Will Financial Planners be completely replaced by technology? This is the haunting question that keeps me awake for many years. And even more so today.
Many leaders are taking the posture that, “things have not changed much in the past 20 years. It will be the same for the next 20 years as well.”
A thought experiment such as this affords us no harm and could inform us. In the worst case, makes us shudder in fear but not life threatening. And in the best case, makes us rethink some of our assumptions, and change our processes to deliver a better client experience.
No harm really. And more benefits than not.
Because imagination is free, I believe a good mental posture is to stand on an extreme assumption, to say that, “yes, Financial Planners will be replaced by AI.” And then we’ll examine why and how.
This is much better than writing an article to give many reasons why Financial Planners will not be replaced. We can likely guess what these reasons are and the arguments that we will be making to support the case. This has been the default assumption. Because of this, we’ve yet to visit the contrary scenario and much less, try to understand it.
At the same time, we also want to think about why and how Financial Planners can remain relevant in a new future without precedence. We’ll do this at the later part of this series.
So first, Financial Planners will be replaced. But Why?
Let me begin by discussing the notion of Financial Planning. Who owns this notion today? For the past few decades, when any consumer were to mention the term “Financial Planning,” they would first think about the Insurance Companies and their Financial Planners. We’ve owned this land, we’ve owned this property. At least, up until now.
You won’t build a house and call it yours unless you also own the land. This land is the gateway to the Financial Planning conversation and the wide spectrum of solutions associated with it. To own this notion is to own this gateway.
So this is the first question for today’s Financial Planners and leaders especially — What if we no longer own the notion of Financial Planning, we no longer own this gateway?
We are no longer the go-to people for answers whenever Financial Planning comes to mind.
If this becomes a future reality, what will the implications be?
Next Up:
We’ll discuss;
MAS SGFinDex — a tectonic shift in Financial Planning
(2 mins read)