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For many everyday admin tasks, roping in AI can be genuinely useful. A chatbot can even help you make sense of your finances. Just paste in a spreadsheet and ask for a summary, and you'll have a neat, easy-to-read report in seconds.
The problem arises when a summary turns into financial advice, and that advice then turns into a decision that no qualified person has reviewed.
AI has woven itself into daily life for most South Africans, who entrust both work tasks and personal planning to bots.
A KPMG and University of Melbourne study found that 62 per cent of South Africans are willing to trust AI, and 90 per cent say it has made them more efficient. Yet, only 25 per cent believe its risks outweigh its benefits, leaving little instinct to verify its answers. This is proven by 63 per cent of respondents who admitted relying on AI’s output at work without checking the accuracy.
AI has increasingly become part of how people plan and execute tasks, including financial admin, without most of us stopping to double-check. Trusting a chatbot to improve organisation and understanding is one thing. Trusting an uncorrected calculation or actionable guidance involving your money is another.
South African financial experts have been increasingly vocal about the risks of over-reliance on AI for monetary guidance.
Vera Nagtegaal, CEO at Vouch, warns that AI tools are not financial advisors. “They are not regulated, do not have a fiduciary duty and cannot fully understand an individual's financial situation, risk tolerance, or long-term goals.”
Johan Steyn, an Artificial Intelligence thought leader, adds that AI tools typically have no real grasp of your personal situation or South African specifics, such as tax rules, retirement systems, or FSCA-regulated products.
The picture is clear: making decisions about your money with a tool that has no accountability, does not consider context, and can make mistakes is not wise.
Chatbots answer with fluent confidence, whether their reply is accurate or not. Here are examples of how this could fool – and dearly cost – you.
Ask a chatbot about a two-pot retirement withdrawal, and it may reach for US or UK retirement concepts, missing that savings pot withdrawals are taxed at your full marginal rate from the first rand, with no lifetime exemption, and that any SARS debt gets deducted before the payout reaches you. It might call a R40 000 withdrawal a sensible emergency measure, when the amount you actually receive could be far smaller.
Alternatively, a general AI tool asked to estimate trust tax may default to individual logic instead. South African trusts (other than special trusts) are taxed at a flat 45 per cent, while individuals sit on a sliding scale that only reaches 45 per cent above R1 878 600. A chatbot drawing on the wrong training data could understate what's owed and might lead a trustee to distribute funds based on a false figure.
Moreover, when it comes to product legitimacy, AI does not verify whether a financial product is FSCA-regulated. It will describe an unlicensed scheme with the same certainty as a legitimate one because it has no mechanism to tell the two apart.
Registered accountants or tax professionals have a fiduciary duty – that is, a legal and professional obligation to act in your best interests, and they could be held accountable should anything go wrong. AI has none of this. It cannot be made responsible, and it does not have the particulars of your family or business circumstances to customise its advice.
Used well, AI tools are great for understanding general concepts, working out what questions to ask your bookkeeper or tax adviser, or summarising your financials. But they should never have the last word on a financial action that affects your future.
That's the gap a professional accounting, tax, and auditing firm such as Huysamen Westraad Inc. exists to close. Since 1987, we have worked with businesses, individuals, and trusts across the Cape Peninsula, bringing real accountability to your financial decisions. If you need an experienced human in the loop with your personal or business books, please get in touch.
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