AI Emerges as Top UK Financial Adviser Directing £47bn in Assets

Artificial intelligence has effectively become one of the UK’s largest financial advisers, influencing an estimated £47.4bn in savings and investments. This shift highlights a significant "advice gap" where hundreds of thousands of unadvised consumers are bypassing regulated professionals for unregulated chatbots, creating a massive new risk profile for the UK wealth management and retail investment sectors.

What was announced

The second instalment of the 2026 Advice Gap study, conducted by the lang cat and sponsored by Saturn, reveals that approximately 382,000 unadvised adults in the UK have acted on financial guidance provided by AI tools. This £47.4bn in AI-influenced capital places these tools among the top five most influential "adviser firms" in the country, trailing the £69bn managed by Evelyn Partners but surpassing the £40bn advised on by True Potential.

Data from YouGov shows that 24% of consumers have consulted AI about personal finances in the last two years. Among these users, 31% inquired about investments, 18% about retirement planning, and 16% about pensions. Usage is heavily skewed toward younger and wealthier demographics; 35% of 18-to-24-year-olds have used AI for financial questions, compared to 12% of those over 55. Notably, 22% of the youngest cohort acted on AI-generated answers without seeking a second opinion, compared to just 4% of the over-55 group.

The study highlights a critical reliability issue, citing a recent Saturn report which found that popular Large Language Models (LLMs) including ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Grok, and Gemini provide incorrect answers to financial inquiries 57% of the time on average. In response, the FCA recently requested that AI providers include disclaimers on financial advice outputs. Furthermore, the FCA has rejected a recommendation from the Mills Review to launch a government-backed AI financial guidance service, despite 29% of consumers indicating they would use such a platform.

"It’s easier than ever for people to access what they think is financial advice through mainstream AI models. But our separate research showed how poorly LLMs perform in financial advice tasks, and £47.4bn is a lot of money subject to inconsistent help that’s wrong more than half the time. The effect this will have on the advice market and consumer outcomes is unknown, but more needs to be done to protect people."

Amal Jolly, CEO of Saturn

The companies involved

The lang cat is a specialist financial services consultancy and market insights firm based in the UK. Led by CEO Mark Polson, the company has established itself as a prominent voice in the platform and advice sectors, frequently producing deep-dive research into the "advice gap" and the evolving relationship between consumers and financial technology. The firm is known for its critical analysis of the UK’s regulatory landscape and the operational challenges facing financial planners.

Saturn is a fintech firm focused on the intersection of artificial intelligence and financial services. Under the leadership of CEO Amal Jolly, the company provides technical analysis and reporting on the efficacy of Large Language Models within the financial sector. Saturn’s recent work has focused heavily on the accuracy and safety of AI-driven financial guidance, positioning the company as a technical auditor for the burgeoning AI advice market. Both firms operate independently of the major wealth management groups, providing third-party data and strategic oversight to the broader UK financial services industry.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely tracked the intersection of automated intelligence and professional financial planning. We previously covered the technical foundations of this study in AI Financial Advice Fails: Saturn Report Reveals 57% Error Rate in ChatGPT and Claude, which detailed the high frequency of hallucinations and errors in mainstream LLMs. Additionally, we have explored how human professionals are reacting to these tools in Advisers Embrace Agentic AI for Back-Office Efficiency While Demanding Human Oversight for Client Assets. This earlier reporting highlighted a clear divide in the industry: while advisers are keen to use AI to streamline administrative tasks, they remain deeply skeptical of allowing algorithms to manage client assets without strict human intervention—a caution that consumers acting on AI advice appear to be bypassing.

What this means

The revelation that £47.4bn is being guided by unregulated AI models represents a systemic challenge to the UK’s consumer protection framework. For the advice industry, this is no longer a future threat but a present competitor that operates without the overhead of regulatory fees or professional indemnity insurance. The high error rate of LLMs suggests a looming wave of "bad advice" complaints, yet because these tools are general-purpose, the path to redress for consumers is non-existent. This puts traditional wealth managers under immense pressure to lower the barriers to professional advice before the "advice gap" is permanently filled by unreliable automation.