Asset managers gathered at the CFA Institute at London’s ExCel today got a glimpse into the future with a presentation on the latest technological solutions.

Oliwia Berdak, principal analyst at Forrester Research, presented to a packed forum with delegates using headphones to tune into the talk.

In the presentation she spoke about advances which will allow better engagement with clients from robo-advice, through to messaging apps.

She said it is now possible to have compliant client engagement through phone apps and video messaging.

“You can have a complete conversation on WhatsApp and it’s completely compliant,” she said.

Ms Berdak also revealed there was increasing demand to offer financial advice on everyday virtual assistants and said people were already “going to Google and asking ‘do I have enough to retire’ or ‘can I quit my job?’.

She said: “We have single pockets for robo-advice, for things like life insurance, mortgages, but no one has stitched it together yet.”

On AI she said there were a number of developments that can be applied to the financial sector, but that “there isn’t really a complete AI that can replace humans” yet.

However she said machine learning “will change the way we interact with investors”, via the use of aggregators and algorithms.

Technological developments can also grease the wheels of transactions by speeding up consent and confirmation procedures and increasing interactions between stakeholders.

Ms Berdak highlighted the case of Citi Private Bank, which had launched a private collaboration platform for 30,000 of its HNW clients.