Dont Shoot The Messenger

How To Future-Proof Your Career Against AI: Financial Adviser Addition

• Chris Ball • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Will AI replace financial advisers, paraplanners, and investment analysts, or just change how the best ones work? 

In this episode, Chris and JJ explain exactly how AI is reshaping financial planning careers and what you need to do to stay ahead.

In this episode of Don’t Shoot the Messenger, Chris and JJ cover how AI is already being used inside a $3.5 billion advice business, and what it means for your job, your clients, and the future of smaller firms.

They cover:
Will AI really replace financial advisers, or just the ones who refuse to use it
Why human judgment, empathy, and trust still sit at the centre of great advice
How Hoxton is using AI for training, file notes, customer service, and knowledge systems
Which roles are most at risk (admin, basic paraplanning, investment analysis)
Practical ways advisers and business owners can start using AI every day

If you’re a financial planner, paraplanner, or running an advice firm, this episode will show you how to use AI as an advantage instead of seeing it as a threat.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger is a podcast for financial advisers who want to sharpen their skills, grow faster, and build a world-class career in a rapidly changing industry.

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_00:

Welcome back to another episode of Don't Shoot the Messenger. Doesn't miss. Exactly. That's the thing, is it just doesn't miss. It doesn't have an off date. You need to look into what AI is. Will it replace will it replace an advisor's job? No. I don't. It's simple no. That's it. Thanks very much.

SPEAKER_01:

Um if I was an administrator or someone entering into an administration role and this was a potential risk for me and my future, I would be very focused on developing relationship management skills because I think as we go through this journey, AI will very rapidly reduce and remove that if you embrace it. If you've had a close family member that's recently died, that is a sign of vulnerability. So it'll extract that. Some advice is miss those things. Your kids will look back and go, parents anybody are.

SPEAKER_00:

My kids now don't even wouldn't even know what a DVD is. So no support, just them on their own. Um, like we see a billion billion pound business.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, with one person. Yes. So we make sure that we're we've got a future-proof our business.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to another episode of Don't Shoot the Messenger with me, Chris Ball, and again today I've got one of my great friends uh and colleagues, Jonathan J, JJ, as his uh Hoxton name is uh with me to talk about a very, very topical um subject at the moment. Will AI replace financial planners? Something that's really scary. Every advisor is asking the same question. Will AI replace us? Um, you know, and by the end of this, I'm hoping you'll know what AI will replace, what it won't, and how to make sure you're not getting left behind as an advisor or as a planner. Um, we obviously run a financial planning business. So JJ runs all of our UK operations and our Asia operations within the business now. Um I run uh the global operations uh and and I oversee. So we oversee three and a half billion dollars of assets between us um there or thereabouts, which is a lot, and it's a question that a lot of our planners are asking. I got asked it this week, you know, what impact do you think it will have have have on my job? So let's cut to the point then. Will it replace will it replace an advisor's job? No, I don't think so. Simple no. Right, that's it, thanks very much. But you know what what would you say to someone who's worried about being made redundant with AI and how it's being used?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh simply if that is your position right now, uh you need to be spending more time learning about AI. If you don't know that answer, you need to look into what AI is, and hopefully this will help, and we can cover a lot of those aspects. But if you don't know the answer to that question, you need to figure out what the answers are. Um because the people who are most scared, worried, intimidated by it are the people who don't understand it, in my opinion, at this stage.

SPEAKER_00:

Agreed. And it it's AI to me is an enabler, it is not a you know, it's not going to take away. It should enable you to do more pound tasks, it should take away a lot of the penny tasks and the stuff that you that you shouldn't do. You know, AI, in my opinion, won't replace advisors, but advisors who don't use AI will be replaced by those who do. So those who's who are using the tools, which which is exactly what you're saying. You cannot um replace human judgment, empathy, uh having a you know, actually the the the relationship building part. If if that's not your role, then you might have something to worry about. Yeah. But that part is going to be really difficult for it to replace. And there's a subset of people who don't even use it at the moment, don't even have a clue about what it's about and have no interest in using it. For sure.

