The number of defined contribution plan consultants and advisers who remain on the fence about using artificial–intelligence-powered tools in their workflow dropped significantly in the past year, according to T. Rowe Price’s 6th annual Defined Contribution Consultant Study, published Tuesday.
Just 14% of responding consultants and advisers said they were evaluating or were not sure how they would use AI, down from 44% last year. Similarly, none of the respondents avoided using AI, down from 8% in 2025.
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“There’s an availability component to it,” says Jessica Sclafani, head of the retirement strategist team at T. Rowe Price. “More firms are rolling out approved AI resources and tools and making them available to larger swaths of their employee base.”
The most-cited use of AI was 75% of respondents reporting using it for processing meeting notes, up from 36% in 2025. More than two-thirds (67%) used AI to automate tasks such as research, data analysis and for generating reports, up from 25% last year.
Communication also was a major area of growth, with 47% reporting they used AI to improve client outreach efforts, up from 22% in 2025.
Where AI Is, Isn’t Being Used
Asked how frequently firms used AI in key functions, the most-cited daily usage was for operational efficiencies such as drafting or summarizing emails (69%) and meeting preparation and summaries (35%).
Plan design and benchmarking analysis was the most-cited area in which respondents never used AI (41%), followed by participant engagement or educational content development (33%) and client prospecting or business development (23%).
Few consultants and advisers said they were using AI in an analytical way, such as forecasting market trends (cited by 6%), identifying investment opportunities (8%) or making better investment decisions (8%).
In a “counterintuitive” example, according to Sclafani, firms that had formal AI governance processes and guardrails in place were more likely to report using AI frequently than consultants and advisers that said they did not have as much governance in place.
“Oftentimes, when you present people with lots of rules and guardrails, it can make people less likely to embrace the change … [but] with AI, it’s the opposite,” Sclafani says. “The rules actually encouraged adoption.”
Growing Familiarity With Retirement Income
In a similar case of increasing awareness, T. Rowe Price’s survey found that just 14% of respondents said their plan sponsor clients did not have an opinion on retirement income—down from nearly 60% in 2021.
“Plan sponsors expect their consultants and advisers to be able to offer them an annual review of the in-plan retirement income landscape,” Sclafani says. “What are the new solutions that have just been brought to market? … What plans are using them? How many participants are adopting them?”
Measuring consultants’ and advisers’ level of enthusiasm for income solutions, on a scale of 1 (least appealing) to 4 (most appealing), the most appealing product, simple systematic withdrawals, scored highest at 3.2. A target-date fund with a noninsured, embedded payout feature came in next at 2.8, and managed accounts, both with a noninsured income planning feature and an insured guaranteed income component, tied for third at 2.6.
While respondents said their clients are not planning to implement in-plan retirement income solutions in the near future, Sclafani says sponsors want to learn more about their options.
“Plan sponsors expect their consultants to be up to speed, knowledgeable on in-plan retirement income, and be ready to support them for when they do decide to incorporate it,” she says.
T. Rowe Price gathered responses from January 12 through March 11 from 36 consultant and adviser firms, representing more than 160,000 DC plan sponsor clients with more than $10.3 trillion in DC plan assets.
