The profession is asking how advisers should use AI. But the more urgent question may be what advisers should do when clients have AI too.
For the past two years, almost every conversation about artificial intelligence in financial planning has centred on the adviser.
How can firms become more efficient?
How can advisers automate administrative tasks?
How can AI improve compliance, paraplanning or client communications?
These are all worthwhile questions.
But they overlook a far more profound shift that is already taking place.
Clients are arriving at adviser meetings having already consulted AI.
Not all clients. Not always well. But in growing numbers.
They have asked questions about pensions, inheritance tax, retirement income, investment strategies, cash flow modelling, and whether they even need an adviser in the first place.
Some have generated their own financial plans. Others have explored different retirement scenarios, challenged assumptions, or simply tried to understand enough to ask better questions.
For the millions of people who do not have a financial planner, AI is becoming the first place they turn.
This is not a prediction.
It is happening now.
Recent research suggests that almost half of consumers globally have already used AI to support savings or investment decisions, while usage among higher-net-worth investors exceeds eighty per cent in some studies. Younger generations are adopting AI even faster, often treating it as a first source of financial information rather than a last resort.
[EY found that 49% of global consumers had used AI to support savings and investment decisions in the previous six months. HSBC found that 82% of high-net-worth investors use AI for finance and investment tasks. STRAT7 found that AI use for financial advice rises to 81% among Gen Z and 80% among Millennials in the UK, with one in ten AI financial-guidance users going to AI first.]
The implications for financial planning are profound.
Not because AI replaces advisers.
But because it changes the relationship between advisers and clients.
From information asymmetry to capability symmetry
For decades, financial planning has operated within an asymmetry of capability.
Advisers possessed the technical knowledge, modelling software, regulatory understanding and research tools. Clients brought their aspirations, concerns and financial circumstances.
Delegation was therefore a rational response.
The adviser knew more.
The client relied upon professional expertise.
Artificial intelligence begins to rebalance that relationship.
Clients now have access to sophisticated analytical capability twenty-four hours a day.
They can model scenarios.
Compare strategies.
Challenge assumptions.
Ask unlimited questions.
Translate technical language into plain English.
Learn at their own pace.
They may still misunderstand.
They may still lack judgement.
They may still need professional expertise.
But they are no longer starting from the same place they did five years ago.
The information gap is narrowing.
More importantly, the capability gap is beginning to narrow too.
[I deliberately use “capability symmetry” rather than “information symmetry.” Information has been available online for years. What AI changes is not simply access to information. It gives people the ability to work with that information—analyse it, interrogate it, model it, and ask increasingly sophisticated follow-up questions. That is a much deeper shift, and I think “capability asymmetry” becoming “capability symmetry” is one of the central intellectual contributions here.]
The Planner’s New Value Proposition
If clients are becoming more capable, where does that leave the financial planner?
Far from making advisers less valuable, I believe it creates an opportunity for the profession to become more valuable than ever.
For decades, much of the planner’s value rested on information advantage. Advisers had access to knowledge, analytical tools, modelling software and technical expertise that most clients simply did not possess. That asymmetry naturally led clients to delegate much of the thinking and decision-making process.
AI begins to change that equation.
Clients can now ask thousands of questions, model different retirement scenarios, understand complex tax concepts, compare strategies and learn at their own pace. They may not always reach the right conclusions, but they are arriving at meetings better informed, with more questions and often with a stronger desire to participate in the planning process.
This changes what clients value.
The competitive advantage of the future is unlikely to be who can produce the fastest cashflow model or explain the latest pension legislation. AI will increasingly commoditise those capabilities.
Instead, planners have an opportunity to excel in areas that AI cannot easily replicate.
Interpretation.
Context.
Judgement.
Behavioural understanding.
Empathy.
Experience.
The ability to understand not just the numbers, but the people behind them.
Clients rarely struggle because they cannot access information. Increasingly, they struggle because they have too much information. They need someone who can help them distinguish what matters from what doesn’t, weigh competing priorities, understand uncertainty, and make decisions they can live with years later.
This is where human judgement becomes more valuable, not less.
The planner’s role evolves from being the person with all the answers to becoming the person who helps clients ask better questions.
From producing recommendations to facilitating understanding.
From reducing complexity on behalf of the client to helping the client become more capable of navigating complexity themselves.
That is not a reduction in professional value.
It is an elevation of it.
The adviser becomes less of a gatekeeper to financial knowledge and more of a trusted thinking partner—someone who combines technical expertise with wisdom, perspective and accountability.
In many ways, this represents a return to the true purpose of financial planning.
Not simply helping people make better financial decisions, but helping them make better life decisions in which money plays an important part.
Ironically, the more capable AI becomes, the more valuable distinctly human capabilities become.
The future competitive advantage of financial planning may not be technical expertise alone.
It may be the ability to help another human being think clearly, decide wisely and act with confidence in an increasingly complex world.
The Business Model May Need to Evolve
If clients are becoming more capable, and planners are creating value in different ways, an obvious question follows.
Should the economics of financial planning change too?
For decades, many advice businesses have generated much of their income from implementation and the ongoing management of financial products.
That model reflected where value was perceived to lie.
Clients delegated.
Advisers implemented.
Fees followed assets.
But an AI-enabled client changes that equation.
Someone who arrives having already explored options, modelled scenarios and clarified their own thinking is not simply looking for a product recommendation.
They are looking for confidence.
Perspective.
Challenge.
Judgement.
Accountability.
In other words, they are paying less for access to information and more for access to wisdom.
If that becomes the primary source of value, remuneration may increasingly need to reflect it.
The profession has long debated whether ongoing fees represent ongoing value.
AI is unlikely to make that debate disappear.
It may make it sharper.
Clients who can increasingly monitor portfolios, understand products and analyse performance for themselves are likely to ask a more direct question:
“What am I paying for?”
That is not a threat.
It is an invitation.
An invitation to articulate—and deliver—value that cannot easily be automated.
Helping people make better decisions.
Avoid costly behavioural mistakes.
Navigate uncertainty.
Balance competing priorities.
Stay accountable to their own goals.
Support them through life’s inevitable transitions.
These are services whose value is largely independent of the size of a client’s portfolio.
They are human services.
As financial planning becomes less about controlling information and more about developing capability, business models may gradually evolve in the same direction.
The firms that thrive may not be those with the largest assets under management.
They may be those that leave their clients more capable than when they first arrived.
The future competitive advantage of a financial planning firm may not be the assets it manages. It may be the capability it leaves behind.
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