Dont Shoot The Messenger

What Financial Advisers Need to Know About AI in 2025

• Chris Ball • Season 1 • Episode 11

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Artificial intelligence isn't just changing financial planning, it's revolutionising it from the ground up. This candid conversation explores how AI is transforming daily operations for advisors and reshaping client relationships in ways previously unimaginable.

We dive into practical applications that are already delivering results: dictating meeting plans during commutes, creating training materials in minutes instead of hours, and deploying sophisticated meeting assistants that capture every client detail while advisors focus entirely on the human connection. For planners drowning in administrative tasks, these tools offer a lifeline, automating the mundane while enhancing what matters most.

The privacy question looms large in our discussion. How do we balance leveraging AI's capabilities with protecting sensitive client information? We explore approaches some firms are taking, including developing proprietary systems that compartmentalise client data by advisor. Beyond compliance concerns, we examine the deeper question of whether client data is truly at risk and how to navigate these waters responsibly.

If you want to see what life in Hoxton Wealth is like, please visit: / @hoxtonlife

For more information on Hoxton Wealth careers, please https://www.careers-page.com/hoxtonwealth.com


For my videos by Chris, please visit his Youtube: ⁨@ChrisBallHoxton⁩

Speaker 1:

So what we're going to discuss today is how we're using AI in our business. How are you using it? Number one as a manager, but number two as a financial planner. From a financial planning point of view, I mean, it's a complete different ballgame. Like, wow, this is bonkers. Like this is going to change the way that we work. The first thing a friend of me told him ask it to roast me. Yeah, so that was quite an interesting one and it really tore me to pieces. Do they really care about my personal information? Does it really matter that much to them? You know, maybe that's really ignorant of me, but do you think it will replace financial planners? So welcome back again to another session with myself and jake on don't shoot the messenger. And today we're going to cover again a very topical topic and something that we're all exposed to. It's driving all of the markets in our areas. Uh, it's driving clients decisions, it's driving investment decisions and it's pretty much over the news, I would say, and I, when the new when bloomberg that I watch is probably on there about 10 times a day. You know the top seven companies in the world are all invested in it, and of course, it's ai. Um. So what we're going to discuss today is how we're using AI in our business, discussing whether AI will replace financial planners, and also some of the privacy concerns with AI and using it for clients and getting that in. But I think a nice place to kind of start is how we're using it in our business at the moment. Is is how we're using it in our business at the moment. Um, and you know some of the productivity hacks that we've seen with it. Uh, in financial planning. I'd be really keen as well to hear about other people, if they're listening and they've got other um, you know other tools that they're using or ways that they're using it, because I think it's gonna go at such a rapid rate at the moment that you can. It's very difficult to be on top of everything what's happening, um, so let's start off there. So how are you using it? Number one as a manager, but number two as a financial planner. Okay, so as a manager, um, ai for me has been an absolute game changer, you know. So, as you know I think you probably heard this on previous podcasts as well I used to live in abu dhabi and I was driving up and down from abu dhabi to dubai.

Speaker 1:

So when I started to adopt ai, I think it was you that pushed me to start using it and it had that feature where you can speak to it. So I'd be driving to work in the morning from abu dhabi speaking to ai on a monday, putting my week together. So I talked to him and say, right, this week I need to do this, put it, format it and, you know, make, put it all into order for me. But, like training sessions, if I've got a training session, I can literally talk for 30 minutes on the way to work, tell it what I wanted the training session on it, then read back to me what it created from a slide point of view. I got to the office, put it into a slide deck and then start working and then other ways I use it is typing for me. I mean it's fine, but I'm formatting and all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1:

It's a bit of a pain in the neck. So I will voice note it so you can like dictate to it. So I'll say right, today I want to put together a document about, I don't know, a training program for 15 weeks. Talk it all through and it'll knock it into a document for me in 10 minutes. You know that was something that would have took me as you know, I'm not the fastest type but probably about an hour and a half before. So it's just using it for one, making you quicker. Two, you then can reason with it, so I can then go back and say well, actually I feel like this part of the training session I've done is pretty weak. Can you give me some ideas to help me to make it better?

Speaker 1:

There's always a danger that you start to turn into an AI, and it sounds a bit too much like an AI. So you've got to be careful how you use it. But that's how I use it from a management point of view, from a financial planning point of view, I mean, it's a complete different ballgame. I mean we now sit on meetings, enjoying those meetings. You can have note takers and there's different tools out there. They'll sit there, they'll summarize the meeting, they'll give you action points from the meeting. I've actually found recently that just by recording the team's meeting, though, and actually just taking the transcript, I can do that anyway. So it's just using it to make you more efficient and to cut out a lot of the noise.

