World Financial Planning Day: Do AI Financial Tools Change Everyday Behaviour Or Just Keep Users Hooked?

World Financial Planning Day, on 7 October, feels like a good time to highlight how quickly the way people plan their money is changing.

Not long ago, an AI budgeting agent or a robo-advisor was a niche fintech experiment. Now AI financial tools sit in millions of pockets, from investment apps that rebalance a portfolio automatically to chatbots that build a household budget in seconds.

The stats speak for themselves. According to a J.D. Power survey of 4,000 US consumers, more than half have used AI for financial advice, and 13% do so every day, a higher share than for any other advice category.

Adoption is one thing, but outcomes are another. Vanguard found that three in 10 investors who act on AI advice say they lost money as a result, and four in five question its accuracy. So the dilemma this World Financial Planning Day is whether AI tools elevate financial planning or just provide a convincing performance.

 

Engagement Or Outcomes?

 

The pitch for these tools is easy to understand. They lower the barrier to planning, with automated savings, instant budgets and investment guidance that doesn’t need a minimum balance or an adviser’s fee. Attention is the easy thing to measure, though, and it’s why so many founders’ dashboards look healthy.

Daily active users and session length show that people are engaged, but they don’t show whether a savings rate went up, whether debt came down or whether a portfolio held steady when markets turned.

Financial planners are wary. Research from the Financial Planning Standards Board, the organisation behind World Financial Planning Day, found that planners’ biggest worries about AI are data privacy and cybersecurity (47%) and the accuracy and reliability of its outputs (42%). Its guidance on AI also flags hallucinations, bias in training data and the fact that AI can’t grasp nuanced personal circumstances or emotions.

A study in the Journal of Financial Planning backs this up. It put seven AI platforms through identical personal finance prompts and found substantial variation in the guidance on emergency savings and asset allocation. The tools also tend to deliver a wrong answer as fluently as a right one, which can leave a user feeling informed without being any better off.

So we asked experts across personal finance, tax, wealth management, fintech and financial planning whether AI is changing how people handle money, or just keeping them hooked.

 

 

Our Experts:

 

• Kevin Mountford, Personal Finance Expert and Co-Founder, Raisin UK
• Alessandro Hatami, Founder and Managing Partner, Pacemakers.io
• Mark Davies, Founder, Doris
• Arjun Kumar, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Taxd
• Jonathan Hughes, Financial Services Partner and Managing Director, AlixPartners
• Nouran Moustafa, Practice Principal and Executive Financial and Mortgage Adviser, Roxton Wealth
• Nic Lonsdale MAAT, Founder, Ginger Bucks Accounting
• Bharathi Sandhu, Senior Business Development Specialist, Raymond James
• Derek Miles, CEO, Nine Edge Wealth

 

Kevin Mountford, Personal Finance Expert and Co-Founder, Raisin UK

 

 

“The danger with any financial technology is confusing engagement with progress. Checking your balance more often, receiving more prompts or spending longer in an app can make you feel more in control, but the real test is whether it helps you make a better financial decision.

“AI can be genuinely useful where it reduces complexity, spots patterns or makes it easier to compare options. Where it falls short is if it simply adds another layer of nudges without helping someone understand why an action is right for them.

“Our research suggests trust will depend on keeping people in control. Consumers want to be able to verify what they are being shown and, in many cases, still value human oversight.

“A useful AI tool should help someone do something better, not just do something more often. That could mean identifying an expensive habit, spotting that cash is sitting on a poor rate, showing how much could be saved by changing behaviour or clearly comparing the trade-offs between different financial options. People should look for tools that explain why a recommendation is being made, show the potential impact in pounds and pence, make fees and risks clear and allow them to verify the result before acting.

“That is what separates a tool that simply keeps someone engaged from one that actually helps improve a financial outcome.”

 

Alessandro Hatami, Founder and Managing Partner, Pacemakers.io

 

 

“AI will only change how people manage money if it closes the gap between understanding a problem and acting on it. A slicker dashboard won’t do that.

