Amir Ghandar: Chartered Accountants ANZ Reporting and Assurance Leader on the growing number of investors utilising AI

New reports have revealed that more people are taking advantage of AI when it comes to making investment decisions.

A recent survey claims at least one third of Kiwi investors are using AI to make investment decisions, with 64 percent of respondents between 18 and 29 utilising the technology.

Chartered Accountants ANZ Reporting and Assurance Leader, Amir Ghandar, says concerns have been raised, with some reporting noticeable errors. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Now fascinating insight into how we're using AI when it
comes to our investments. A new survey has found more
than one third of key we investors use AI to
make investment decisions, and as you might expect, it's more
popular with younger people. So people between the ages of
eighteen and twenty nine, sixty four percent of them use
AI for their investments. Amir Ganda is the Reporting and

(00:37):
Assurance leader at Chartered Accountants New Zealand and with us.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hello, Amir, Kira, how are you well? Thank you?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Is this wise?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Well? There are multiple sides so this certainly it's the
most interesting thing I think coming out of our Investor
Confidence survey this year that so many kiwis are turning
to AI in their investment decisions, and many are finding
that it's working really well for them. They're finding that
it provided information quickly, explanations were clear, and the responses

(01:10):
help them make decisions. But others lack trust. They found
that it didn't provide new information or in fact found
errors and misinformation. And I guess what It comes back
to is making sure that what you are using to
make decisions is reliable. And this is a matter of
garbage in, garbage out. So AI works best where you

(01:34):
have an audited, underlying, independent data set and you're using
the AI, understand its limits, and within the robust regulatory
framework there that's designed to protect investors.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
I mean, I'm guessing that these people are asking something
a little bit more complicated than simply where should I
put my money on the interts Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
You'd think so. And what they're using is other household
names chat, GPT, copilot, deep seek, for example, those of
the top three and AI as opposed to more sophisticated
investment specific tools. But AI can help investors to, for example,

(02:20):
digest very large amounts of information. And if there's one
place that we do tend to create that kind of information,
it's in investments and markets, financial information, all sorts of things,
and so it's helping them to get across information, identify
the key points. But of course the old truisms are

(02:45):
as true here as anywhere else. You need to validate
what's coming out of it out of these tools before
making decisions. Go back to the source documentation and it's
why investors in this survey say that eighty eight percent
of them say they trust audited financial statements and orders
are still that critical human element so that they can

(03:09):
rely on the information they're using. But certainly it's providing
lots of different useful purposes also identifying opportunities, and that's
how also international institutional investors are using AI increasingly.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
I noticed also that about eleven percent of respondents reckon
domestic political unrest is the biggest risk to the New
Zealand economy. What do you think that mean by domestic
political unrest?

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Well, certainly the highest concern in this year's survey when
it comes to the New Zealand economy was inflation twenty
five percent, although that's come back and what has increased
a lot is up to that's twenty five percent of
investors saw that as the biggest risk. Twenty three percent

(04:00):
pointed to the global political landscape, and that's really I
think the real story in terms of what's making investment
as nervous. That's way up from seventeen percent in the prey.
Of course, when we have trade discussions coming on the
agenda that haven't been relevant for decades, you've got tariff talk,
you've got conflicts in parts of the world, and so

(04:23):
that's why investors, according to this survey, had a lot
more trust in the New Zealand market and companies than
they do in overseas markets. The finding that certainly the
fourth highest was the domestic political landscape, which is not

(04:44):
necessarily political unrest, but that really comes back to looking
at politics, which is it's pretty much always a factor
for investors when they're thinking about what might be coming
up in the economy.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Thank you very much for me, that's fascinating stuff. Amir Ganda, reporting,
an assurance leader Chartered Accountants, New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
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