With more than 20 crore demat accounts and 5.5 crore mutual fund investors as of 2025, retail participation in capital markets has reached its peak. Marking a drastic change in the history of wealth creation. However, within this increase, one very essential component remains weak, the availability of trusted financial advisors.

The numbers tell a sobering story. India has approximately 1,300 SEBI Registered Investment Advisers (RIAs) for a population of 1.4 billion. In other words, approximately one RIA for every 76,510 investors. Despite SEBI introducing the RIA framework more than a decade ago, the penetration remains negligible.

This void has allowed the rise of financial gurus, YouTube influencers, and WhatsApp groups marketing speculative products and, at times, avoiding regulation to proliferate. Unfortunately, the result has been a rise in scams and mis-sold products, impacting investors’ confidence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a gamechanger in wealth management, but not by replacing human advisors, rather, it will act as a force multiplier. For RIAs, AI can fundamentally improve scalability by allowing just one advisor to provide services to an increasingly larger number of clients by automating portfolio reviews, compliance checks, and scenario analysis. AI, with the right guardrails, can operate within SEBI regulated frameworks by using audited financial data to reduce misinformation, minimise the lowest common denominators of advice and behavioural risk, and ensure client compliance is embedded with every recommendation. AI can also provide real time personalisation of advice by responding to individuals financial goals, risk appetites and demographic profile.

AI’s capabilities extend far beyond recommending a portfolio. It can be a financial coach for millions, for life. It can actively save investors from risky and unverified sources. More importantly, it can provide contextual advice, i.e., explaining to a first-time investor the consequences of being overly exposed to small cap funds, or emphasizing tax-efficient strategies to a salaried professional.

What sets AI apart is its ability to educate in real time and at scale. An investor in Surat may receive the same quality of guidance as an investor in Mumbai, but in Gujarati, via an interactive vernacular interface. The result is, equal access to credible investment education. The geography or any other differences do not matter, and it breaks the previously built monopoly on wealth building advice.

The future of financial advice in India must be compliance-first in nature and AI can act as the cornerstone to close the advice gap in India. Importantly, AI must have compliance built in at its core, with systems trained only on SEBI regulations, and equipped with audit trails and explicability minimising the risks of generic models.

Human-AI hybrid models are equally important, which blend AI’s speed and analytical capacity with human empathy, which can ensure that advice is efficient and trustworthy.

India’s next chapter of financial inclusion will not hinge on teaching people how to invest, but on empowering them to understand whom they can trust in deciding where to invest.

AI, with compliance and transparency built in, can be that trusted wealth mentor that empowers investors, supports regulators, and expands the potential of the few registered advisers we have.

This is not a question of man versus machine, but of how the two can work together, where human insight meets AI intelligence to make financial wisdom more accessible. Encouraging wider acceptance of AI can help transform the way India invests, guiding millions toward smarter, more informed decisions.

This article is authored by Ajay Lakhotia, founder and CEO, StockGro.