When AI helps consumers understand, question and decide, the value of human support cannot automatically justify the cost of the investment channel attached to it.
Ask what happens to financial services when consumers become dramatically more capable, and a familiar defence appears.
Good financial planning is about more than technical competence. People value coaching, education, convenience and reassurance. They want someone to help them think clearly when life becomes complicated.
I agree.
But that answers a different question.
The question is whether a consumer who values those things also needs to purchase an investment recommendation, use a particular investment channel or pay an ongoing percentage of their assets.
The future of good financial planning and the future of investment intermediation are connected. They are not identical.
What exactly is the client buying?
In this article, investment intermediation means the professional layer through which a client receives investment recommendations or obtains access to investments. It is a commercial description, rather than an attempt to define every regulated activity.
Consider a client approaching retirement.
They may want help understanding what a worthwhile retirement looks like, discussing competing priorities with their partner and deciding how much uncertainty they can live with.
They may also need a recommendation about a particular investment or specialist help with a complex pension decision.
Those needs can coexist. But demonstrating the value of the first does not establish the necessity, price or duration of the second.
“I help people sleep at night” may describe a real benefit. It does not, by itself, explain why the client must transfer their investments or pay a percentage fee every year.
The benefit deserves recognition. The charging arrangement deserves examination.
The consumer joins the scrutiny
By a “superintelligent” consumer, I mean someone whose ability to understand and examine a proposition is substantially extended by AI.
They can ask for unfamiliar terms to be explained, compare options, calculate charges and challenge assumptions. They can bring questions to a professional conversation that previously required considerable research or technical knowledge.
The same process can improve professional work. An AI system identifies an omission; a professional challenges its interpretation; the underlying evidence is checked.
The consumer can participate in that process too.
The important change is that scrutiny becomes available on both sides of the relationship.
A client can now ask:
- What work am I paying you to do?
- Which decisions can I make myself?
- What requires a professional recommendation?
- Can I buy your planning support separately?
- What would trigger a further engagement?
- Does your remuneration change depending on which option I choose?
A good service should become easier to explain under that scrutiny.
A service relying on an unquestioned bundle may become harder to defend.
Does the recommendation remain necessary?
Much of the industry’s response to consumer AI assumes a continuing sequence: the client researches, asks better questions and then receives the professional recommendation.
That will remain appropriate for some people and circumstances.
But we should also examine another possibility.
The consumer uses AI to understand their situation, investigate alternatives and test their reasoning. They reach their own investment decision. They obtain access through a suitable route without purchasing a recommendation.
They may still pay for planning, education or a human sounding board.
They may seek specialist expertise for a particular problem.
They may deliberately delegate because the convenience is worth the price.
Each is a legitimate choice. The market question is how often consumers will choose each route, and what they will willingly pay.
The existence of a recommendation service does not establish a universal need to purchase it.
Convenience has a price—and an alternative
Convenience can be valuable. So can reassurance and continuing support.
The test is whether the client understands the arrangement, has meaningful alternatives and considers the cost worthwhile.
Some people will choose a continuing relationship. Others will want help at retirement, after bereavement, when selling a business or when circumstances materially change.
A decision that requires expertise today does not automatically create a need for the same service every year.
This creates room for a different professional model: continuous client capability, with expertise purchased when it is useful.
That model can include ongoing support where there is an ongoing need. Its starting point is the person’s circumstances rather than a presumption of permanent dependency.
Restricted access becomes a strategic choice
Now consider an investment provider that makes its products available only through advisers.
There may be commercial and service reasons for that arrangement. It may suit many customers.
But in a market of increasingly capable consumers, restricted distribution also creates a risk.
Someone may understand the investment, want access and have no wish to purchase the intermediary service attached to it.
If direct access is unavailable, they may choose an accessible alternative.
The provider is therefore making a bet: that the benefits of its chosen channel outweigh the demand it may lose.
Whether that bet succeeds will depend partly on the value and total cost of the route from consumer to investment.
An adviser-only channel cannot assume that consumers will indefinitely accept the intermediary as a necessary admission price.
Growth today does not settle tomorrow’s demand
A further defence is that firms continue to attract clients and grow.
Where supported by evidence, that matters. It demonstrates that people are buying the current proposition.
It does not settle how they will buy as their capabilities and alternatives change.
Existing demand can coexist with an emerging challenge to the business model. Equally, technological capability does not guarantee that every customer will change their behaviour.
There is no dependable countdown.
There is a practical preparation question: which parts of the service would a highly capable client still choose, if each were available and priced separately?
Build for the capable client
At the Academy of Life Planning, the opportunity is to build a profession that welcomes greater client capability.
The planner helps people understand their lives and resources, examine choices and act with informed control. The client owns their records and can carry their understanding between professional engagements.
Human expertise remains available. Specialist and regulated services are brought in where the work requires them.
The commercial proposition becomes clearer: this is the problem we help you address, this is the support you receive, and this is what it costs.
Good financial planning has a future.
Investment intermediation must establish its own value within that future.
If your client no longer needed you to choose an investment, what would they still choose you for?
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