SPEAKER_01:

And if you actually think about the heart, look, it's no secret really that a lot of people don't have a great um perception of or level of trust in financial services generally, and that's normally at a corporate level, so there's not a huge amount of um of trust at a corporate level, which is why we do lots of things around education and sharing things like this content and and actually building a relationship with with people external to the business. Um, and that's why people labour on things like um uh you buy people, yeah, because that's a core of what we do. I don't think that people are just gonna suddenly switch to trusting uh an AI bot as their advisor. Yeah, uh that's that doesn't feel feel like something that's reasonable. Um so yeah, I think I I think that the trust, empathy, personal relationship, got taking people on journeys and all of the uh the more high-level financial planning um uh skills uh and attributes is what's gonna set you apart.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it can't be automated, can I? You cannot, you cannot, you cannot get that from AI at the moment. Um but you know, I I I would say maybe for smaller decisions, maybe you might use it, but for big decisions, people want to look you in the eyes. And like we said, there's a subset of people that will never ever want to use it. For sure. Um, so I think you know it's important to make sure that you you you are uh enabling it, or you are using it to enable you, yeah. So we've talked about it won't replace advisors, but what will it replace then? Do you think within our profession?

SPEAKER_01:

Um we uh as an industry or profession, we do a lot of things. Um a lot is pretty clunky with processes. I don't think there are massively efficient businesses that are tech enabled, let alone AI. They've got the technology to enable them to do things, do uh I think um when it comes to technology, and now what AI will help us do is to um do things bigger, better, more efficiently. Definitely. That's definitely that is uh but then uh as an industry, like I say, that people companies don't even necessarily have the right um tech stack in their businesses at the moment to be able to help them um be more efficient and effective.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh so AI will hopefully speed that up. It's tough, isn't it? Because AI looks at historical uh data and then provides you answers based on what's happened in history, it can't go forward, it can't see into the future. Um so you're only as good as the information that you're training it on. For sure. And with a lot of financial planners actually not having that level of information, then it's um it's gonna be tough for them. They need to really start taking it seriously. I know, look, we've been we've been collecting information and building out our databases since 2018, pretty much when we started, we go all the way back to inception. I always knew that there would be a point where it would be like people say to me, Well, you're not gonna use it now. And I go, Well, that's not the point. The point with data is that I don't know when I will use it. If I don't, who cares? But at some point it becomes really uh you know, really important. Um, so we have everything from minutes on the telephone to records of converse telephone conversations to you know activities and meetings that were sat at different times, all recorded in our system. So we can really start to build up a great picture and and and use use AI to help with those. I mean areas that we're using it within the business at the moment, fun switch tool we've built, um, that is AI powered. We're using it for training. So we've got Beluga, uh, which we're uploading as a knowledge hub for people to be able to search. Uh, I know Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan, one of the one of them, uh, have done that as well. I think a lot of businesses will use it for that as well. It's a great way for you to be able to question something and then get uh and then get answers back. Um we obviously use it with call uh call transcripts uh and turning them into file notes to save advisors' time instead of having to spend an hour afterwards typing up their file notes. I mean, with Saturn and uh others, uh read AI, Otter, all of these things are done instantly as soon as you get off the call, which is which is a huge uh time saving. I've seen it being used for customer service, so you getting answers to your questions quickly. I actually saw a business um that you could uh message the uh the chatbot and it will go in and retrieve information about your policy and bring it off and and start spouting uh spouting it out to you. And a really interesting one that I come across the other day was someone has uh written a knowledge manual or like a best practices guide, trained up their AI uh agent on that, and then uh it feeds in the transcripts from their advisors into the into the into the agent, and then it gives the uh advisor real-time feedback on their call when they've come off. You know, when you're training an advisor, you've either got to be in the meeting with them or you've got to listen to that call to actually give them the the information, you know, like the feedback. Yeah, listen to the call, then book a meeting to give the feedback that imagine how much quicker you can be with feedback and training up advisors. I mean, it's like skies skies the sky's the limit with this stuff. But you know, one area that I am concerned uh with is power planners because I feel that power planners are highly likely unless they are really technical and skilled and they are only focused on those technical and skilled jobs, will be replaced. And that's a route into the industry for a lot of people, isn't it? It is, it is a lot that was my route.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I was a power planner, um, so I think I'm well placed to actually comment on what it means. And look, a power planner, there's a full spectrum of what a power planner is from a sort of entry-level power planner who's doing admin with a few a bit of data entry on reports. Uh, there are some power planners um I would cruelly probably not call them a power planner, uh, that sit and they all they do is extract data from one place and input that data into a into a report template. Uh they're at risk for sure. Um, if you want to be a career power planner, you really need to focus on upskilling working with highly complex uh cases and highly complex clients and families. Um otherwise, I think anything below that is uh seriously at risk of being being replaced. Um and um it also um look I again having been a power planner and worked in that high net worth space, I think there's a long way to go before that becomes a risk. It might at some stage. Yeah. Um so if you are a power planner, there is definitely, I think, a runway for you to continue to be a power planner in that technical space. Um, but you need to obscur yourself enough so that if you need to pivot at some stage you do.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's again, it's making sure that you're using it in the best way possible because someone is going to want a power planner that can use AI to get the most out of the cases and get them done, and then to be there for the most more technical bits. Yeah. Just like an advisor, I'd like the the the maybe the rudimentary like the rudimentary bits of just you know you're replying to a text message or something might be dealt with. It's like the the what is the value? What's the real high-level value stuff that you can offer? Same with admin. My only what concern is is that it will limit the amount of jobs. I I feel that's a real fear for me, is that AI will limit the route in for a lot of people because that's how they start. So you won't need to employ 20 admin or 20 power planners, you might have one or two, yeah. Um, and then therefore that kind of gateway into it is is is tough.

