A firm can become more efficient while its clients remain just as dependent. That is the question beneath this week's agentic AI announcements. Imagine joining a wealth management firm. You upload identification, answer questions about your finances and supply documents. An AI agent notices what is missing, prepares the forms, starts identity and sanctions checks, … Continue reading Who Is the AI Operating System For?
Tag: ai
Customers Have AI Too!
The profession is asking how AI can make advisers more productive. What happens when it makes customers more capable? This week, financial planners gather in Windsor to “turn the page on established thinking”. Here is the page I would turn. Imagine your next prospective client arriving on a video call. They have organised their financial … Continue reading Customers Have AI Too!
Who validated the warning about AI and your money?
An evidence audit of a financial AI headline, its commercial context and the poll that followedSteve Conley | Academy of Life Planning | 23 September 2026 I watched a poll ask people how much of their money they would let AI decide with. Before they answered, it told them that chatbots had got 57% of … Continue reading Who validated the warning about AI and your money?
Your Life. Your Money. Your OS.
Academy OS Foundations introduces a new way to manage life and money—one in which the individual, not the institution, operates the system Most people already have a financial operating system. The problem is that it usually belongs to somebody else. Their pension information sits with providers. Their financial plan sits in an adviser’s system. Their … Continue reading Your Life. Your Money. Your OS.
The Planner of the Future Will Not Be the Client’s Operating System
Discover the professional pathways at the Academy of Life Planning Information is no longer scarce. Agency still is. Artificial intelligence can explain concepts, organise information, model possibilities and answer questions at any hour of the day. That changes what people can do for themselves. It also changes what they need from a professional. The future … Continue reading The Planner of the Future Will Not Be the Client’s Operating System
Trust, Curiosity and Optimism in the Age of AI
The qualities that help leaders reimagine institutions can also prevent them from seeing what their institutions have become Trust, curiosity and optimism sound like exactly the qualities leaders need in the age of AI. Charlie Nunn, chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, recently discussed all three in a McKinsey interview about institutional longevity, technological change … Continue reading Trust, Curiosity and Optimism in the Age of AI
Before asking whether AI gives the wrong financial advice, we should ask whether the industry has been measuring the right kind of wealth
A striking headline appeared in Financial Reporter: “AI models give wrong financial advice 57% of the time.” The claim came from research commissioned by financial technology company Saturn. It reportedly tested 18 AI models using 121 financial questions, repeated five times, producing more than 10,000 responses. Across those responses, 57% were classified as wrong. On … Continue reading Before asking whether AI gives the wrong financial advice, we should ask whether the industry has been measuring the right kind of wealth
The Man in the Suit Was Me. But He Is Not Me Now.
Why Total Wealth Planner now reflects the person—and the proposition—you can experience today For years, the Total Wealth Planner website featured a photograph of me in a suit. I looked younger. Successful. Confident. Prosperous. It was a professional photograph of the sort commonly used throughout financial services. It conveyed experience, authority and achievement. The photograph … Continue reading The Man in the Suit Was Me. But He Is Not Me Now.
The Establishment Is Defended. The Market Keeps Moving. The Profession Is Left Looking Backwards.
A professional body may believe it is protecting financial planning by excluding challenges to the established model. It may actually be protecting its members from the very ideas they most need to hear. I was scrolling through the programme for this year’s Festival of Financial Planning when the pattern became difficult to ignore. There were … Continue reading The Establishment Is Defended. The Market Keeps Moving. The Profession Is Left Looking Backwards.
When Human Agency Looks Like Sales Resistance
Why the “DIY client” may be the future of financial planning, not a prospect to defeat I recently read a sales article about how advisers should handle people who prefer to manage their own finances. It described the “DIY prospect” as a battle. Advisers were told to weed such people out before they wasted time, … Continue reading When Human Agency Looks Like Sales Resistance