Speaker 1:

I think is what it's quite good, and also to make you, um consistent. So when I'm writing meeting notes now, I use the same same format. So every time I write those meeting notes and I give them to my team, they can go through the format and they know exactly where it's going to be, rather than it being, because I can get a bit excited and I can write it all over the place. So it's just that format that you have to it as well, which is really good. I mean, it's definitely going to evolve, but you've just got to keep using it and making yourself better, making yourself better. 100 you'd need to uh, it's something that it's like repetition is it's like of anything the more reps you do something, the better you get with it, and the more learning and development you do around it, the better you're going to get it.

Speaker 1:

You're not going to use chat gbt uh, google's one, I forget what it is. I mean, there's so many out there now apple's, metas, whatever it is that you use and you're going to be an expert on it immediately. Which one do you use the most? Chat Chibi Timona? Yeah, I use Chat Chibi Timona and, interestingly enough, I don't actually Explore a lot of the others Either.

Speaker 1:

Like I'm pretty Boring, like with food I eat and everything like it's like the same stuff at the same time and everything like that. So actually for me to break it, it's quite different. But I remember when Someone showed me it the very first time and I was like holy shit, like wow, this is bonkers. Like this is this is going to change the way that we, that we worked, and duncan had just come over, so this was I want to say, this was this would must have been like 2023. And I was like mate, you've got to check this out. And we spent all day playing on it and then my interest kind of waned a little bit and then I kind of got born back into it.

Speaker 1:

It's like, you know, you should be definitely using it more, but now I use it. It's so ingrained into my daily life that I can't imagine operating anywhere near as effectively and as efficiently without it. I use it same as you dictating, dictating. I don't like writing emails. I think it's, I think it's boring and I think it takes up a lot of time. I don't mind editing them, so give me something, I'll edit it, make it you, you know, put my own twang on it. But she writing the email is laborious and it's much quicker to say it.

Speaker 1:

I use it for, um, I use it for making plans, I use it to help me get content. I use it for a lot of research. Yeah, so, asking it specific questions, then drilling down into it more as well, um, but, as I think you know, you were saying before, you've got to be careful with, uh, you've got to be careful the research and you've got to make sure that you uh that, you, that you check it, haven't you? Yeah, I uh, as you know, I went to italy last week. Um, I, I do like to arrange, as you know, I like to arrange nights out and a bit of fun.

Speaker 1:

So we were near to siena and I used chat gbt to plan a night out like a bar crawl for me and all my cousins who were all younger. So we left our, the older part of the group and we went on this bar crawl and the first three bars we went to didn't even exist. So, so there was only two bars left and everyone's looking at me going, yeah, not much going on here, and I was like, yeah, probably should have fact checked this a little bit. So you do have to check it. Um, it's quite important, but I I that's a problem for me now is I've started using chat gbt more than google. It's not a problem because actually, if you know how to use it right and you go in and you click on the links and stuff, I would use it over google now, which is crazy from a from a personal view, but also from a business point of view, because, god, we're so aware of that 100 privacy is a real concern, as we've said before, and you know, naturally you're feeding it lots of information because you need to feed it the information to be able to give you the answers that you want.

Speaker 1:

Um, you have to be quite careful with the information that you're feeding it. Um, you know, especially client sensitive information in things that we do for financial planners. You know I definitely do not advise our planners that work with us to put lots of sensitive client information in there and to uh and to use it. Um, but with the advisors that we have in the business, I know everyone is using it. So you know you don't want to discourage it and I think as well that let that can, like that whole kind of paralysis around it like, oh, you know, should I be doing this or should I be doing that actually kind of defeats the purpose.

Speaker 1:

I mean, in my view, open ai, um, that obviously owns chat gbt, which I think you know is obviously heavily invested from microsoft. Like, do they really care about my personal information? Does it? Does it really matter that much to them? You know, maybe that's really ignorant of me, but I also, you know, obviously, client data, gdpr, all the rest of the standards we have to abide through globally are obviously adhered to and we and we're strictly. But then also, like I said, on a personal front, I look at it and I go why is my life so interesting that I'm concerned about putting the data into it? Well, I've tried that. So I tried because I had concerns about it a while ago. So I started asking it to tell me about Hoxton Wealth yeah, and then it was telling me all the stuff that I'd put in there about. You know, when I was trying, trying to write a linkedin post or whatever, I was getting stuff help with and I said no, no, I want you to tell me stuff that you know about hoxton wealth that's not on the internet from other people using chat gbt yeah, and it said, I can't give you that information, so that's, that's a good step, I guess, in the right direction.

