Nearly Half of Adults Now Prefer AI for Finance Info. Here's How to Respond
BestMoney and Prolific surveyed 1,252 U.S. adults (18-79) in November 2025. The results are blunt: 49% agreed AI tools were "superior to all people in their life" for financial information or guidance. Half said they use AI for advice some of the time, 29% most of the time, and 82% increased their use over the past year.
Most respondents acted on what AI told them. Overall, 71.8% made financial decisions due to AI guidance, and 11.9% took significant steps in retirement planning based on AI feedback. Top areas influenced: budgeting and spending (29.5%), investing (24%), and saving (22.8%).
What clients are asking AI about
- Investing: 61% (most common)
- Retirement planning: 36% (second)
- Cryptocurrency and self-employment: 30% each
- Trading: 29%
- Scams and buying real estate: 19% each
The draw is clear: speed (63%), zero cost (56%), and responsiveness (55%). Quality (29%) and privacy (19%) lagged. Even so, 74% said AI boosted their financial confidence.
Where AI falls short (per users)
- Too generic: 36%
- Lacks context: 25%
- Incomplete information: 23%
- Makes assumptions: 19%
For finance pros, that gap is your opening. Clients want fast, always-on help. They also want relevance, context, and accountability-areas where a human adviser or a well-governed workflow can excel.
Income and generation splits you should factor into your strategy
- Trust in AI is highest among $125k-$150k earners (96% vs. 82% overall). That same group also reports the highest "great" outcomes from AI (51% vs. 33%) and the strongest intent to use AI more (91% vs. 78%).
- Tradeoff: that income band also reports the highest rate of poor decisions after using AI (98% vs. 91%). High conviction can cut both ways.
- Well-being lift: Millennials lead on improved financial well-being (65%) and confidence (73%). Boomers trail on both (51% and 65%). Gen Z sits near the middle for well-being (64%) and slightly lower on confidence (68%).
- Future use: 27.5% of Gen Z does not expect to increase AI use, higher than Boomers (22%) and Millennials/Gen X (both 16%).
Practical moves for firms and advisers
- Set clear guardrails: Treat AI output as draft insight. Label it, timestamp it, and require a human check for anything that triggers tax, legal, or long-horizon decisions like retirement income.
- Context injection: Pair AI with client data you're authorized to use-goals, constraints, cash flow, risk tolerance-so outputs reflect reality, not generic assumptions.
- Advice reproducibility: Capture prompts, model versions, and sources. Keep an audit trail for supervision and client review.
- Outcome monitoring: Track "actions taken after AI advice," not just engagement. Flag high-risk actions (asset allocation shifts, withdrawals, concentration) for outreach.
- Bias and gaps testing: Regularly test for oversimplification and missing context in consumer-facing flows. Measure error rates on complex cases.
- Client education: Teach clients to ask better questions (constraints, time horizons, tax status) and to cross-check outputs before acting.
- Retirement workflows: Build AI-assisted playbooks for rollover decisions, withdrawal strategies, and Social Security timing, with human sign-off.
- Compliance alignment: Review FINRA/SEC guidance on digital advice and AI use; refresh supervisory procedures and disclosures accordingly. See FINRA's overview on AI for context: FINRA: Artificial Intelligence.
Why this matters for your book of business
The volume of AI-influenced decisions is already high, and retirement planning is firmly in the mix. Clients believe AI is fast and useful-until it isn't. Your edge is making advice specific, complete, and emotionally realistic.
As one editor put it, AI is a solid starting point, but a professional can connect the dots in a way a generic tool can't. The combination-AI for speed, humans for judgment-is the model clients will trust over time.
Method note
Survey fielded by Prolific with BestMoney (a brand of National Intelligence) in November 2025. n=1,252 U.S. adults, ages 18-79.
Want to level up your AI stack for finance work?
- Curated tools for finance use cases: AI tools for finance
Your membership also unlocks:
