Salesforce launches 'Agentic Advisor' for RIAs to catch up on AI and halt a stock slide, but experts raise a litany of concerns over costs, benefits and implementation

Southall, B. (2026, June 24). Salesforce tries to catch up on AI -- and halt precipitous stock slide -- with launch of 'Agentic Advisor' for RIAs, but experts are raising a litany of concerns from costs, to benefits and the hassle of implentation. RIABiz. https://riabiz.com/a/2026/6/24/salesforce-tries-to-catch-up-on-ai-and-halt-precipitous-stock-slide-with-launch-of-agentic-advisor-for-rias-but-experts-are-raising-a-litany-of-concerns-from-costs-to-benefits-and-the-hassle-of-implentation

• Salesforce launched Agentic Advisor, a suite of agentic AI capabilities for financial advisors built natively into its Agentforce for Financial Services, automating administrative and customer-facing tasks across banking, wealth management and insurance.

• The launch comes as Salesforce (CRM) stock has lost 41% of its value year-to-date, trading at $153, a 58% decline from its late-2024 peak, amid fears the company fell behind in the AI revolution.

• Nine days earlier, on June 15, Salesforce closed a $3.6 billion acquisition of Fin, an autonomous AI customer service platform, which CEO Marc Benioff framed as a way for clients to accelerate "time to value."

• Franklin Tsung of Salesforce reseller AppCrown warned that implementation can take one to two years and cost $150,000 to $350,000 in one-time fees, excluding license and AI usage-based pricing, with AI costs potentially reaching millions.

• Justin Mikhalevsky, CTO of the roughly $40 billion EP Wealth Advisors, said an initial Agentforce deployment reduced administrative friction and left him willing to explore additional use cases.

• Critics including Tsung said the offering "remains an island," lacking turnkey integrations with the critical systems that support wealth management and likely to meet adoption hurdles from RIAs that already have their own AI strategies.

• T3 producer Joel Bruckenstein called the release a mixed bag, saying most of the touted capabilities are things "everybody is doing, or about to," while the most potentially significant feature does not yet exist.

Knote: This is definitely a step in the right direction for Salesforce given the new breed of AI-centric CRM challengers, but it remains to be seen if it really addresses the bigger issue: the database. Not that it really matters since, once you implement Salesforce, you really can't leave it. At least, until someone invents the magical ruby-red slippers that take you effortlessly to another provider.