Speaker 1:

What is quite incredible with it, though, is how much it does know about you. So I've there's two things I've done with it. Uh, the first thing a friend of me told him ask it to roast me. Yeah, so that was quite an interesting one, and it really tore me to pieces. So that was, that was. The second thing I did was ask it to write a persona of me, as if a friend had written it about me, okay, uh, or my wife had written about me. So it's right, explain who I am based on what my wife would say. Yeah, and it was actually. It was actually pretty accurate, you know, because, because obviously, you use it for so much. I mean, I use it for families, I use it to plan family holidays, I use it to plan flights, I use it for bloody everything. So and it had me down to a t so it does show that how intelligent it is and how it can reason, all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1:

I mean, you talk about the research part. I mean, if you use the, uh, the further research, um, I've had a play around with it, but I want to know the answer. Yeah, maybe you're going to educate me into it. The further research one you can set it off and leave it so I could say, look into I don't know this investment fund or look into what's going on with this company, and you set it and it runs in the background and then it keeps researching and then it like digests its information and consolidates it and what you can get out the other end is unbelievable and you can really. Then it's what's different for me than google is google you get what you get and that's it, whereas this you can explore deeper into one part and that's when I really think you can get the benefit out of it.

Speaker 1:

You know it's, yeah, it's um, it's, it's so powerful, it's like having I remember uh, someone described it to me once is it's like having a intern um or an assistant in your pocket that has been to all the top universities harvard, yale, all the rest of the stuff and you need to utilize it as if you would use it as like an assistant. You ask it questions, you ask it to do things for you, but you need to check yeah, 100%, because it's not right. So ChatGPT is one of them. Are there any financial planning tools that you use? Obviously, saturn AI we use in the business. Any others that you use at the moment, the main one that we've probably been using is Saturn we we integrated that into the uk business more than the international business, and that was more so because it was built by uk financial planners. Yeah, um, I mean it's unbelievable.

Speaker 1:

You come off a meeting and again it's the prompts. I mean it's just what they've done is built a really good set of prompts that work really well. But the way that it me and you could have this conversation now, I mean obviously it would be a financial conversation. It categorizes it, it puts in the vulnerabilities, it puts in suggested advice at the bottom. You give that then to the power planning team that have access to it. They've pretty much got the whole report there ready to write. They've got everything they need to write the report, because and we talked about this all the time you know we used to drive around a city in in dubai and abu dhabi and we'd knock out six, seven meetings in a day. You'd be knackered and used to come out and maybe do a voice note of the meeting and you can get a few minutes into the voice note, but there's so much that you'll have missed and you'll forget. Now you've got absolutely everything and you know I've had it.

Speaker 1:

I've sat on meetings with clients where I brought Saturn in and they're like what's that? And I explain it to them and they say, oh, you know. I say, well, listen, this is going to allow me to focus 100% on you and not sit there typing away the whole time taking notes, because that's what I used to have to do to make sure I remembered everything. And once you explain that to them, you share the dialect with them after. They think that's amazing, yeah, um, and you know you can look back through each meeting and you can really. You know you remember everything that's been spoken about. So saturn's been the main one that I've I've definitely used so far. There's loads of other ones out there that we've trialed and stuff, but so far that's been the one that's thing. But again, I've been trialing it now with prompts myself, like you've been. You've been doing, and you know, taking the transcript and putting that into a prompt rather than using a tool, because then we've got a bit more control of it. It's interesting, isn't it, with control, like where that takes you.

Speaker 1:

Like, I'm very conscious of that, like about having open AI and stuff like that. It's so big, but actually I believe and people might laugh, laugh but I do believe that a lot of these businesses that we feed information into you do have to be careful if they are in competing fields. Well, we're financial planning uh, we're a financial planning business. We need to be careful about who we're training up, because they're they're learning that every call that they record, they get more data on your process, how, how you do things, what you said and where. And for me, who is developing with? Obviously, mansour and you know the, obviously like yourself and the other people within the business developing our internal technology, I'm not genuinely concerned about giving too much to someone else because I don't want them to know how we're doing things. Giving too much to someone else because I don't want them to know how we're doing things. I want that almost to be our IP and I want to protect that.

