According to a 2026 report by 1 Finance titled 'What Personalised Financial Advice Is Actually Worth', artificial intelligence can help investors identify costly investments, spot idle cash and organise their financial plans. However, using AI to analyse a portfolio is not the same as relying on it to make decisions about investments, taxes, insurance or long-term financial goals. The report identifies spotting high-cost funds and idle cash as tasks that software can handle effectively, involving identifying patterns and highlighting potential inefficiencies in a person's finances.
The report emphasizes that behavioral coaching is a major source of value in personalised financial advice, involving helping investors make difficult decisions, avoid impulsive financial choices and remain committed to their long-term plans. Technology may help model the consequences of such decisions, but the report argues that persuading someone to reconsider a major financial choice requires human judgement. Understanding family priorities and the reasons behind a decision can be as important as the calculations themselves, as reported by Mint.
According to the 1 Finance report, personalised financial planning should cover six areas of a household's finances: estate planning, liabilities, investments, cash flow, insurance and tax. The report argues that judging financial advice solely by portfolio returns overlooks other ways in which planning can affect a household's finances, including reducing investment costs, addressing inefficient borrowing, identifying insurance gaps, planning tax-related transactions and ensuring that major financial goals have a clear funding plan. An investor's portfolio may perform well even as other risks remain unaddressed, as outdated nominations, inadequate insurance or lack of liquidity for future expenses can create financial problems not apparent in conventional investment performance reports.
The report suggests that technology is best suited to tasks involving pattern recognition and parts of the planning process that can be automated. Investors can use AI tools to organise information, identify questions about their portfolios and support preliminary financial calculations. However, the report stresses the importance of measuring and explaining the value of financial advice across different areas of a household's finances, rather than relying only on investment performance. AI can help make parts of financial planning more efficient, but the report's central argument is that financial advice involves more than analysing investments, with goal-setting, behavioral decisions and monitoring a household's changing needs remaining important parts of managing money over the long term.