“Recent launches show the potential. Starling’s new AI tools include a student budget planner and automated tax saving for businesses. Revolut’s AIR lets customers question spending, manage subscriptions and control cards by asking. These are genuine advances, but their lasting benefit is unproven.

“The need is huge. The Richmond Project’s 2026 research found just 28% of UK adults could answer three basic financial literacy questions correctly; 13% got none right.

“People shouldn’t need to become financial experts. Good AI should explain their choices plainly, then do the heavy lifting: spotting shortfalls early, comparing options and, with permission, acting for them.

“For people who have never had affordable, personalised financial support, AI could provide it for the first time. A modest income shouldn’t mean second-rate guidance. Lower service costs also give banks a commercial reason to reach these customers: financially stronger customers mean deposits, loyalty and future business.

“But incentives matter. An assistant paid to sell credit could become exceptionally good at persuading people to borrow. A trustworthy one must sometimes recommend a rival, or doing nothing.

“So judge these tools on outcomes: lower borrowing costs, fewer missed payments and healthier savings. Sometimes the best result is a customer who needs the app less.”

 

Mark Davies, Founder, Doris

 

 

“AI financial tools are clearly changing how people engage with investing, particularly by making it feel easier to ask questions and explore financial information.

“Recent FCA research found that 56% of 18- to 40-year-olds surveyed trusted AI for financial guidance more than TV and radio, the press or social media influencers. Opinium research also found that AI use was highest among newer investors, with 65% saying they had used AI for investment-related purposes.

“There are obvious reasons for that. AI is quick, convenient and often free. It can make difficult information easier to understand, and for some people it feels easier to ask an AI question than ask another person.

“I think that tells us something about what people want from the investment experience. They want to be able to understand investing without feeling intimidated by it.

“We can talk about the risks of AI, but I think the more useful question is what people’s behaviour is telling us about the experience they actually want. If people are finding AI easier to engage with, the industry should be asking what it can learn from that.

“For me, that is the bigger point. The rise of AI is showing us that people want an investing experience that feels easier to understand and more comfortable to engage with.”

 

Arjun Kumar, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Taxd

 

 

“Most AI money apps are built to be opened. So that’s what they optimise for. Daily nudges, spending scores, a nice dashboard telling you you’re on track. It feels like control. Often it’s just attention.

“The real test is boring. Did you pay tax you didn’t owe? Did you miss a deadline? Did you get a penalty?

“Tax shows the gap clearly. Since April, Making Tax Digital has pushed sole traders and landlords earning over £50,000 into quarterly reporting. AI helps here, a lot. It sorts receipts. It flags expenses people forget to claim. It catches a missed submission before HMRC does. That improves outcomes, because the expensive mistakes are usually admin ones, made by tired people at 11pm.

“Judgement is where it falls short. An AI can tell you a cost looks deductible. It can’t always tell you whether it is, given your circumstances. And it says both things in the same confident tone. That’s the risk. People trust a fluent answer more than a hesitant accountant.

“So my view is simple. AI improves behaviour when it removes friction from things people already mean to do. It struggles when it’s asked to do their thinking for them.

“The best tools will happily say ‘check this with a human.’ I’d be suspicious of any that never do.”

 

Jonathan Hughes, Financial Services Partner and Managing Director, AlixPartners

 

 

“AI money tools can genuinely change behaviour, and the most promising ones are those that act rather than just inform. It’s easy to see why banks and payments providers are excited about applying AI to personal finance: aggregating a customer’s accounts, moving money to better rates, blocking a payment it doesn’t recognise. But these things are probabilistic, not deterministic, so there’s always a risk the tool does something the customer didn’t intend, and then where does liability sit?

“The bigger concern is advice. Many people have started asking generative AI for advice on tax, investments and personal finance, and some are even acting on it. But AI isn’t a regulated financial adviser, and using it creates problems for both those requesting the advice and the regulator if something goes wrong.

“In financial services, professionals have a responsibility to be able to explain the reasoning behind their decisions to clients, and to regulators. Most AI tools can’t be held accountable in the same way. It’s often impossible to know how an LLM arrives at its conclusion, and there is the well-known hallucination effect, so there will inevitably be errors from time to time. Feeling in control of your finances isn’t the same as being protected, and that’s the gap consumers need to understand.”