Speaker 1:

I also feel that it's, you know, like, this stuff is really costly as well. So AI is super costly, especially if you're developing it, if you're using it. A chat GBT description is what? 20 quid, I don't know how much open AI is, but probably a hundred quid really good. I don't know how much open ai is, but probably 100 quid a month, something. I mean like it's relatively it's still a couple hundred quid. You could be in it for subscriptions if you're developing it, the amount you have to pay for the for the developers, the amount of uh power and uses that you use as as you're trying to build out these llms or you're trying to navigate it it. It's seriously costly.

Speaker 1:

So as a business, you either have to be all in on it or not and you have to make that decision, I think fairly soon, because if you aren't training it and you aren't building your own stuff, you might as well start using someone else's and just be bound by that fact. Yeah, but you've been instilling in us for a while now and the amount of times that I have the same conversation with people, because obviously you know I work with 60 advisors all over the globe and someone will come to me about a product or a question or whatever else. So now what we started doing is recording those conversations and putting them into a document that then will be loaded into our own AI which we're building, and I mean this comes back to people. I wonder if it's going to replace you, the idea, I mean, I could say that, while I'm giving it all of the answers to the questions, it's going to replace me. No, it's not. It's going to be allowing me to do more good stuff than having the same conversations. I mean, I want to get to a point where people can go on to our AI and go you know what is the charging structure for this product? Where is this available? To come to me and ask the questions? Because as we scale as a business, we've got offices all over the world, you know, and if you're sat in mexico or you're sat in australia and you know the answer to that question is coming from someone's on a 12 hour time difference. You can't scale. You can't. There's no speed. So having that internally is going to be massive as well. But again, that, as you said, it's cost your time. It takes. I mean, you've spent. You've spent a lot of time developing the technology and learned a lot about it and obviously very passionate about it.

Speaker 1:

Do you think? Do you think, it will replace financial planners? I don't think it will. Uh, initially I think it will. Eventually, I think it will replace a lot of. I think.

Speaker 1:

I'll kind of caveat that I think what it will replace very quickly is administrators and power planners. Yeah, I think that is a concern for future advisors, because, actually, a lot of power planners and admin come, like you bring people in at junior levels and progress them through to advisors. So if you get rid of all your admin and your power planners, then you're not going to have a lot of advisors very quickly. It's very difficult to start them off, so I am concerned a little bit about that, because I know how much um, I know how much they, you know how much they do and how much it can do and how much it can replace. I can write super many letters for you. If we'll take that now, it's not too far. Obviously, it needs to be checked by an advisor.

Speaker 1:

What you can't replace, though, is this Yep, you cannot replace with AI whether you you know whether you have, whether you have that face-to-face interaction. You know you can't replace. You can't replace face-to-face contact. You cannot replace the relationships that you build with someone with an AI robot, the relationships that you build with someone with an AI robot. But then I say that and, like key decisions I want to talk to someone and I want to talk to someone quickly. But I'm finding even more of my interactions Now I do over WhatsApp.

Speaker 1:

Like the other day I was buying insurance for my car and I did the whole thing over WhatsApp. At the finance for my wife's car, I did the whole thing over whatsapp. I didn't talk to the guy at all. He sent documents to her, she put in the rough, signed and we got them, obviously, got them back. There was not one telephone conversation, there was not one relationship. I used him before so I was confident, confident in him, but I didn't want to, and that was for a big purchase and that was. I was so happy at the end of it I was like that's a great customer experience, it was super easy. But I was talking box to him, forward to him, and then it kind of got me thinking about our kind of you know our role and you know actually, but then that's, you know actually.

Speaker 1:

That's the reason why, as an advisor, you want to be an advisor. You don't want to it to be transactional. If it's transactional, I feel that it, you know it could be killed off if you're only doing one thing for one person, but if you're helping them across everything, then it's, it's uh, you know it's. I think it's more open what, what? What do you think? I think you know what you said there.

Speaker 1:

Say, if I was going to buy like car insurance or home insurance or life insurance, I don't really need an advisor as much. I could probably work out what insurance cover I need, based off ChatGPT. I could ask it questions, give it my income, my expenditure, but what it won't do is it won't help me make those emotional decisions. So at the moment, it might do in the future. What I think is you won't help me make those emotional decisions. So at the moment, it might do in the future.