SPEAKER_01:

I was thinking it's sorry, Chris, but I was thinking on in the preparation for this about admin roles in particular. Um, if I was an administrator or someone entering into an administration role, and this was a potential risk for me and my future, um I would be very focused on developing relationship management skills because I think as we go through this journey, the thing that we're all going to be able to spend a lot more time on and more focus on as businesses and as advisors is the relationship management piece. Yeah. And one of the things we'll come on to is an advisor being able to look after more clients. But an advisor's not going to be able to look after more clients with completely without support. I think there will be a relationship management piece where you have a sort of client liaison that works with a with with that works with an advisor. So if you're an administrator again, constantly thinking about upskilling and protecting yourself in your own career, that is the focus that I would have and making sure you're speaking to clients and building that TLC.

SPEAKER_00:

And yeah, I mean that's true. It's like the business development point. That's the I was gonna say, out of all the roles that we bring people in, that business development role will still be there. Now, maybe our has a helping hand in that, but we would definitely still employ business development managers to go out and build those relationships, you know, help help bring in the clients uh initially. I I think it will be tough to replace that uh wholly as it is. Investment managers, though, or investment analysts, they're gonna have the same problem as well because obviously a lot of their you know work now can get picked up by AI, the analysis and how quick they can have it. It's at your fingertips. Obviously, to become an investment manager, typically you will have been an investment analyst. You don't turn up one day and you're just an investment manager, sure. Um, but you know, I think the core point is that AI kills repetitive work, um, not relationships. It's interesting though, what we were talking about before, which is like how much an advisor can actually manage. Um I think it won't be too far before we too long before we see the billion pound or dollar AUM advisor. Agreed. Just them. So no support, just them on their own. Um like we'll see a billion billion pound business. Yes, with one person, yes, um, running it soon, which is uh which will be uh which will be really interesting. Um, because obviously at the moment that just doesn't exist and it can't.

