CFA helps fund managers with AI adoption – Money Management

With more and more fund managers using AI in their investment management, CFA Institute has launched a dedicated educational guide. 

The course, AI in Asset Management: Tools, Applications, and Frontiers, aims to help investment professionals better adopt and adapt AI to guide their decision-making. 

It will help investment professionals to: 

• Identify where AI adds demonstrable value beyond traditional quantitative methods. 
• Integrate machine-learning pipelines into existing investment processes. 
• Balance automation with human oversight, while maintaining governance and accountability. 
• Evaluate and manage new sources of risk introduced by complex algorithms built into investment models. 
• Use deep-learning approaches for trading and risk management, enabling more adaptive and data-driven decision processes. 

For risk and compliance staff, it will also encompass the ethical usage of AI in a transparent and compliant way and how it can be integrated into trading, portfolio management and analysis while maintaining fiduciary duty and client trust. 

A report last year from McKinsey explored how AI could reshape the asset management industry by improved efficiency and profitability. 

For an average asset manager, the potential impact from AI, gen AI, and now agentic AI could be transformative, equivalent to 25 to 40 per cent of their cost base, it said. This was driven by improvements to distribution, automating compliance, streamlining investment processes and accelerating software development. 

“Leading firms recognise that AI is not just another wave of tech, but an opportunity to fundamentally rewire the institution and potentially transform the economics of business. This is enabled by next-generation AI systems that can learn, adapt, and act autonomously, embedding intelligence into day-to-day workflows and unlocking step-change productivity gains across functions.” 

CFA Society Australia chief executive, Lisa Carroll, said: “Built for portfolio managers, analysts, CIOs, and risk leaders, the publication will help Australian investment professionals identify where AI can add measurable value. The publication explores various methods of using AI, tools, and case studies, designed to help practitioners put AI to work immediately. 

Mona Naqvi, managing director, research, advocacy, and standards at CFA Institute, said: “We seek to equip investment professionals with the knowledge and ethical frameworks needed to integrate AI responsibly.  

“CFA Institute has long helped the profession recalibrate through change, ensuring that new technologies are applied based on ethical frameworks and human judgment. The examples in this publication invite practitioners to think critically and experiment with AI tools, while keeping ethics and investor trust at the core.”