Speaker 1:

What I think is is you can't ignore it. If you ignore it, then it will start to replace you, and it won't replace you as a person, but it will replace your ability to be able to do business as well as other people. What you need to do is use it to enable you and I actually think you'll still have a power plan and you'll still have an admin You'll just be able to do so much more with them. So I think actually, it'll be able to make things cheaper, so I'll be able to make servicing cheaper. I think it'll be able to make things faster which is what we said before and it'll allow us to do more of it. I mean, there's only so many meetings that I can have with clients, but all of the preparation and all the backend work could be a lot faster, which means we can upgrade the service. So I think I'd like to think that it's never going to replace me, but I'd like to think that if it was, I would evolve and get better and find a way to make it work well for me.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I suppose there are roles in the world that probably are a bit scared of it. You know, if you're a copywriter or things, it can be a lot more challenging because it does knock things out. But then we talk about checking. You know I've sent you things before and you go can you send it back and not sound like chat GPT? Do you know what I mean? So you do get into a point where you let it go a little bit too far. So yeah, it's interesting, yeah it, yeah it's. It's interesting as well, like client's perception of it too, because I now know if someone has sent me an email or a document and they view gpt to write it, or I know a linkedin post or I know something almost like it, and even though I'm a massive advocate for it, I don't know whether I pay it at the same amount of attention. I don't know whether I look at it and go, you know, like I, just there's almost like a snobbery around it, but then that can actually be like the. That can actually be the reverse of it, like where people actually go. Well, yeah, I do like it. Actually, I much prefer dealing with an individual as well and a human um, and that actually almost has like a renaissance um, because you know, like much like electric. If we all go all electric cars, like having a petrol car, the 12 petrol car would be like whoa, you know, like, like that all of a sudden becomes cool, whereas obviously all cars are petrol now. So it'd be interesting to see what happens with that.

Speaker 1:

We talked about this the other day. It's the my wife and I were talking about as well, and my children, right, so my kids, she's like should we be teaching the kids out? Okay, I mean, we, we drive around in the car, me and spencer, when I had to school days a week, and we'll put it on and we talk to it. Right, and I like to hear him talking to it because he can explore further and he can like so he can ask a question about a country. Or we went to rome last week and he's asking questions about the Colosseum and when it comes back with the answers, because someone's speaking to him, he can ask it questions back and it really allows him to explore. But then is he losing that ability to be able to find things himself. So you know it's getting that balanced thing.

Speaker 1:

It's like you're saying about technology. You know we talk about imagine getting a handwritten letter. You know, will it go full circle where that'll actually be a better thing to get than an email? Definitely pay attention to, yeah, exactly yeah, you pay more attention now to something that's handwritten and something that's put in front of you and it's personalized than you do. Um, if you, you know, if you get a, if you get an email, yeah, imagine the amount of emails you've been now in dubai. There is no post like, there is no letterbox on the house. So if you do get a letter, you will definitely open it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 100, do you let the?

Speaker 1:

How about your kids? Are you? Are they using ai? Do you let them use ai? How does that encourage you? Yeah, I encourage them to for sure. I mean, we use it in the car, same as you speak to it, and dylan finds it hilarious how that it talks back.

Speaker 1:

I've got some like northern accent that of course you have. I've got a southern yeah, that's funny, isn't it? Um, I quite. I find the northern accent quite soothing, um, but yeah, it's um, it's uh. Yeah, I definitely. It's definitely going to change the way that they interact and that they they deal with things and that they they're able to get information. You're right, though I do have concerns about it making people lazy, but then also it's developing in the questioning and how you're asking that. You know how you're asking the questions, that the key that I have learned and that I'm trying to teach them is the prompts. Yeah, like, at the moment, it's all historical, it's not going forward and it can't go forward. You know it can. Only the information is based on this historical yeah, so you need to be able to ask it questions in the right way, to get the right answer and to get the best answer, and therefore you need to understand how to prompt it like write me an email. Okay. Well, write me an email in my tone of voice, not using em dashes, writing full words, instead of using you denied and all the rest of the stuff Based on this dictation, but keeping it business professional. We'll give you a much better response out of it than yeah, write me an email based on this.

