How Morgan Stanley Uses AI Solutions to Revolutionize Financial Services

Morgan Stanley is pioneering the integration of AI in financial services, employing cutting-edge AI solutions to empower financial advisors with rapid insights, improved decision-making capabilities, and efficient summarization tools that enrich client interactions. In collaboration with OpenAI, Morgan Stanley has embedded GPT-4 into its workflow, significantly transforming how wealth management advisors access the firm’s extensive knowledge base and cater to a diverse range of client needs. This innovative approach is crucial for today’s firms aiming to maintain competitive advantage by leveraging AI in creative and impactful ways.

Building a Foundation: Evaluations that Drive Adoption

Key to Morgan Stanley’s success was the development of a comprehensive evaluation framework, designed to ensure the reliable and consistent performance of AI systems aligned with the high standards of financial advisors. This rigorous framework tested every AI use case against real-world applications, fostering improvements at every stage through continuous expert feedback.

Morgan Stanley implemented this evaluative process by setting clear objectives: speeding up information retrieval to save advisors hours of searching, automating repetitive tasks like summarizing research reports, and providing enhanced insights tailored to individual client needs. By running summarization evaluations with GPT-4, the company enhanced its capability to compress complex and process-driven content into coherent and concise summaries. These outputs were diligently rated for precision and clarity, allowing prompt refinements for better quality results.

As part of the evolution of their evaluative framework, Morgan Stanley introduced translation evaluations to serve multilingual clients better, collaborating closely with OpenAI to fine-tune retrieval methods, thereby accommodating an ever-growing document repository. David Wu, Head of Firmwide AI Product & Architecture Strategy at Morgan Stanley, emphasized the profound shift achieved: “We went from being able to answer 7,000 questions to effectively addressing queries from a corpus of 100,000 documents.” This advancement has significantly impacted advisors’ ability to engage clients on previously unexplored topics, effectively eliminating the friction between knowledge acquisition and client communication.

Scaling Success from Pilot to Firmwide Use

Following the success of AI @ Morgan Stanley Assistant, the financial giant developed AI @ Morgan Stanley Debrief, a meeting summary tool powered by Whisper and GPT-4, specifically tailored for financial advisors. Debrief processes Zoom recordings, with client consent, transforming them into practical outputs such as client notes and draft follow-ups integrated directly into CRM systems.

These AI-generated outputs are reviewed and adjusted by advisors prior to finalization, maintaining an essential balance between machine automation and human oversight. The tools’ success hinged on the robust evaluation-driven approach, which included developing datasets for various meeting types, ensuring models could accurately capture critical action items without error. This advancement significantly improved the timeliness of client engagement, with clients seeing follow-ups completed within hours instead of days.

Kaitlin Elliott, Head of Firmwide Generative AI Solutions at Morgan Stanley, shared the overwhelmingly positive advisor feedback: “They’re more engaged with clients, and follow-ups that used to take days now happen within hours.” This feedback underscores the immense value and efficiency AI solutions contribute to financial services.

Strengthening Trust with Controls

Ensuring compliance with stringent financial service regulations was another pivotal aspect of Morgan Stanley’s AI implementation. Daily regression testing with a suite of sample questions allowed for the identification and fortification of system weaknesses, thus bolstering its capacity to deliver compliant and reliable outputs.

Morgan Stanley was proactive in addressing security concerns, benefiting from OpenAI’s zero data retention policy that guarantees the privacy of proprietary data. Wu addressed common concerns regarding AI data usage, highlighting the importance of OpenAI’s policy in fostering trust and confidence in AI solutions: “The OpenAI team’s willingness to ensure zero data retention has been really impactful.”

Achieving 98% Adoption: Increased Engagement and New Service Potential

The strategic focus on quality and reliability led to Morgan Stanley achieving remarkable adoption rates—with over 98% of advisor teams using AI tools such as the Assistant regularly. This impressive adoption is reflected in enhanced document access, rising from 20% to an incredible 80%, significantly optimizing search efficiency. As a result, advisors now dedicate more time to client relationship management, facilitated by automation and readily available insights.

By creating what is now considered a “super app,” Morgan Stanley has not only improved internal processes but also unlocked numerous potential use cases across various departments. Wu envisions extending Debrief’s functionality for other roles, such as investment bankers interacting with CFOs, emphasizing the transformative potential AI holds within financial services.

With these foundational developments, Morgan Stanley continues to innovate, crafting platforms that not only enhance current offerings but also enable the creation of new products and services, tailored by those closest to the client’s challenges. As Jeff McMillan, Head of Firmwide AI at Morgan Stanley, aptly states: “It’s a fundamental change which both improves the quality of our content and creates new products and services that only people who are close to the problem can imagine.”

Through strategic collaboration and a steadfast focus on robust evaluations, Morgan Stanley showcases the transformative potential of AI solutions in financial services, setting a benchmark for innovation and productivity that other firms can aspire to emulate.

For more information, visit Morgan Stanley.