SPEAKER_01:

Well you were telling me that an advisor, you were looking at some stats around advisor time spent looking after clients and advising uh something like 25% uh at this moment, which is crazy. We all talk and businesses all talk about having paying advisors to look after clients and to be in front of clients. We need uh as close to 100% as we possibly can. If we've got those penny tasks and those mundane ad hoc, admin burden tasks that that get in the way, AI will very rapidly reduce and and remove that if you're embrace.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean look, we've got the plan at the moment, haven't we, to get up to look at the moment we say kind of like a pod, servicing pod can look after 250 clients, that'd be an advisor, a good power planner, and an admin. Yeah, like them together can can look after 250 clients, in my opinion. Some people say it's a lot less, I've had 75 a hundred, but I I think that you could provide a good service, 250 clients, that's you know, that's not that many a week. Uh that's five a week, which um which I don't think is a lot. However, I reckon you can get up to 500 with one advisor and half a uh half an admin and a bit of an outsourced uh power planner for some maybe some more technical cases. And the way you do that is that you automate and make those admin tasks quick. Like you should be able to generate things whilst you're on the call. So coming off and having the meeting notes is great, but actually coming off and the fact find being completely filled from the conversation that you had, that's where we need to get to. Then it generating the suitability from it, that's where it's going. So you can go, right, we've had this chat, we've gone through the pros and mine, I've now got the suitability letter that's been compiled while you've been speaking in the background, and you go through it because the time, the bit that takes time is obviously having the conversation, finding out what the issue is, then going away and then putting the research and stuff together that you need and the suitability, and then having another meeting to present the suitability and then probably having questions asked afterwards. If you can prepare all that and limit down those amount of meetings that you actually need to have, speeds up the whole process infinitely. Um so yeah, I'm I'm 100% with you on I think it will just enable people to do more, and hopefully it drives the value down for the clients as well, you know, like drives the value, drives the value up, but drives the cost down. Sure. Um so uh clients can you know get things for cheaper and hopefully means that you know more people can get access to advice that it was typically out of their reach before.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that uh that is exactly it. The um the advice gap and the accessibility of advice will definitely ramp up because one of the key things has been how can companies do it and provide advice without it being profitable. You can't has to remain profitable, and this will hopefully help us do that 100%.

SPEAKER_00:

Um obviously we've said look, what AI won't replace, so it won't replace human empathy. Um, you know, things like tax planning. Do you think it I mean it's got to be there nearly with a lot of the tax compliance work, but the nuances of it and actually getting that right, it's definitely gonna need a human to guide that, I think, at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I think with tax advice and any complex type of advice, um it is super nuanced what we do, and there's lots of different options. So can you reliably um have when you've got so many say estate planning where you've got tax and trusts and um different investment types and protection that can how how can you suggest that one solution fits all? Yes, you can't because there are different factors that are are at play. What about how people feel about tying money up for the future and whether or not they trust their kids and all these sorts of things? These are the things that an advisor needs to uh bring uh bring to the table, and that's that conversation and the question asking and that sort of thing is super important.

SPEAKER_00:

It's bringing it out, isn't it? Like you you can't get that, and that's what a lot of people get. Yeah, you know, the calculations and stuff behind it it can do, but actually those emotional conversations to bring out the key topics, that has to surely be human-led. I mean, I can't see a place where it can't be. Look, who knows?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh I think it would be um it would I I I think I feel very confident that it's a long time away at the moment. Um, but the way that we're seeing things advance at the at the moment as well, um, who really knows what the future holds? But I just think uh that is the part that I'm confident with at the moment, is that part needs to remain. Um, and I I think it it will take a long time for people to feel confident it knowing that there's a bot on the other end of the conversation, even if it looks real and it looks like a human you're having a conversation with. I think that's that's a real struggle for people.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Do you know what though? Saying all of this, I've just kind of like so Jake was telling me how he was talking to um his uh his talks to ChatGPT in the car, um just going backwards forwards. So I've been doing it, and I've on that I was like, you know, actually it's quite interesting, I'm gonna give that a go. And it is super interesting how much of a conversation it actually feels like. Yeah, I was talking to it about um how to map geeky about how to map data so that AI can read it. Um and the conversation we were having was very fluid, um, it was very interesting. It was it was directed by me though, because I was quite in it, you know, kind of.