Speaker 1:

Have you made your own GBTs? Yes, yeah, have you. So have you made like an email GBbt and then giving it that prompt so you can feed it? Yeah, I've done the same for like training, guides and docs and stuff, because it gets quite frustrating when you keep going back, starting again and then restarting it. I'll get it to prompt. So I've gone in now and created all my own ones and I did it, for I mean, I've fallen off a bit with a LinkedIn post, I think, because everybody's doing them now. But what I did for LinkedIn, I said ask. So I prompted it to ask me everything it needed to know about me in order to create a LinkedIn thing to help me with my LinkedIn posts. And then it asked me like 100 questions and then it picked up my tone and then I said use the tone of those answers and then it really did start to sound. I mean, it's quite incredible what you can do with those things.

Speaker 1:

Have you had any emails from anything from anyone with you know where you've blatantly known that they've used GPT? Yeah, I had an email not long ago from a client and I'd sent through a presentation proposal for what we were going to do advice-wise. And I mean this email was probably the most in-depth email I'd ever had about questions. And I mean, as soon as I read it I was like I've known this for a while. I was like I'm pretty sure this has come from from ai. So I just got, I said let's have a call, jumped on a call, went through it and it was things like where are the funds, uh, who are the custodians of the, the mutual fund that we're investing in, and and all of these sorts of things, and you know what is the underlying asset allocation of that mutual fund? And I was like this isn't a thing. So I jumped on a call and went through and answered all of the questions and then popped out an email afterwards and I was I was pleased that they were using it, but then I, you know, they didn't even know what the questions were they were answering, asking which was those things.

Speaker 1:

So it is gonna, it's gonna come back and challenge you, I think, and it's how you deal with that challenge. You know, if you then start trying to get nitty-gritty and go all the way back into it, you're just going to over, confuse both of you. So, um, but yeah, you can see it. I mean, I've had emails. I had an email recently from a guy, not from the uk, um, it was. It was something to do with my car and they'd used it to write it and it was written in like best, like the best english I've ever seen, and it was really a shakespeare, elaborate, elaborate thing all about. I was like, well, that's obviously from chat cbt as well. So, yeah, it's, uh, it's quite interesting. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1:

It's like I wonder if we'll get over that snobbery and whether it would just become like the. You know the, the overall. Um, you know the, what everyone uses. We're turning into those. People have been using it a bit longer now and going off, don't know how they're using it properly. Aren't we but amateurs? But I think you know, we've done sessions on it. I've done sessions with the planners on how I'm using, what it's doing for me and all that sort of. I genuinely believe we'll get to a point where you'll have your own gpt and, whether it's client meetings, whether it's everything you do on a day-to-day, you'll come in and you'll speak to it and you'll have it. I'll have a name and it'll be like what have I got to do today? And it'll read my calendar and tell me, and then it'll say you don't worry about this task, so you don't. And that's where I think it'll get to. If it's used correctly and if it does, brilliant, because all that's going to do is compliment everyone that's using it.

Speaker 1:

Some of the things that we're working on in the background at the moment are actually really interesting. I'd say we've got um, we've got a couple of engineers who are, who are very passionate about ai, and they're almost doing it side projects, so like moonshots, I suppose. So one of the key things that you need to be able to do is obviously feed it in data. Now, again, given the fact that we've built our own you know backend CRM, we've got data back from 2018. And obviously, the operations guys are going back now in and adding more, you know, going for any missing gaps as you actually drag more fields in that weren't there. You need to make sure they're populated and all the rest of this stuff. So it's like how crisp the information is, the rest of this stuff. So it's like how crisp the information is, but they're getting to a point now where they can separate it per advisor, uh and or per trading wealth manager, or per paraplanner, or per admin, if they're dealing with a pool of the pool of advisors, so that you won't be able to ask it questions on my clients and I won't be able to ask it questions on your clients, because obviously, don't forget, it's a state of yeah, yeah. So it's about how you, how you structure it, and it's also about how the database is structured, which is supposed to get a bit geeky. But then the next thing is is then going, is, is having it being generative, so having it then being able to set, like you, without having to ask it a question. You go in reading your calendar and going uh, jade, you're speaking to simon today. Um, these are all the notes from the last session, these are the bits that you said you followed up from, that's the email and this is, you know, these are the bits that we recommend that you speak with. So it's almost becoming generative in in that, in that, in in that fact that it's prompting you, because that's it at the moment. Like, at the moment you have to prompt it, yeah, whereas you will get to a stage soon where it prompts you to do things that it knows you're doing.

Speaker 1:

I was kind of excited about co-pilot as well for a while, and it didn't kind of ever really kind of took off and has got in there. I know they're doing a lot of automation stuff. That that's enough. That's another area that's really key as well, which is like automation. Like automation is not necessarily ai, but it has definitely got much better with ai or on the you know, on, let's say, doing a calculation. Yeah, like, so we can automate a calculation based on the data that you've given it. Um, which I think is yeah, it's fucking really cool is, uh, it's, it's like you know, it's. We're kind of moving along, I mean now.

