AI creates an opportunity to combine continuous personal capability with episodic human expertise. Cutting advisers is only one possible response.
By Steve Conley, Founder, Academy of Life Planning
7 October 2026
Reading the news that HSBC could cut around 70% of its UK wealth financial advisers gave me a strong sense of déjà vu.
Fifteen years ago, when I left HSBC, bancassurance advisers were being culled across the industry. As its former Head of Investments, I had argued that a trusted adviser model returned dividends. People who understood their customers, earned their confidence and supported important decisions created value beyond the immediate transaction.
The bank did not listen. Advisers lost their jobs anyway.
Today, I am making the same argument, with a different model for delivering it.
Those 70% need not simply go. They could be repositioned as episodic experts in an age of AI.
What the news actually says
The Financial Times reports proposed reductions approaching 70% of financial adviser roles in HSBC’s UK wealth business, alongside roughly half its management and specialist roles, as part of a move towards greater use of AI. The figures are attributed to people familiar with the plans. [1]
Reuters reports that consultation is underway. HSBC’s response describes a continuing move towards more digitally enabled products and customer journeys, without explicitly confirming the percentages. [2]
These are reported proposals. They do not establish that 70% of advisers have already been replaced by AI, or that each affected role will have a direct AI equivalent.
But they raise a question that goes well beyond HSBC: when technology changes the work, how thoroughly do we explore changing the role?
The diagnosis determines the solution
If the problem is defined as “human advice costs too much to deliver”, the obvious response is to automate more and employ fewer people.
If the problem is defined as “people need better support to understand, choose and act”, the possibilities become much wider.
AI could make information easier to understand. It could help people organise their circumstances, explore scenarios, prepare questions and maintain a living plan. Human expertise could then be available at the moments when it adds most value.
Both approaches may reduce the amount of routine work advisers perform. But they have different measures of success.
One asks how much the institution saves. The other also asks what the person gains.
A cheaper service is valuable. A more capable customer is valuable too.
The danger is measuring the first and assuming the second follows automatically.
Continuous capability. Episodic expertise.
At the Academy of Life Planning, we are developing a model in which people operate their own system, with human support available when they need it.
Their information, goals, questions and decisions form a living record. AI can help them work with that record between appointments. They can revisit assumptions, investigate possibilities and prepare for conversations with specialists.
The human expert enters when complexity, uncertainty, consequences or personal circumstances warrant support.
Consider someone approaching retirement. They might use AI to organise their pensions, explore possible spending patterns and identify gaps in their information. That preparation can make a subsequent expert conversation more focused and useful.
Or consider someone recently bereaved. They may need help slowing down, sorting priorities and recognising which decisions can wait. Some tasks will need a solicitor, accountant or appropriately authorised financial adviser. Others need someone who can help them regain their bearings.
The purpose of the support is to leave the person better able to take their next step.
The relationship can be continuous even when the expertise is episodic.
Trust does not require every task to pass through the professional. It requires confidence that appropriate help is available, that its limits are clear, and that the person’s interests remain central.
Repositioning requires a different business model
This is more than giving existing advisers a new title.
It requires changes to training, services, incentives and how expertise is paid for. Professionals would need to help people work with AI critically: checking evidence, noticing omissions, questioning assumptions and recognising when a decision exceeds their current capability.
An episodic expert service could charge for defined support rather than depend entirely on product transactions or assets under management. A bank exploring that model would need to test customer demand, pricing, access and commercial viability.
I cannot claim that every existing HSBC role could be retained profitably. That would require information we do not have.
But “can we automate this task?” is an incomplete test of someone’s future value. We should also ask: “what could this person help customers achieve once routine work takes less time?”
Experienced advisers carry knowledge of real lives: competing priorities, difficult conversations, uncertainty and decisions people struggle to implement. That experience deserves a serious redesign exercise before it is treated purely as a cost.
A platform can create dependency too
Replacing a person with a platform does not automatically restore human agency.
If the customer cannot understand the reasoning, challenge the assumptions, retain their information or obtain appropriate human help, dependence may simply have moved to a different interface.
AI can also produce confident errors and reinforce an incomplete view of someone’s circumstances. Giving people access to it must be accompanied by ways to question, verify and seek support.
The Academy’s principle is straightforward: support should increase your capability, not replace it.
That applies to human professionals and AI alike.
Our Total Wealth Planner model combines a personal operating system with episodic human support. It also recognises that specialist services have distinct boundaries: where regulated financial advice is needed, it must be provided by an appropriately authorised professional. A new delivery model does not remove that requirement.
This time, ask what the experts could become
Fifteen years ago, I argued that trusted advisers had enduring value. I still believe that.
AI changes how that value can reach people. It gives us an opportunity to make preparation and everyday planning more accessible, while focusing human expertise on the moments that matter.
That is the alternative I want banks, professionals and policymakers to take seriously.
The planner of the future will not be the client’s operating system. They will help the client operate one.
Before we remove the experts, we should ask what they could become.
And before we celebrate an efficiency gain, we should ask: whose ability to understand, choose and act has grown with it?
Sources
- Financial Times — HSBC plans sweeping job cuts across UK wealth business in AI push, 7 October 2026.
- Reuters — HSBC plans job cuts across UK wealth business in AI push, FT reports, 7 October 2026.
The account of earlier events reflects the author’s personal experience. The proposed alternative is the author’s analysis, rather than a description of HSBC’s plans.
