A question for life planners working inside regulated firms
You sit with someone and ask what matters. You help them see the life they want, the trade-offs they face and the choices they can make. It is the most human part of planning.
Then the commercial machinery starts. The plan identifies assets. The firm brings those assets under management. A percentage of the portfolio pays for the service, year after year.
Many planners care deeply about their clients. Many firms do valuable work in investment advice, tax planning and implementation. But care does not dissolve an incentive. When the business is paid according to the assets it gathers and retains, we should ask whether the client’s life plan is guiding the investment service, or helping to sell it.
This is an uncomfortable question if your salary, colleagues and family depend on that model. I am not asking you to give up your livelihood on Monday morning. I am asking whether the next version of your practice could begin alongside the one you have now.
The investments are already there
In the foreword to the FCA’s September 2020 Call for Input: The Consumer Investments Market, its then interim chief executive, Christopher Woolard, wrote that most retail investors are best served by readily understood, diversified, low-cost investments already available from a range of providers. He also observed that many investors do not choose them, and that unsuitable products and high fees can harm outcomes.
That is an opening, not a claim that everyone should invest alone. Access to a fund does not tell someone whether to invest, how much risk to take, which account or pension to use, or what to do about tax, debt, care or a business. People may need regulated advice and specialist help. But access does challenge one old assumption: that a client must surrender ongoing control of their assets to gain the benefits of a life plan.
If diversified investment tools are available to individuals, where should a life planner’s distinctive value sit? Perhaps in helping people understand their position, connect money to the rest of life, explore options, recognise what they do not know, and bring in the right expertise at the right moment.
Let the client keep the operating system
At the Academy of Life Planning, we are building around a different organising principle: agency before advice.
The client keeps their own life record, goals, questions and decision history. Academy OS and AI help them make sense of information and prepare for choices. A Total Wealth Planner adds human judgement, challenge and care when these are useful. Specialist advice comes in when a decision needs it. The person remains able to understand and act between meetings.
This is not a promise that software can replace a good adviser. It is a way to make the person’s capability the lasting asset, rather than treating each decision as another reason to hand responsibility to a professional.
For a planner in a regulated firm, that can start as an additional discipline in your present work. Invite a client to state the decision in their own words. Show them the options before discussing a product. Record what they understand, where they are uncertain, and which questions require regulated or specialist advice. Give them something they can use without you after the meeting.
If you later explore a separate practice or service, be clear about your employment terms, your firm’s permissions, client relationships and the regulatory boundary. A planning conversation does not become exempt from regulation because it has a new name. The model needs careful design, with referrals and specialist support where appropriate.
Begin with Foundations
You do not need to decide today whether to leave your firm or dismantle a business that supports your family. Start by learning to see the incentives in the current journey and testing a different one.
Academy OS Foundations is the first step. It introduces the difference between giving information and building capability; between a relationship organised around dependency and one organised around agency. It helps planners distinguish education, planning, decision support, advice and implementation, and recognise when a person needs expertise.
Then take one real planning journey and ask:
- What does the client own and understand when this process ends?
- Which parts of the value depend on the firm holding their assets?
- Where could a client use their own tools and records to make progress?
- When does professional judgement or regulated advice genuinely add value?
You may find that your existing service improves. You may discover room for an agency-led offer beside it. Over time, you may choose to build a Total Wealth Planning practice. None of those possibilities requires a theatrical leap of faith.
Life planners know that a life cannot be reduced to a portfolio. Our business models should show that we believe it.
The question is simple: after working with you, does the client own more of their life plan—or have you acquired more of their assets?
Source: Financial Conduct Authority, Call for Input: The Consumer Investments Market, September 2020, foreword, p. 3. This is a Call for Input on consumer investments, not the Consumer Duty consultation paper.