Speaker 1:

So one of the things that we've implemented at the moment I've been working heavily on is is fun switches. Yeah, so, to write a fun switch report for a planner if you're not on like a discretionary model or something like that takes it's like it's not the most interesting piece of work for the planner. It's not the most interesting piece of work for the power planner. You have to do it. You know fairly regularly if you're rebalancing at least once a year, like. But it should actually be a really simple report, like you. We need to really know is the reason, and then it should be able to extract that data from your system, write the report with all the charges that it knows and then spit that out and you know that's what we are there with now.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that I'm like kind of thinking about in this I think is also interesting as well is the presentation of the information as well. So, as planners we've got we have got into this habit of everything has to be on a pdf, everything has to be digitally signed as if it was a piece of paper. We live in a digital age. Why, like what? Why can't I have an email through and say I accept it? Why do I actually need to physically digitally sign a document like I? You know, like, why can't I have it presented to me on a web page and I click, uh, like I click terms, conditions, accept, and I kind of move on, like I feel like that sometimes we make it harder for ourselves. I think sometimes we get stuck in what we only know, right.

Speaker 1:

So you only you talked about that when you said earlier you know people know other things that we should be using. You get used to doing it the way you do it and sometimes and we try and challenge each other on a regular basis as to why are we doing it that way? You know, can we do it quicker? Kind of like you just said that does it need to be? On those things, I think, um, I mean we're moving a little bit away from ai.

Speaker 1:

But ai, automation, all of these different things, you've got to be learning about it. You can't just take chat, gbt and go, I'm going to do that, you've got to be researching it. I mean the, the thing you're talking about there with the fun switch tool, I think we we looked into these power apps, wasn't it? Or whatever that started, that's on microsoft power apps, and then we got a specialist in that knew about it, because they knew better than what we did, and that's what I want to start looking at next, maybe, is getting some people in to teach us about uh, ai and how we can use it, because it's all self-taught. It's the blind leading the blind, exactly, yeah, yeah, um, it's tough, isn't it? It's like, and I think, like without that power automate bit. The other bit that's really interesting is like when you develop any type of content which is like building a house, it's like you need a specialist in that area and therefore you only have a certain amount of time and you only have a certain amount of resource. So things like power automate you can experiment and play with things like that to get it to a place where you are happy then to go and develop it, because otherwise what you do is, and then you get the perfect thing and the flow of the thing right and everyone's played around in it and you've tested and you've broken it out, rather than having a load of dev time that's essentially wasted while you're trying to figure it out. So we've obviously got the databases. We then plug into the databases which we can extract. We've, you know, got uh apis that we've developed into that um and you know it's really like, it's really um. It's really interesting to see how you can evolve. What do you think of the um?

Speaker 1:

There's programs out there now where you can record yourself and then you can literally sit and type a script and it will speak as you. I mean, I was playing about with one last week. I mean it sounded nothing like me and it was very weird because it was saying something that I'd never said, which scares the life out of me, actually, because you know we've had it. You know you get these emails that will be the next scam. You know we've had these emails where people tell you to buy things and do stuff on the. On your emails. I mean, imagine, get you sent me a video on whatsapp saying, jake, I need to come to my house right now and drop off whatever. Yeah, it's not even you. I mean that scares me deep fakes. I mean they, they are a real thing and they and they can be easily created.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of the tools at the moment are very high level. So to actually like, don't get ai has to learn and you have to train it. You can't learn or train something off a three or four minute upload, like it's never gonna be the way that you are. One of the best voice ones is seven labs, um, and I, you know, I, I was, I was, uh, showing you that before I uploaded four hours of my voice into it and then I trained it on the speed and on the cadence of how I would say things, that you could play around with it and it. I mean it was seriously good if I send you a voice now. I think I did. I mean, yeah, I think you did, but like you would not know unless I said that's not me. Um, so I think I think that. But again, we live in an age of quick, quick, quick. No one wants to wait, no one wants to bother training it for four hours to to get, to get into where you want to. But I think what it will do is it will speed the amount of information that you can get out there. So we're recording this now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if we really wanted to do an ai podcast, we could actually have one of our marketing team draft up a whole podcast and a whole chat on ai. We not have to be here. Like the limiting factor with the amount that we can produce is me and you sat here and me and you cocking up and then the editing time and all the rest of this stuff. So I think you will naturally start to see a lot of content, but then again, like I, I still believe that people will crave that like personal, you know, personal, unfiltered approach for certain things, like I like listening to people, I like understanding who they are, how they operate. I wonder whether soon you will have to notify people whether it is ai or whether it is actually a real person. I think that's got to come at some point, like from a regulatory point of view. I think they've started to see that on social media now it says AI Does it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and my cousin, when we were in Italy last week, he's got those glasses, those Meta glasses. They're Ray-Bans with Meta built in right and he's walking around and he looks at something and he'll say tell me what I'm looking at. And then it'll look at it and it'll talk, so like a guided tour of it, unbelievable. When he takes a video with that it says it's been taken, the one met, why it goes on instagram. Whatever it says taken by meta um, which I think is important because, as we said before, I mean if you can, somebody, if somebody can log into your seven labs and literally type whatever they want and send it to everything, I mean that should be notified, otherwise you know you are gonna it could be a big scam. You know, yeah, it's tough, isn't it? I think it's, uh, it's, it's the way that we're going, but also it's, you know, it's here. I think that's the other thing.

