PwC and KPMG separately announced partnerships that would integrate AI into their businesses.
PwC has partnered with AI start-up Harvey, backed by the OpenAI Startup Fund and built on OpenAI and ChatGPT technology, to provide its legal professionals with access to a platform that uses natural language processing, machine learning, and data analytics to automate and enhance various aspects of legal work.
The professional services firm pointed out that the AI-powered platform has the potential to be used across the company’s full suite of financial advisory services.
PwC Australia financial advisory managing partner Pete Calleja said: “This is about revolutionising the way we provide legal services to our clients.
“This will be a transformative platform for our clients, and for our people, and it has the potential for broader application across other disciplines of professional services which we are exploring and critically assessing.”
Meanwhile, KPMG Australia announced it is launching a proprietary version of ChatGPT through a partnership with Microsoft.
The tool, dubbed KymChat, will be provided to KPMG employees through a digital assistant on their desktops and phones.
According to the firm, KymChat will allow the firm’s employees to safely use the groundbreaking technology in the workplace without having client data leave the KPMG environment.
KPMG chief digital officer John Munnelly said: “This proprietary solution will support the firm’s culture of innovation, boost efficiencies, and create a better people experience.
“The information provided will better enable cross-team collaboration and help those new to the firm with a more seamless and efficient people-navigation experience.”
The KymChat model, which will be integrated with Microsoft Teams, is expected to improve rapidly as new data is added and new use cases are identified, according to the firm, which plans to focus on innovation and efficiency.
However, according to Ben Neilson, founder and director of Neilson & Co Wealth Management, advisers don’t need to wait for these types of partnerships to integrate AI into their practices.
Speaking with ifa, Mr Neilson said that advisers can already use tools like ChatGPT to create efficiencies in their businesses.
“In an office to client environment, you can use it to respond to queries, to outline introductions, to assist to contextualise things that you’re discussing,” he said.
“Recently we’ve come to the conclusion that you can use it as an educational tool as well, both with what we’re doing, but also with what we need clients to do”.
Mr Neilson added that the tech can be used to put together statements of advice (SOAs), with his business even able to pre-populate product forms.
“We’ve had some pretty fantastic success now with it recognising APIR codes as well. So, not only can it write the advice with the recommendations in the advice document, but it can actually begin to pre-populate product forms,” he said.
“From a third perspective, a licensee can actually use it to audit and evaluate the quality of the advice documents that are released from businesses within its reach.”
Likening the platform to “a personal assistant on steroids”, Mr Neilson explained that not only does it make advice documents easier and cheaper to create, they are also shorter and more digestible for the clients.
“Financial advice shouldn’t be that expensive. We’re all doing a version of the same thing. We started with our clients to put money here or there or whatever,” he said.
“When we reduce the cost to do that, we actually get a better client outcome. So, if we can use AI to write documents faster, we can be more efficient, and a client can get better results for a more cost-effective price. More importantly, they come out faster.”
That darn Ben Neilson .. making complete sense yet again