The technology-first approach has consistently underdelivered because it equates connectivity with trust. But they are not the same: The reality is connectivity can get one at the door, while trust provides actual access to a person's life savings.
Every week, the global fintech community announces another AI-powered breakthrough. The headlines are dominated by robo-advisors that supposedly outperform human planners and chatbots designed to replace relationship managers. The narrative is seductive: AI will democratise finance by removing the friction, bias, and cost from a system that has historically excluded billions. However, as we look at the reality of the Indian market, we must challenge this narrative—not because the technology is flawed, but because we are misreading the problem it needs to solve.
The Barrier of Trust
India presents a paradox of digital success. We have 1.4 billion people and a world-class UPI infrastructure that processes over 22 billion transactions a month. Yet, despite this high-velocity connectivity, true financial inclusion — measured by actual wealth-building participation — remains stubbornly low. Only about 9.5% of Indians invest in mutual funds and equities. The gap is not technological; it is a gap of trust. The question AI needs to answer for the next 600 million users is not "How do I execute a transaction?" but "Why should I trust this system with my family’s future?".
In my journey of building Choice Connect -- Choice Connect is the distribution arm of Choice International Ltd, a BSE/NSE-listed financial services group. We operate a network of over 60,000 Choice Business Associates (CBAs). The CBAs are local advisors embedded across India and Bharat who bring mutual funds, insurance, credit, and broking products to households -- I have seen that in rural and semi-urban markets, a financial decision is not made by an isolated individual. It is a collective household decision, often spanning three generations, discussed in a kitchen or on a charpoy outside a village panchayat.
In these intimate settings, the trusted figure is not a sleek app interface. It is a human being — a local advisor who grew up in the same district, whose sister-in-law knows your mother, and who has a track record of never losing a client's money. This advisor will sit with a family for two hours to explain why a Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) is safer than a traditional chit fund. AI cannot replicate that cultural fluency or earn that trust through code; it must be earned through physical presence and years of consistent, reliable behaviour. In the markets where formal finance most needs to reach, trust is the primary infrastructure.
The Adoption Paradox and the Connectivity Trap
Most fintech narratives skip an uncomfortable data point: The population segments of India with the highest digital connectivity — urban millennials and English-fluent professionals — are already well-served. If the AI revolution in finance stays where it is comfortable, it will merely deepen services for people who already have access, thus widening the digital divide.
The 600 million Indians who need financial services the most — first-generation investors, rural households, and migrant workers — are not waiting for a “better” app. They are waiting for a reason to trust the system in the first place. This isn't just an Indian problem; it’s a global one, seen across Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. The technology-first approach has consistently underdelivered because it equates connectivity with trust. The reality is connectivity can get you at the door, while trust provides actual access to a person's life savings.
Putting AI Where it Belongs: The Inversion of Effort
I am not arguing against the adoption of AI in financial services. On the contrary, I am arguing for its deployment where it can be truly powerful — managing the back-end work that currently consumes a human advisor’s time and limits their ability to scale.
Currently, advisors spend enormous efforts on compliance documentation, portfolio tracking, and reporting. These are tasks where AI delivers immediate and unambiguous value. Imagine an advisor who currently spends three hours on paperwork for every one hour of client conversation. AI makes it possible to invert that ratio.
We must be very clear about the distinction in our product design:
- An advisor who uses AI tools to serve 200 clients instead of 80 is a distribution multiplier.
- An AI system that seeks to replace that advisor in a rural market is a distribution eliminator.
This distinction is vital for policy and the financial sector’s obligation to serve all citizens, not just the digitally comfortable ones.
The Human-AI Stack: A New Architecture for Inclusion
The model that actually works is an integrated "Human-AI Stack": AI handles the scale-up challenge while humans address the trust issue. When integrated seamlessly, the client experiences neither the friction of bureaucracy nor the coldness of automation.
In practice, this means building AI tools that are advisor-facing, not consumer-facing. We should provide local financial advisors with the same analytical capabilities as a top-tier wealth manager in Mumbai — real-time portfolio analysis, risk alerts, and personalised product matching — while leaving relationship-building and accountability in the trusted hands of the human.
This is not a compromise or a "middle ground”. It is the correct architecture for financial inclusion at scale. The global fintech community needs to stop treating human intermediaries as a legacy cost to be eliminated and start treating them as a distribution asset to be amplified.
The Untapped Distribution Asset
India’s financial advisor network — mutual fund distributors (MFDs), insurance agents, and banking correspondents — is one of the largest last-mile distribution networks in the world. It reaches geographies where no bank branch has ever operated and where no app will achieve organic adoption without a human introduction.
Historically, this network has been underequipped and undervalued. AI, deployed correctly, can transform these individuals into precision instruments—locally trusted, technologically powered, and economically sustainable. By empowering the "human at the last mile," we solve the defining challenge of the next decade: transitioning from access to transactions to access to wealth creation.
The author is CEO, Choice Connect (a subsidiary of Choice International Ltd). Views expressed are personal.