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 (00:00):
Now fascinating insight into how we're using AI when it

(00:03):
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
Assurance leader at Chanted Accountants, New Zealand and with us. Hello, Amir, Kira,

(00:25):
how are you well?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Is this wise?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
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

(00:53):
helped 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 if you AI works best

(01:17):
where you 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 1 (01:35):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, you'd think so. And what they're using is other
household names chat, GPT, Copilot, deep Seek for example. Those
are the top three and AI as opposed to more
sophisticated investment specific tools. But AI can help investors to,

(02:02):
for example, 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 high identify the key points. But of

(02:23):
course the old truisms are 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 so they trust audited

(02:46):
financial statements and orders. There are still that critical human
element so that they can rely on the information they're using.
But certainly it's providing lots of different useful purposes also
so identifying opportunities, and that's how also international institutional investors

(03:07):
are using AI increasingly.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
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 2 (03:20):
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 twenty up to that's twenty five percent
of investors saw that as the biggest risk. Twenty three

(03:43):
percent pointed to the global political landscape, and that's really
I think the real story in terms of what's making
investors 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

(04:06):
that's why investors in 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

(04:28):
not necessarily political unrest, but that that really comes back to,
you know, 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 1 (04:45):
Thank you very much for me, that's fascinating stuff. Amir
Ganda reporting, an assurance leader Chartered Accountants, New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
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