Armchair Critic: How might AI affect people-based advice?

Three wider questions to address

clock • 8 min read

The debate over the use of technology in financial services being a threat or an opportunity has tended to focus on its impact on advice. To Professional Adviser's Armchair Critic Brendan Llewellyn, this seems a mistake

The impact of technology to date has involved taking relatively simple, high frequency tasks that can be carried out more cost-effectively by some form of tech-enabled automation. Advice from advisers is not simple and, for a given client and adviser, does not occur that frequently. So there are many other roles in financial services that come higher up the list in terms of tech potential. Fund management actions, for example, have much greater frequency and, while you wouldn't say they are simple, the big sway to passives is driven partly by a big tick for frequency and a different sort...

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