The Name’s Bot – Money Bot

Licence to Compute: How AI Is Shaking Up Your Money

Some inventions make life a bit more convenient, others, in the words of Michael Caine “blow the bloody doors off”. Artificial Intelligence is the second kind. It’s the kind of technology that rewrites the rules, rattles industries and whose impact could rival the printing press, the Industrial Revolution and even the birth of the Internet, for the seismic shifts that it might create in how we live, who holds power and how society works.

Forget minor upgrades. This isn’t a new kettle or a faster phone. Entire industries are bracing themselves for massive change and the finance industry is the latest to worry about what it means for the way they do business or if some companies can continue to do business at all in the way they have in the past.

But what is a challenge for the finance industry could bring huge new opportunities for consumers.

Change is happening quickly. More than 28 million UK adults have already turned to artificial intelligence to help manage their money – making personal finance the nation’s number one use of AI, according to a recent study by Lloyds Bank. 

28.8 million people are using AI to help make financial decisions

The research reveals that artificial intelligence has rapidly become a financial tool for millions across the UK, as 56% of adults – around 28.8 million people – say they’ve used AI in the past 12 months to help manage their money. Among them, ChatGPT is referenced as the most popular platform.

The research claims that “With more than half of people who use AI employing it for budgeting, savings planning, or general financial education, it’s now a go-to resource. 

More than a third of users (37%) say they engage with AI for investment research and recommendations, a quarter (26%) for debt management strategies, while almost four in 10 (39%) have turned to it for future financial planning, such as information on pensions.”

The appeal for an AI bot to do your financial shopping, is clear. Most find it boring to go through scores of websites looking for the best bank account, broadband and mobile deals. Once you have done it, the temptation is to just stick with your chosen provider for year, sometimes long after they have stopped offering the best deal. AI models on the other hand, can ensure you don’t miss out on new deals with the computer automatically doing all the boring searching for you.

£1.3 billion in consumer savings by getting AI to find

the best broadband, mobile & mortgage deals

Citizens Advice say customers are wasting £1.3 billion a year by not shopping around when their fixed contract expires on broadband, mobile and mortgages. Getting AI involved could therefore give consumers a collective billion pounds in savings every year.  

A challenge to existing financial advice and services companies

Stock market investors have taken note of the change that is happening. Traditional brokerage and financial firms took a hammering on the stock market recently as investors increasingly took the view that Artificial Intelligence could soon do the job these companies do, for a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time. If true, this could turn the world of professional services on its head and give access to financial advice to millions of people who currently find it too expensive and confusing to get advice and support through traditional channels.

Forgotten to cancel your subscription? You’re not alone.

Unused and forgotten subscriptions have cost us £688 million a year

Even on the simple stuff, AI can be helpful in saving money. Many of us just forget to cancel the subscriptions we are not using anymore, even if it’s simple to do so. Citizens Advice have warned that: “…the problem of subscription traps is deepening”  as it estimates unused subscriptions have cost consumers £688 million a year.  Of those who ended up with an accidental subscription the most common reason was because it auto-renewed without their knowledge (40%). This is followed by people who took out a subscription for a free trial but forgot to cancel later (39%). And worryingly, almost one in four (24%) people who have ended up in an accidental subscription thought they were making a one-off purchase.

The promise that the AI models can fix all these problems, has obvious appeal.

No need to do your own tax return in the future

It’s not just subscriptions, why hire an accountant in the future if an AI model can do your tax return quicker and more cheaply than any human can. The AI company Altruist has said its tax planning AI model called Hazel could help create client strategies “within minutes”

A computer that finds the best insurance deals for you

Recently we have seen a flurry of other new financial innovations, such as the one from the AI providers Insurify which has launched an app that uses ChatGPT to directly  challenge the insurance comparison sites in the US, with a service that allows anyone looking for cheaper car, home, and pet insurance to have a text conversation with ChatGPT to get exactly the deal they want.

The rise of the Robo Bankers and Robo Advisors

A whole deluge of what we might call Robo Bankers has landed on our desktops. Many of them are designed for the US market, but what happens over there is likely to come here soon.

AI promises greater accessibility and personalised insight — potentially closing the “advice gap” for people who can’t afford traditional financial advisers. But challenges remain, especially around data accuracy, privacy and regulatory oversight.

Challenges remain around accuracy and privacy issues

But it’s clear that Brits are blowing thousands a year because of missed opportunities so AI tools could offer a real cash saving wake-up call

Amongst some of the apps making noise are:

Rocket Money says it has saved its users $2.5 billion by helping people manage their subscriptions and making it easy to cancel them and it even says “We automatically scan your bills to find savings. Upload or connect and let our negotiators go to work for you to get the best possible rate.” As with many of these apps and services, there are both free and paid tiers for the service

https://www.rocketmoney.com

Origin was Forbes best budget app of 2024 and says it offers personalised advice based on your data. – So, you can ask it things like “Can I retire at 60 etc’. Although it is an American app (like a lot of them) so s really aimed at the US market. https://useorigin.com

Tendi says it helps you with everything from “paying off debt to saving for your future, Tendi is an AI-powered personal financial advisor that helps you understand, plan, and achieve your financial goals with ease.” It uses systems to analyse what you are spending and saving and then provides personalised financial plans to help you reach your goals. https://tendi.ai

Not strictly a financial app – but something getting lots of attention is the digital personal assistant – which claims it does lots of work for you. If you want to go big – you can go Claude – the digital PA.

There is an all-encompassing AI personal Assistant which is getting more attention. It is called

Claude Bot https://clawd.bot

Not 007 but still Agent AI with a Licence to Compute

Agent AI refers to systems designed not just to respond to prompts, but to pursue goals, make decisions, and take actions on a user’s behalf.

Instead of waiting for step-by-step instructions, an AI agent can break a task into smaller parts, choose tools, gather information, and execute a plan with limited supervision.

The big advantage is efficiency and scale: Agent AI can automate complex workflows, operate continuously, reduce human workload, and handle multi-step tasks that would otherwise require constant back-and-forth. This makes it powerful for business operations, research, customer service, data monitoring, and even personal productivity.

However, that autonomy also introduces trade-offs.

Because Agent AI makes decisions independently, errors can compound if its reasoning or data is flawed. There are concerns around oversight, security, and unintended consequences — especially if agents are given access to sensitive systems or real-world actions. Additionally, trust and transparency become critical: users need to understand what the agent is doing and why. While Agent AI can dramatically increase productivity, it requires strong guardrails, monitoring, and clear boundaries to ensure reliability and safety.

Be Warned:

The drawback for many of these AI powered financial helpers, is that you have to give the app access and sometimes control over lots of your personal finance and data – so that it can act on your behalf.

One should also remember that AI is being wrapped into a lot of apps that you currently use – so sometimes you don’t know it is operating. This is particularly true of their attempts to stop fraud on your cards.

Advice from unregulated AI tools can be dangerous to rely on.

Advice from unregulated AI tools can be dangerous to rely on. It’s best to treat AI-generated advice as a starting point, not a final decision. Always verify information, particularly on things like ISAs or pensions, using official regulated sources.

It would be interesting to see if in the future AI models could sit for professional examinations and be qualified as accountants of Independent Financial Advisors – but that is not the case yet. I think it is better to see them as a friendly generally well-informed friend chatting to you in the pub or coffee shop. They can be enormously helpful, but it’s best not to take what they say as gospel.   

Used wisely, tools with artificial intelligence can make managing your money a little easier and help you make smarter decisions. But they work best when you stay in control, understand how they’re operating, and keep an eye on what they’re doing.

Adam Shaw is The One Show’s Money Doctor