SPEAKER_01:

But then it's that's that's kind of a technical subject matter. Yeah. I'd be interested to hear if you could have a sort of a more deep um sort of emotional type.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and he's like dringing it out without just kind of taking your first answer and then kind of move moving on. It's like knowing when you know the emotional uh point, but I suppose they'll probably be able to do that at some point with knowing the pitch in your voice and uh the way you look and your facial expression, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01:

You mentioned Saturn. Yeah, Saturn can identify vulnerability in the conversation, yeah, with the by the tone of your voice, tone of your voice and thing, subjects that you bring uh different areas. So if you talk about the fact that you might have recently been divorced, I mean you've had a close family member that's recently died, that is a sign of vulnerability, so it'll extract that. Um and some advice has miss those things, so it's also the opportunity to not miss well, it doesn't miss exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

That's the thing, isn't it? It just doesn't miss, it doesn't have an off day, yeah. Um, which is which is interesting, and you know, kind of talking about kind of off days and stuff, I suppose that kind of segues in nicely to talk maybe talking about how AI will impact our exams. So we obviously did a session recently on CFP. Um, you know, you took, you know, you talked in-depth in that about how much time that you actually, you know, the bulk of it was actually spending the time building out your spreadsheet. Uh, for those that haven't watched the episode, uh, you should watch it for sure. Um, but it was really interesting to understand that a lot of the eight weeks that JJ had to do the CFP um case study was spent building out this model, this financial model. Now, with AI, you that might be must be able to do a lot of that lifting for you, uh.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly. And when we were having that conversation, you made exactly the right point. Is um to be able to do that, you're gonna have to be really familiar with AI. Yeah. And know exactly how to train it and the prompts and uh and things like that uh that that need to be built in. Uh, not necessarily suggesting that people find shortcuts uh for see for doing the CFP, but um it it provides a challenge for for us and for uh organizations with qu courseworks and exams to think about how we have we um do we have to pivot away from that type of exam style because it's too easy for people to be able to manipulate. But then also you could look at it from if if you are able to train an AI bot to be able to build it, you are competent enough to be able to build it yourself. Yeah. Um so is it a problem? Um, not necessarily as long as you actually know the right questions and the right things to to do to build it properly. Um why not be able to use it? I think we're I think we're probably gonna get to a point where it everyone just accepts that it's gonna be a feature of life.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's like it's so I was I was listening to Sam Altman the other day when they released GPT 5 and he was talking about it on an interview, and he was saying, your kids will look back and go, God, our parents had it really hard. You know, like they did they didn't have all these tools around them to make their life super easy. Um and the amount of time imagine wasting your time on I don't know, typing out a you know, an essay or something like that. Well, why why would you do it? You know, like on a and maybe you know, may maybe that's it. Maybe the the exam um the exam boards start to embrace it and all right, great, people are gonna use it. That's a fact, rather than try and detect how they're using it, why don't we let them use it, but we'll make it you know more difficult or more in line with what they because if it's going that way, like surely that should be part of it, which is they should be teaching you how to use in it, use it, not teach you, you know, not to use it or to try and deter use.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, for sure. And um, I think our generation's pretty good at abracing change and uh and things like that. I think older generations might find that more difficult. But if you talk about our kids, I used to watch video cassettes and have to sit there five minutes rewinding a video cassette. My kids now don't even wouldn't even know what a DVD is. Uh so you think about how far things advance and how quickly they advance, and this is just gonna speed that up.