More than half of people getting financial advice will accept AI playing a role in their financial planning, but only if a human being still makes the final decision, according to new research from deVere Group, one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisations.

The July 2026 survey found that 55% of clients set that single condition on AI involvement, while a further 57% said they are open to AI helping with research and preparation, provided it never replaces the adviser at the point a decision actually gets made.

“People are not confused about what they want from AI,” says James Green, regional director at deVere Group. “They want it doing the work nobody enjoys, not making the calls that decide their retirement.

“Hand a decision like that to a machine without a person standing behind it, and you’ve not modernised the relationship. You’ve probably ended it.”

The findings also point to a sharp divide by age.

Clients around 54 embrace AI readily as part of their financial planning. By 65, scepticism becomes the default, with many clients actively distrustful of any decision an algorithm has a hand in, deVere found.

“There is no universal client attitude to AI, and firms need to stop pretending there is,” says Jasmine Blackham, strategy consultant at deVere Group.

“A fifty-something client will experiment with it happily. A client in their mid-sixties, often with far more at stake, wants a person they trust between them and the tech, not an app standing in for one.”

Green says the risk for firms is mistaking a client’s willingness to try AI once for genuine trust in it.

“Someone using an AI tool is not the same as someone trusting it with their future.

“People will experiment. They will not forgive a mistake made by something they never agreed should be deciding anything in the first place.”

Blackham says firms that respect the boundary clients are drawing, AI handling groundwork, a person making the call, stand to gain more from the shift than those pushing either extreme.

“Clients are not rejecting AI,” she says.

“They’re drawing a line around it. Firms offering an old-fashioned adviser with no modern tools, or a slick app with nobody actually behind it, are the ones that are going to lose out.”

Green says the firms most at risk are the ones treating this as a technology rollout rather than a trust exercise. “Every wealth firm racing to launch an AI product needs to ask a harder question first,” he says.

“Are you building something clients will actually let near their money, or something that looks impressive in a boardroom demo and empties out a client book within a year?”

Blackham says the data should be read as a warning as much as an opportunity. “Get this wrong and it will not be a slow decline,” she says.

“Clients don’t complain and drift away quietly when a firm crosses this line. They leave fast, and they leave for a competitor still offering a person they can actually trust.”

“People will hand AI their questions,” Green concludes. “They will not hand it their future, not without a person they trust holding the other end of the conversation. Any firm still betting otherwise is about to find out the hard way.” -TradeArabia News Service