The Role and Value of Digital Advice in Australia Research

The Role and Value of Digital Advice in Australia, developed in collaboration with CoreData and Borromean Consulting, examines the evolving role of digital advice across the financial advice ecosystem, drawing on national consumer research, industry interviews and international case studies. It highlights the growing importance of digital advice in improving access to financial guidance and supporting better retirement outcomes.

The research finds that digital advice is now an established and accessible alternative to unregulated online sources, supporting individuals to engage with their finances earlier, improving their confidence to act when decision points arise, and complementing, rather than replacing, professional financial advice.

In particular, the report highlights that:

Digital advice improves decision-making confidence and follow-through on financial decisions;
Digital advice is helping bridge the advice gap by providing a lower-cost, accessible entry point to financial guidance, particularly for consumers not currently engaging with professional advice;
Consumers who engage with digital tools are significantly more likely to seek full professional advice, and to do so earlier; and
Digital and human advice function as complementary components of an advice ecosystem, with strong consumer preference for hybrid models that combine digital tools with access to human judgement.

Key Findings

Digital advice users are more likely to seek financial advice	Among those aged 55–59 (a key pre-retirement group) digital users are more than three times as likely to seek financial advice in the next 12 months compared to non-users (44 per cent vs 13 per cent). This pattern is consistent across other cohorts and timeframes.
Digital advice users are more likely to engage with professional retirement adequacy and investment advice in the next year, with the majority indicating they are more likely to engage with full professional advice in the future	Among Australians concerned about having enough to retire, 28 per cent of digital users intend to seek advice in the next 12 months, compared to 11 per cent of non-users. This gap widens over time, with 35 per cent of users intending to seek advice in the next 2–3 years and 52 per cent in the longer term, versus 14 per cent and 34 per cent respectively for non-users. A similar pattern is observed for those concerned with investing. 40 per cent of digital users plan to seek advice within 12 months (compared to 22 per cent of non-users), increasing to 49 per cent over 2–3 years and 60 per cent in the future, compared to 23 per cent and 38 per cent among non-users.
Digital advice users are more likely to seek advice sooner	Digital users are 2–2.5 times more likely to seek retirement advice over the next 3 years compared to non-users.
All age cohorts are comfortable engaging with a combination of human and digital advice (hybrid models), particularly among older Australians	Roughly half of digital users (53 per cent aged 55–59; 48 per cent aged 60 and above) prefer a combination of human and digital advice. This figure is slightly lower among younger cohorts, with 39 per cent of those under 35 preferring hybrid models.
Trust in artificial intelligence-enabled advice increases when human judgement is explicitly part of the model	33 per cent of digital advice users, and 28 per cent of non-users, report greater trust in digital advice with an AI component when supported by human oversight.

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The Role and Value of Digital Advice in Australia Research