After a testing period, Morgan Stanley is rolling out an OpenAI chatbot to help advise wealthy clients.
Morgan Stanley will soon roll out a new AI chatbot to help its financial advisors serve wealthy clients more efficiently. The AI assistant was developed in collaboration with OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, and is designed to provide quick access to research or, for example, draft mailings.
The launch will take place this month after testing with 1,000 advisors. The virtual assistant can find documents and forms that advisors previously had to search for manually. The bank is also developing technology that, with client consent, can suggest next steps, update sales databases, schedule follow-up appointments, and help manage client finances in areas such as taxes, retirement, and estate planning.
Morgan Stanley and OpenAI partnership predates ChatGPT
While AI provides insights and support, investment advice remains in the hands of human advisors, said Sal Cucchiara, chief information officer of wealth and investment management at Morgan Stanley, who is among the executives driving the bank's push into AI technologies.
Cucchiara met with OpenAI leaders in 2022, and according to him, it quickly became clear that "we needed to work with them because they were way ahead of everybody else." The bank and OpenAI then signed an agreement in the summer of 2022 that gave Morgan Stanley priority access to product development for wealth management, several months before ChatGPT was launched.
Generative AI is finding its way into banking
Morgan Stanley's wealth management division reported a 16 percent increase in revenue to a record $6.1 billion last quarter, as assets under management grew by $90 billion. CEO James Gorman wants to grow assets under management to $10 trillion through acquisitions.
The bank already uses AI for analytics and fraud detection, but is now deploying advanced generative AI such as ChatGPT. Competitors like JPMorgan, BofA, and Moody's Analytics are also pushing AI adoption.