Speaker 1:

And obviously, with financial planning, given the fact that that, you know, I I thought we were old in the uk in terms of how old the average riser is like 57. Yeah, in the us I was on the phone something just then telling me 62 in the us. In the us, the average age of a financial planner is 62. Now, obviously it's a much bigger country, they've got a lot of risers, but the average age is 62. Clearly, as a profession, if the average age of the person doing it is that is that old, they're not going to be as up to speed. I mean, that's very ageist, maybe of me, but they're not going to be as up to speed as maybe someone who is younger and who is more as technology, more influence in their decisions. So it's no wonder we are behind and it's no wonder there is a bit of a resistance as to why.

Speaker 1:

You know why people want to use it, but it's here to stay. Yeah, I mean one of the young lads in the and it is, and it I mean I'm obviously very young, but but it's a. It's an. I mean there's some of the younger lads in the office. I mean one of the lads. The other day he was trying to, because obviously we practice when we're we're getting our leads through from our marketing team. We have to call them up and you know, you still have to have a format to what you're going to say to them. You like you can't just ring up and go hi, you downloaded a guide. Do you want to have a meeting? You have to know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1:

So we do a lot of like role play. You know, which is really cringy, and you sit in a room and you go through and stuff, and he was trying to train the ai to role play with it. Was he? Yeah, and I was sitting there going like that's an unbelievable idea. Yeah, like if you could put it's yeah, unbelievable use of AI, like we could almost build our perfect AI trainer and then literally go right, you're talking today about 401k um pension assets with with someone in the US. These are all the objections and all of the questions and all the things that they want to know about.

Speaker 1:

You know pitch it. You know, and I mean, that's incredible. You know you'll almost have fake clients to practice with it's repetition again, isn't it? It enables you to do so many more reps than just picking up the phone and hoping that you so when you do speak to people. But then again, that's a use of it, with you, like, not against you, like sometimes you go's got. Oh well, you know. Well, we could call up the person, do it for you. I mean it could, but it's probably not there yet. Actually, that's a really good use, which is the with the objections, but it's you know, that's the key, isn't?

Speaker 1:

It is it's here to stay.

Speaker 1:

It's not going anywhere, like the amount of money that's getting pumped in from governments now as well as these private companies. You know it's only going to get better over time and it's only going to be more used. And you've just got, you've got to embrace it. You can't start to shy away from it. If you're not embracing it, you are missing a serious trick and I think, like with most things, you'll get left behind. Yeah, you don't have. You don't have to use it for everything, but use it to make yourself better and use it to enhance what you're already doing. If you do that and we will continue to train the teams on how to use it and as we learn it, we'll push it down like we do with everything, because we want our advisors advising, we want our power planners power planning. We don't want them doing all the nitty-gritty stuff in between that AI can do for you.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't make any sense Making your life as efficient as possible, isn't it good? Well, look, thank you very much, uh, for joining us today. I hope you found that really useful. Obviously, that's jake's and my personal views are on ai. As I said, I'd be really, really keen to see how you're using it. So you know, if you've got any thoughts, please drop them in the comments below and if you like what we say, let us know, because we're keen to keep talking more about this stuff and making sure you find it useful. Please subscribe and like the video and have a amazing day ahead. Thanks very much for watching.