For more than a decade, policymakers have asked the same question:
Why don’t more people access financial advice?
The answer has never been a lack of interest.
It has been a mismatch between what people value, what the system delivers, and what it costs to provide.
At the Academy of Life Planning, we are now offering something that consumer research said people wanted back in 2016–2017, but which the industry could not realistically deliver at the time:
A comprehensive, one-off planning experience, priced around £500, focused on clarity, direction, and life decisions — not product sales.
Today, that experience is the AI GAME Plan™, plus one focused hour with a Total Wealth Planner, retailing at £497.
This article explains why that price is evidence-aligned, why it wasn’t viable before, and why it is now.
What consumers actually said — before “AI” was part of the conversation
In the period following the Retail Distribution Review, the Financial Conduct Authority and HM Treasury commissioned extensive consumer research as part of the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR).
That baseline work did not ask abstract questions. It tested real scenarios:
- one-off advice
- retirement or life decisions
- planning around meaningful sums (£10k, £25k, £50k)
- without assuming ongoing asset management
The consistent finding was simple:
Consumers preferred clear, fixed prices for discrete planning help
and judged “good value” to be around 1% of the amount involved.
For a £50,000 decision, that equated to around £500.
The issue was not willingness to pay.
It was delivery cost.
At the time:
- data gathering was manual
- analysis was labour-intensive
- narrative planning took hours of adviser time
- compliance processes assumed product sales
So while consumers said “£500 feels fair”, firms quietly concluded “we can’t make this work.”
What has changed is not the consumer — it’s the capability
Fast forward to today.
With ethical, transparent AI:
- data collection is structured and efficient
- pattern recognition and scenario modelling are automated
- narrative synthesis is faster, clearer, and more consistent
- human time is reserved for judgment, sense-making, and care
This changes the economics — without reducing the quality.
The AI GAME Plan™ produces a comprehensive written report, covering:
- life goals and transitions
- work, skills, income, and human capital
- health, time, energy, and resilience
- financial architecture across the whole household
- risks, options, and pathways forward
Then — crucially — the client meets a Total Wealth Planner for a focused, one-hour debrief.
This is where:
- meaning is clarified
- priorities are tested
- next steps are agreed
- confidence replaces confusion
AI does the heavy lifting.
Human wisdom does the integration.
100% of your total wealth — not just the 1% the system fixates on
There is another uncomfortable truth rarely acknowledged.
In the UK, less than 1% of most people’s total wealth sits inside regulated retail investment products.
The remaining 99% lives elsewhere:
- in skills, earning power, and adaptability
- in health, relationships, and time
- in work choices, career transitions, and optionality
- in household structure, resilience, and freedom
- in bricks and mortar, occupational pensions, and savings
Traditional advice models focus narrowly on the small, investable slice — because that is what the system monetises.
The AI GAME Plan™ is different.
It is a Total Wealth report — life first, money second, products optional.
That is why comparing it to a percentage-based investment fee misses the point entirely.
This is not “1% of assets under management.”
It is 100% of your life architecture.
Why £497 is not radical — it’s overdue
Set against the FCA’s own consumer research, the £497 price point is not disruptive.
It is aligned.
What is new is that:
- the service can now be delivered efficiently
- the price can be held transparently
- and the outcome is no longer dependent on selling products
In other words, what consumers said they wanted in 2017
is finally practical in 2026.
A quieter kind of innovation
The Academy of Life Planning is not claiming to reinvent planning.
We are doing something more modest — and more important.
We are:
- matching price to value
- matching technology to purpose
- and matching human expertise to where it matters most
£497 buys:
- a complete AI-generated GAME Plan report
- plus one hour of focused, professional human guidance
No lock-ins.
No asset capture.
No extraction.
Just clarity, confidence, and a plan you can actually use.
A gentle invitation
If you have ever felt that:
- advice was too expensive for what it offered
- planning focused on products rather than people
- or that your real life never quite fitted the model
This may be the moment where what wasn’t possible then
has quietly become possible now.
Explore the AI GAME Plan™ with the Academy of Life Planning — and experience what Total Wealth Planning was always meant to be.
👉 Explore the AI GAME Plan™ — with your personal 1-to-1 debrief.
[Notes:]
Consumer willingness to pay and the broader advice market baseline
The FCA’s FAMR baseline research (drawing on the Financial Lives Survey 2017) provided the demand-side evidence on consumer attitudes to financial advice costs, including benchmarks around value and willingness to pay for discrete planning support.
📄 FCA FAMR Baseline Report (2017)
Financial Advice Market Review – Baseline Report
• FCA & HM Treasury baseline report (June 2017).
• Shows how the FCA established baseline indicators, including demand-side consumer attitudes relevant to affordability and value perceptions.
👉 PDF (full report):
https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/research/famr-baseline-report.pdf FCA
👉 Web page with download links:
https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/research/financial-advice-market-review-famr-baseline-report FCA
📊 Quantitative Consumer Research Used in FAMR Baseline
Quantitative research to inform the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR) baseline
• Based on the FCA’s Financial Lives Survey 2017 (13,000+ respondents).
• Contains consumer responses on use of advice, perceived value and willingness to pay — the dataset that informed the baseline report.
👉 PDF (quantitative research):
https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/research/famr-quantitative-research.pdf
Academy of Life Planning 