How AI chooses UK financial advisers

93 of the UK’s top 150 financial advice firms were invisible in AI search

AI is already shaping which advisers enter a prospective client’s shortlist. Studio Baggio tested how ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity choose UK financial advisers across 50 high-intent prospective-client questions.

These covered investing £500,000+, inheritance tax, retirement income and planning before and after a business sale.

50 buyer questions450 answers3 AI platforms150 firms

Four headline findings

AI assembled recommendations from a narrow source ecosystem.

Advice firms supplied much of the expertise. Directories, publishers and commercial rankings often carried the visibility and shaped the shortlist.

93 of 150 top UK advice firms were invisible. They were never suggested, named or cited in any of the 450 AI answers to our 50 high-intent buyer questions.
AI almost never credited the financial advice firms whose expertise it used. Across 117 guidance answers, AI cited a studied firm’s website 76 times but named the firm in only two of those citations.
Advice firms could not rely on their own websites to carry them into the shortlist. Only 29.7% of selections cited the chosen firm’s website; directories, rankings and reviews usually supplied the evidence instead.
There was no dependable shortlist across the three AI platforms. For the same firm-selection question, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity had no recommended firm in common 60% of the time.

The credit gap

Financial advice firms are helping AI answer the question, but almost never receiving the credit.

In 97% of guidance answers that cited a panel firm’s website, AI used the firm’s expertise without naming the firm to the buyer.

Panel-firm websites were cited 76 times across 117 guidance answers. The firm was named in only two of those 76 citations. When AI selected a firm directly, only 29.7% of selections cited that firm’s own website. The remaining selections relied on other sources, including directories, rankings and reviews.

What happened when AI was asked to choose

There was no dependable AI shortlist

The firms changed with the platform, the buyer’s question and the repeated run. Some answers did not name a firm at all.

60%when AI was asked to choose a firm

The platforms often returned entirely different shortlists

OpenAI, Gemini and Perplexity had no recommended firm in common 60% of the time.

26%46 of 180 answers

AI named no firm at all

When AI was asked to choose a firm nationally, 46 of 180 answers returned guidance, directories or authorities instead of a financial advice firm.

4of 303 candidates

Only four appeared across every buyer need

Only four of 303 candidates appeared across all four national buyer-need categories. Most visibility was narrow or one-off.

01UnbiasedDirectory
168 of 450 answers
02MoneyHelperPublic guidance
127 of 450 answers
03VouchedForDirectory
118 of 450 answers
04FCARegulator
66 of 450 answers
05Nephos GroupCommercial content
47 of 450 answers

This finding concerns source influence, not adviser quality. Commercial pages from one financial-services group sat alongside Unbiased, MoneyHelper, VouchedFor and the FCA while most of the established 150-firm panel remained invisible.

Live follow-up experiment

Can transparent comparison pages enter the AI source set?

On 7 August 2026, Studio Baggio began a live follow-up test using three Calm Authority comparison guides. Each discloses its selection method, links the evidence behind every firm and accepts no paid inclusion or placement. The test asks whether pages built that way can enter the sources cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

Early results show that all three Calm Authority guides are now appearing in AI search. Where Calm Authority appeared alongside the commercial ranking pages discussed above, it ranked higher seven out of eight times. We will continue to track how that changes.

Different needs, different leaders

AI recommended different firms for different buyer needs

The firm recommended most often changed with the buyer’s financial need.

General financial advice

The Private OfficeMost often recommended · 14 of 45 AI answers

Wealth and investing

Evelyn PartnersMost often recommended · 21 of 45 AI answers

Pensions and retirement

Hargreaves Lansdown Financial AdviceMost often recommended · 6 of 45 AI answers

Life events and specialist planning

Evelyn PartnersMost often recommended · 11 of 45 AI answers

Why this matters now

AI is becoming part of how prospective clients choose advisory firms

Buyers are increasingly using AI to research options, compare firms and decide who to choose. The route to the shortlist is shifting, and being part of the consideration set is becoming increasingly commercially valuable.

92%

of B2B buyers using AI say it has shaped their vendor shortlist, while 83% say it has influenced their final vendor decision.

Semrush, 2026

58%

of consumers have replaced traditional search engines with generative AI tools as their go-to for product and service recommendations, up from 25% in 2023.

Capgemini Research Institute, 2025

75%+

of Google searches are expected to include AI-generated summaries by 2028.

McKinsey, 2025

60% higher

AI-referred visitors converted better than non-AI traffic in July 2026.

Adobe Digital Insights, U.S. retail data

The full question set

The 50 questions we asked

The study followed the buyer journey from understanding a financial need to finding and choosing a firm. Open any group to see the exact wording.

13 questions · Understanding the decisionWhat should I do?

Questions about costs, pensions, inheritance, divorce and other financial decisions.

View questions

12 questions · Finding possible advisersWho could help me?

Questions asking AI to identify firms by need, specialism or location.

View questions

25 questions · Choosing a firmWhich firm should I choose?

Direct tests of which firms AI recommended for a specific buyer need.

View questions

Selection breadth

Only four firms appeared across all four buyer needs

Search for a firm, filter by advice area or a specific buyer need.

Advice area

Specific buyer need

Showing 20 of 303 firms and advisers found in national answers.

Overall rank	Advice areas reached	General	Wealth	Pensions	Life events
1	4 of 4	1%	7%	0.2%	3.2%
2	4 of 4	4.5%	2.3%	1.1%	2.2%
3	3 of 4	2.5%	4.3%	0%	2.1%
4	4 of 4	2.4%	0.6%	3.7%	0.8%
5	2 of 4	0.8%	5.9%	0%	0%
6	2 of 4	0%	0%	3%	2.6%
7	3 of 4	0.9%	3.1%	0%	1.3%
8	2 of 4	1.5%	0%	0%	3.7%
9	3 of 4	2.6%	2.3%	0%	0.2%
10	3 of 4	0.2%	3.6%	0%	1.1%
11	3 of 4	1.2%	1.9%	0%	1.4%
12	1 of 4	0%	0%	0%	4.4%
13	3 of 4	0.4%	3.3%	0%	0.6%
14	4 of 4	1.1%	1.4%	0.7%	0.7%
15	3 of 4	0.7%	1.6%	0%	1.4%
16	2 of 4	0%	0%	3%	0.2%
17	2 of 4	0%	0%	2.6%	0.4%
18	2 of 4	2.4%	0.4%	0%	0%
19	1 of 4	2.6%	0%	0%	0%
20	1 of 4	0%	0%	2.6%	0%

What firms should take from this

Credibility alone did not produce visibility.

The firms in this study already possess expertise, qualifications and market authority. AI can only use evidence it can retrieve, understand and connect to a buyer’s question.

Answer the questions buyers actually ask.Structure the firm’s expertise so AI can retrieve and use it.
Connect that expertise to the firm’s name.Build credible first-party and third-party evidence that carries the firm into the shortlist.

Without both, a firm may help produce the answer while remaining invisible to the buyer.

SEO and AI Search Opportunity Audit

Find out why your firm appears, disappears or gets cited without credit.

Studio Baggio audits the buyer questions that matter, identifies the sources shaping the answers and sets out the evidence your firm needs to enter those consideration sets.

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