By Steve Conley | Academy of Life Planning The FCA’s 2025 financial advice firms survey has been presented as a picture of a stable, resilient and evolving advice market. Look more closely, and it tells a deeper story. It reveals a market that is consolidating, digitising and preparing for AI, while still operating on an … Continue reading The FCA’s Advice Market Report Reveals the Real Gap: Human Agency
Tag: business
When Your Bank “Invites You to Invest,” Understand What’s Really Happening
Steve Conley There is a quiet shift underway in UK financial services. After years of constraint following the Global Financial Crisis, banks are moving back toward wealth management—re-entering a space they were once forced to retreat from. But they are not coming back as they were. They are returning: with more advanced technology with more … Continue reading When Your Bank “Invites You to Invest,” Understand What’s Really Happening
Vulnerability, Capability, and the Total Wealth Planner
Reframing financial planning beyond the regulatory perimeter The financial services industry has long organised itself around regulation. Advice, products, permissions, and compliance frameworks form the dominant architecture through which financial decisions are understood and delivered. Yet this architecture, while necessary, is partial. It governs only a small part of the reality it seeks to influence. … Continue reading Vulnerability, Capability, and the Total Wealth Planner
The Pipeline Question: Are We Building a Profession—or Feeding a System?
By Steve Conley In April 2026, the Personal Finance Society (PFS) announced that it had achieved a significant milestone: more than 500 new entrants recruited into its Pathway to the Profession initiative. Backed by a £1 million investment from PFS, the programme has been positioned as a bold step forward—lowering barriers to entry, widening participation, … Continue reading The Pipeline Question: Are We Building a Profession—or Feeding a System?
AI Can Cut Advice Admin to Seconds — But That’s Not the Real Story
By Steve Conley, Academy of Life Planning A recent industry piece featuring Bravura Solutions makes a bold claim: artificial intelligence could reduce core adviser tasks from hours to seconds. They’re right. But they’re also missing the point. This is not an efficiency story.It’s a structural shift in who holds power, who makes decisions, and what … Continue reading AI Can Cut Advice Admin to Seconds — But That’s Not the Real Story
Renewal or Recycling? What Falling Adviser Age Really Signals
The industry is celebrating. A younger adviser profile.More academy entrants.A narrative of “renewal.” On the surface, it sounds like progress. For over a decade, the average UK adviser has been around 57–58.Recent data suggests that’s now falling into the late 40s—but with half the profession still over 50 and fewer than 6% under 30, this … Continue reading Renewal or Recycling? What Falling Adviser Age Really Signals
The Wrong Question: Why Financial Resilience Is Being Misdiagnosed — and What We Should Measure Instead
Only 20% of people feel on track financially. That is the headline finding from a recent industry survey on financial resilience. At first glance, it is concerning.Look closer, and it becomes something else entirely: A reflection not just of financial anxiety—but of a flawed way of measuring it. Because embedded within the survey is an … Continue reading The Wrong Question: Why Financial Resilience Is Being Misdiagnosed — and What We Should Measure Instead
Agentic AI Won’t Close the Advice Gap — It Will Expose It
There’s a quiet shift happening in financial services. AI firms are now building what they call “agentic operating systems”—platforms designed to automate workflows, increase adviser capacity, and scale advice delivery. On the surface, it sounds like progress. And to be fair—technically—it is. But strategically? It may be solving the wrong problem entirely. The Industry’s Framing: … Continue reading Agentic AI Won’t Close the Advice Gap — It Will Expose It
Why our contract is designed to protect you—not trap you
By the Academy of Life Planning The uncomfortable truth about most contracts Most contracts in financial services aren’t written for you. They’re written: to protect the provider to reduce liability to lock in revenue And too often, they rely on: complexity inertia and the assumption that you won’t read them That’s not a criticism of … Continue reading Why our contract is designed to protect you—not trap you
The Future of Regulated Advice: Adapt, Evolve, or Be Replaced
There is a quiet shift underway in financial services. Not a dramatic collapse. Not a sudden disruption.But something more consequential. A slow, structural unravelling of the traditional advice model. And most advisers haven’t fully clocked it yet. A Model Under Pressure Regulated advisers today are operating within a tightening vice. On one side, regulatory change.On … Continue reading The Future of Regulated Advice: Adapt, Evolve, or Be Replaced
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