Brokerage group Libertex said on Thursday that retail traders are increasingly using ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews to assess online brokers before opening accounts. The most common prompt, according to the company, is “Is [broker] a scam?”
The finding points to a behavioural shift in how traders conduct due diligence. Rather than clicking through review sites, comparison pages and forum threads, prospective clients are asking AI tools to compress the trustworthiness question into a single answer.
Libertex said AI systems prioritise verifiable credibility signals when generating broker recommendations: regulatory status, operational longevity, industry awards and transparent disclosures around fees and risks.
The research fits with a wider shift we’ve seen in the industry. For example, one broker that TradeInformer is aware of saw a large drop off in direct and affiliate-based traffic in Italy, even though their client volumes remained the same. That almost certainly reflected a shift towards AI-based search.
“We see that AI-driven research tends to highlight a broker’s regulatory status, longevity, awards, partnerships, and transparency,” said Marios Chailis, CMO at Libertex Group. “Those are areas we’ve always focused on.”
