Mezzi Co-Founder and CEO Manish Jain says new research shows that customers are actively following AI-generated financial advice, pushing back against conventional wisdom in the wealth management industry.
The company partnered with an NYU Stern researcher to examine whether Mezzi’s customers were acting on investment recommendations produced by its personalized AI platform.
The study analyzed data across Mezzi’s entire customer base, which primarily consists of high-net-worth and affluent individuals managing complex financial portfolios.
Results showed that 36% of buy advice generated by the AI led to a purchase within 10 trading days, a figure that challenges the narrative promoted by traditional financial advisors.
Jain noted that incumbent advisors and established players have long published survey data suggesting consumers do not trust AI for financial guidance, but said this research tells a different story.
“Roughly one out of two of our members were following recommendations coming out of our AI, and those recommendations led to a roughly 15% improvement in risk adjusted returns,” Jain said.
The typical Mezzi customer falls between 40 and 70 years old, likely has a family, and holds a net worth exceeding one million dollars, spanning both self-managing investors and those who already work with traditional advisors.
Jain confirmed that Mezzi’s AI has been steering users away from concentrated individual stock positions and toward lower-cost index fund strategies, addressing risk misalignment across multiple accounts.
He pointed to customers who had held positions in companies like Apple or Google for 15 years alongside S&P 500 index funds, creating uneven risk exposure that the AI’s diversification recommendations helped correct.
Jain drew a clear distinction between Mezzi and general-purpose AI tools, arguing that platforms like Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok can answer broad financial questions but cannot deliver personalized, fiduciary-grade advice tailored to individual retirement goals, family circumstances, or education funding needs.
“Mezi is a fiduciary financial advisor,” Jain said, adding that the platform is “legally bound to provide advice that’s in your best interest” and purpose-built to collect and apply detailed personal financial data accordingly.
On the question of accountability for bad AI advice, Jain said the fiduciary obligation shapes every layer of Mezzi’s infrastructure, and pointed to the study’s results as evidence of the platform’s effectiveness in practice.
Jain acknowledged that some investors will always prefer human interaction when managing their money, describing personal finance as inherently psychological, but suggested that underperforming advisors charging 1% of assets annually face a shrinking future.
He described Mezzi as building an entirely new category designed to give billions of people access to a capable financial advisor through their mobile device, a vision he believes can coexist with traditional advisory models rather than replace them entirely.