 

Nouran Moustafa, Practice Principal and Executive Financial and Mortgage Adviser, Roxton Wealth

 

 

“AI can make somebody feel incredibly productive with their money without actually making them financially better off.

“That is the danger. Checking a budgeting app every morning, reading AI-generated insights and maintaining a savings streak creates engagement, but engagement is not the same as progress.

“The best AI financial tools close the gap between knowing and doing. They spot wasted spending, automate savings, flag an expensive renewal before it happens or show somebody the long-term cost of a decision while there is still time to change it.

“Where I become nervous is when AI creates false confidence. A beautifully worded investment recommendation can still be wrong. Constant notifications can encourage people to fiddle with investments that should be left alone. And gamification can turn managing money into another app demanding attention.

“I use AI extensively myself, but technology should remove financial noise, not manufacture more of it.

“The ultimate test is brutally simple: after six months, is the user saving more, carrying less expensive debt, investing more appropriately or making better decisions?

“If the only thing that increased was screen time, the technology succeeded. The financial planning failed.”

 

Nic Lonsdale MAAT, Founder, Ginger Bucks Accounting

 

 

“AI financial tools can absolutely help people make better decisions with their money, but there is a difference between feeling in control of your finances and actually being in control.

“For me, the real value of these tools is in making money management less intimidating and more accessible. If an AI budgeting tool helps someone understand where their money goes, spot unnecessary spending or recognise that they are regularly overspending before payday, that is a positive step. It can turn financial information into something practical that people can act on, rather than something they avoid because it feels overwhelming.

“However, engagement alone is not a measure of financial progress. Checking an app every day, receiving personalised notifications or watching an investment balance fluctuate does not necessarily mean someone is making better decisions. In some cases, it could encourage people to react emotionally to short-term changes rather than stick to a sensible financial plan.

“AI is a useful assistant, but it cannot replace financial understanding, personal judgement or professional advice. It may identify a pattern in someone’s spending, for example, but it cannot automatically understand every personal circumstance behind that behaviour or decide what financial security means to that individual.

“Ultimately, the test is simple: are people saving more consistently, managing debt, building financial resilience and making informed decisions? If AI tools help people achieve those outcomes, they are doing their job. If they simply keep people clicking, we need to question who is really benefiting.”

 

Bharathi Sandhu, Senior Business Development Specialist, Raymond James

 

 

“It’s important to distinguish between better engagement with money, and better financial outcomes. They aren’t the same.

“The biggest advantage of AI is that it can reduce some friction, help with budgeting and keeping people on track. It might give somebody an immediate answer that they’re too embarrassed to ask a professional about.

“I’m cautious because sometimes apps give people the feeling of actively managing finances without any material change in behaviour. Checking a dashboard daily, personalised insights, etc. can feel very productive.

“I think the best test is very simple: Did the tool cause a useful action?

“I’d suggest AI for frequency, and humans for decisions of consequence. When decisions are irreversible, tax-sensitive, legally complex or capable of materially changing someone’s financial future, there is tremendous value in professional judgement and accountability.”

 

Derek Miles, CEO, Nine Edge Wealth

 

 

“AI financial tools are still in their infancy (although infancy in the AI world doesn’t last long) and, like everything, used correctly they can definitely improve outcomes, but used incorrectly they can cause chaos and significantly derail people’s dreams and aspirations.

“AI can help people feel more in control of their finances, but the real test is whether that confidence translates into changes in everyday behaviour, such as spending within their means or saving consistently towards their goals, because greater engagement with an app does not necessarily mean someone is making the right decisions for their personal circumstances or long-term aspirations.

“In the complex world of finance, where the interaction between different tax regimes, investment options, personal circumstances and potential changes provides for an almost infinite range of possible outcomes, starting at the right place is crucial to the successful completion of the journey, no matter what the future holds.

“Utilising the services of qualified and experienced financial planners to ensure the journey starts in the right place is crucial. AI can help make the journey easier and potentially quicker, but the human interaction and understanding are still the critical drivers to successful financial outcomes and peace of mind.”