know, that product is a great product and could be great for a lot of people, but really getting into the nuance of your own situation. And that’s really, you know, I know a lot of advisors love to go out and support people and do one-on-one-to-ones and all that stuff.But there is really a lot of nuance involved in really guiding people to the right place. And, you know, all of that sort of data and how do you spend time and how do you do that in real time too, because somebody’s financial situation can change at the drop of a hat, you know, a car breaks down, a kid goes, you know, has to run to the hospital for something. You know, all of these things, suddenly you didn’t make your bonus that month, or you lost a shift or two, these compound suddenly and your, you know, your situation changes very quickly.So, you know, having something that keeps up with you in real time and knows, you know, everything about you, that’s the only true way to get to personalization.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkAnd is the generic education, I’m going to call it generic. Those are my words, not yours, but is that generic education that’s out there? That’s, I guess, falling short because people want that personalization.They’re saying, well, this doesn’t really apply to me, or maybe they don’t know if it applies to them.Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsI mean, look, whether it’s, you know, chat GPTs personalized, you know, I put enough information to prompt it to give me something that sort of resembles what I need. And it’s a little bit more bite-sized content, or if it’s been, you know, a webinar that you signed up for, you know, that’s really generic. That’s still all very, very high level.And I don’t know many people, I know that I’ve read a lot of diet books. It hasn’t helped me, you know, to lose weight, right? I know that sugar is bad for me, but I’m not so sure where in my diet I’m supposed to cut out sugar.Is it in my coffee? You know, is it in my cereal? Is it where, you know, sugar lives everywhere.Where am I supposed to cut it out? And, you know, that’s a lot of data points to, again, to try to figure out what’s right for me there. So content and understanding it and reading about it is good.Again, I know sugar is bad for me, but helping to understand how you’re supposed to do it is the really challenging part.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkYou know, it’s, as you were describing the sugar diet, I suffer the same challenges as well. They have glucose monitors that you can insert on your arm. It’s analogous, I would say, to AI and kind of what we’re talking about.I can track in real time if I eat a blueberry versus a strawberry, it might spike my glycemic index and I might go up. So I think you’re absolutely right. Let me ask you about the relationship with the advisor, because, you know, people that work with an advisor tend, or at least the studies show, and I guess it depends who’s funding the study, but people that work with an advisor tend to do better than not working with an advisor.So is that holistic? I hate that word, but is that big, overarching approach, is that what people are looking for these days from their financial advisor partners?Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsI think so. Look, you know, financial care is kind of a spectrum of needs, right? On the one hand, there’s triage.Oh goodness, I need money. I used a good word there. Oh goodness, I need money today.And then the other end, it’s, you know, the 401k is fully funded. I got a 529 set up. I even have a vacation fund.I’m, you know, got money set aside, emergency savings, all of that stuff. You know, you’ve got sort of government programs over here and you’ve got advisors who will spend all day over there. But the reality is that 90% of Americans kind of swing on the pendulum, you know, in between, and they really need to understand, you know, all the sort of single point of solutions that exist in that space to help them, right?There’s emergency savings accounts. Should I take the HSA? How do I like refinance or reduce my debt or things like that?There’s a lot of stuff and personal care over there. And, you know, I commend the advisor who wants to take care of everybody across that entire spectrum, but it’s really hard to do. You know, how do you scale your service, especially if you’re, you know, retirement advisor with, you know, 100,000 plan participants and, you know, 10 people in your office, how are you going to scale your service to meet all the needs?But you really probably should, you know, people really need to take care of themselves over here. Once they have an emergency savings account set up, once their high interest credit card debt and things like that are paid down, they’re far more likely to, you know, put money in and are able to sit down and have a real conversation about, you know, future planning and what the future looks like for themselves.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkYou know, one of the challenges of being an advisor in addition to being in person with everybody, it just, even with virtual, you know, meetings, it’s really hard to do that, but you’re vulnerable. You’re vulnerable to somebody coming in, another advisor coming in and taking your business, but artificial intelligence, what we’re talking about this morning, I don’t think you see it as a threat. I think you see this as a tool to support the existing relationship, but I don’t want to misspeak.Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsNo, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So all of that, all that stuff sitting over here, you know, your umbrella of care, you know, you have, most advisors are really knowledgeable about, you know, what the plan should look like, what the future, what the investment strategy should be.So how do you scale across, you know, your knowledge and how do you extend your knowledge base? You have to create a program where you have to include AI in that, and you have to make sure that, you know, you bring in a program that can, you know, scale that sort of knowledge base and support and create that hyper-personalized coaching and guidance for your, you know, for all your clients. Overall, I keep using this over here and over there, but you get the idea.And that’s where AI really can help, but you’ve got to make sure that the AI is, you know, safe and secure and really understands everything, all the pieces, you know, of somebody’s life for it to be really effective.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkYeah. And you should not, my personal, this is my PSA, you should not overlook that privacy component because in today’s world, our data is constantly under threat, right? I mean, it is, I mean, I just read a study this morning or something from the FBI that our seniors are probably our most vulnerable population.Why? Because they have so much money, the great wealth transfer. So all this stuff is so incredibly important.Let’s talk about the full financial care program. That’s about finding the benefits that work for you, right? And also finding maybe what you’re missing.Maybe you could contribute $200 more. Maybe you could fund that HSA. Maybe you could fund that emergency savings program.Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsThat’s right. So many people come to us, especially and say, I’ve been told I need to find $200 more a month, you know, for my 401k, but I have no idea how to get there. I mean, most people, it doesn’t matter who you are, how much you make, you get to the end of the month and you can’t figure out what happened, right?Where did my money go? And so helping people find and free up, again, AI can be a really valuable tool for that. Once it understands everything about you, you know, and can predict, you know, your cashflow and all of those other things, it can say to you, hey, if you adjust your budget in this way, we hate using that word, your spending plan, you know, in this way, we can find you, you know, $200, $300, $400 every month to put into whatever the goal may be, right?For so many of us, it is the 401k and long-term planning, but, you know, it may be saving for college or a down payment on a home or a trip to Japan, let’s say. But, you know, helping people find that little bit of money every month is always a challenge for most of us, but you really need the right tool. Again, it’s got to be reactive, you know, with you in real time, adjusting, making sure that it helps you stay on track.You know, you’re walking into the restaurant and you are hitting, you know, getting to the end of that dining out budget, let’s not go over. So let’s just, you know, send you a little notification that says, you know, hey, Jeffrey, you’re getting, you’ve got $80 left on your dining out budget, let’s be careful, otherwise you won’t have that $200 to put into your 401k this month.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo it really is a value add for lack of, you know, I hate generic business school terms, but it’s really a value add for these advisors and they need to do their due diligence, not only in the due diligence on the investments that they advise their clients, but they probably need to look at these tools in greater detail, I would imagine.Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsFor sure. Yes. I mean, you know, make sure that it’s safe, secure, SOC 2 certified, all those things.You know, I also think for these guys, for most advisors, and correct me if I’m wrong, but this is what I hear all day long is, you know, I need this now to go out and either win new business or support the business that I have. You know, plan sponsors are coming to me and saying, but how are you supporting the rest? It’s not enough just to come with a plan, you need a program.How are you going to help these folks contribute to the plan, right? How are you going to get them in better financial shape? And so that coming with a whole program is pretty much table stakes these days.And not just, again, back to our thing, not just content and education, because it just doesn’t work. You know, more and more plans, participants, plan sponsors are expecting, get this real results, not just content and education. It’s got to do more than that.And you’re absolutely right. You have to do your due diligence, make sure that it is, you know, really SOC 2 certified is a great way to ensure you got, you know, the right partner with you, you know, for that.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkWell, you know, when I first got into the retirement plan advisor world, the big RFP question was how many CFA charter holders did you have, right, in your research team? Now, I think, and that was the question for so many years, and that’s how you were judged. Now, it’s what tools do you use in order to help advance the cause of the plan, help move the needle economically and financially?So I tend to agree with you. Lynn, we’re going to have to leave it there. But look, I suspect we’ll be talking again.Thanks for joining us. And we look forward to having you back again very soon.Lynn Raynault, Financial Wellness LabsIt’s been a pleasure. Thanks.
