Generating financial planning content using AI is all the rage – and there’s little sign of the enthusiasm waning. AI is incredible – but it can be disastrous for financial marketing.

One of the most essential elements in financial planning is gaining trust and encouraging clients to share their deepest financial secrets with you. The only way of building this kind of relationship is to maintain a genuine human connection with each of your clients.

What could possibly go wrong?

Imagine you use AI to write a personalised email to wish your clients a happy birthday. Clients will very quickly detect that the message is automated and not unique, and they’ll get the impression that you don’t care about them as a person.

AI-generated content doesn’t contain typos or spelling mistakes. But it makes up for this by being 100% vanilla and devoid of any spark. Every sentence sounds the same. Every subhead is a two-card trick separated by a colon. And every article ends with a conclusion that reads like a shopping list.

At first it sounds coherent – but the more you read, the less you care.

Here’s the thing. Sending AI-generated articles to your clients could actually do more harm than good for your brand. Clients will realise you’re fobbing them off on a bot and will feel pangs of irritation each time your newsletter drops.

But wait, it gets worse

AI collates information from millions of online publications, but the data is typically a few years out of date and may be inaccurate. We all heard about the lawyer who used AI to write a brief – and ended up citing cases that didn’t exist!

And financial planning, like law, doesn’t lend itself to AI-generated content. The only way to keep abreast of the constant regulatory changes in our industry is to allow a human to write your content.

What’s more, the algorithms themselves can speedily become obsolete as new, better ones are created. There are also continuous changes in human behaviour and expectations , and it’s well-nigh impossible for algorithms to keep up with these whims and fancies.

AI slop is a real thing.

Not all AI-generated content is created equal. While we would argue that anything written by a bot is dull, some content really plumbs the depths of disaster. There’s even a name for this rubbish: “AI slop,” content that is riddled with errors, overly wordy and blurry in its key messaging.

This new year, try employing a human writer

While it’s tempting to incorporate AI-generated marketing communication into your business, you must think carefully about how your clients experience and interpret your messages. They don’t want to muddle through long-winded and potentially erroneous copy. And can you blame them?

AI can be useful for creating first drafts or meeting summaries, there’s no shortcut for relationship building and genuinely creative, personalised content.

And that’s where FinDotNews excels! The articles we write for advisors to send to their clients are bespoke, based on current industry trends and new perspectives in financial planning. What’s more, they’re written by seasoned financial journalists and true creative writing maestros. No bots were harmed in the production of our content.

The bottom line is this: AI is meant to do the boring parts of your job – not the creative ones!