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um so yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting. I was talking to Duncan uh who owns Tab the other day, and he was getting all excited about he's like, you know, like Netflix, YouTube they're gonna get blown out of the water. Google has now got this thing where you can actually make your own videos, like super real life on whatever you want. Like, you know, that's the future, that's where kind of look you make up your own story in Lappen. And I was like, but I quite like watching that, I quite like my numbing, like watching someone to something else someone has done. So I think yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting, like how how it evolves and um and where it goes and and how far people take it. Um but it's you know, I think the the common theme here is is it's uh it's definitely an enabler. For sure. So obviously, we've talked a little bit how we use it in uh our firms. You know, our firms are fairly large IFA now. Um we're using it to scale, to serve more clients, you know, effectively and efficiently, um, and to ensure that we can provide more value to our clients efficiently, provide a quicker service, a better service to our clients, and that's not saying quicker means better, but you know, people want things quicker and they want things cheaper. Yep, like those two things will always remain true. So, you know, if you look at that, how do you how do you use AI to do that? And you definitely can use it to lower uh the costs associated with giving advice and the speed at which you which you deliver it. We we we've talked on that. How do you reckon the smaller firms are gonna uh adopt it? Um, and do you think a lot of them will? Because bearing in mind the average age for financial planner in the UK is 55, which you know this is probably being really ageist, but I would imagine would be less likely to embrace AI than maybe someone who is who is younger. Do you reckon they're gonna get left behind?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, for sure. I think if you don't embrace AI, you're not learning about it, you're not finding ways to build it into your business, you will be left behind. Um I think things like multiples on your business and things like that, that that will be impacted. Um I think that um I think that for smaller firms that do embrace it, it can have a dramatic impact on them. Yeah. Because they're not able to be, they're really struggling with profitability because the regulatory costs and things like that uh are increasing the limit on how many clients you can have because it's so burdensome from an admin perspective and that sort of thing. If you can drastically reduce your headcount, do things quicker and more efficiently, look after more clients, that changes very quickly, doesn't it? Um so I think that there's a there's an opportunity there uh for those smaller firms. Any any firm that is embracing it um uh will will be okay, I think, but you'll be left behind if you don't. And something you mentioned earlier was a bit of a light bulb moment for me where you were talking about Beluga and our knowledge bank and the the tool uh for that that knowledge tool. You mentioned about I think Morgan Stanley or or another firm's uh got that. We're now I I think um there's a situation we we obviously have three and a half billion dollars under management. We're not small, but compared to a Morgan Stanley, we're tiny. Yeah. Um, but we are able to build things into our business. Lots of technology and stuff like that in the past with big enhancements and big uh useful tools was kind of priced out for firms like us relative to those big firms. We're able to operate at a much uh more sophisticated level with the introduction of AI. Yeah. Uh if we can build it in. Um, we also have the advantage of we don't have legacy technology which doesn't interact particularly well with AI. Um, but yeah, long answer. Uh, but I think if you are embracing AI, you do all you've got a positive future. If you're not, I think you should be because you you're at risk of being left behind.

SPEAKER_00:

You could be that first billion dollar uh advisor that we were that we were talking about. I think I think for small firms, um it's gonna be a struggle. I do genuinely believe in it. Because also what I notice a lot with smaller one uh one-man bands is they are very siloed. Yes. So you only know what's going on, and it's like an echo chamber, you only hear what you are saying, there's no outside influence. Yeah, and I think you know, for a lot of people, they want to work on their own because they want to do things their way, they're therefore less likely to be aware or you know, looking at what's going on. I mean, I would say that we as a business are pretty far along the use case. The only reason why we are pretty far along, or we're probably ahead of others in terms of how we're using it, is because we have a technology team of 25 people. If it was just filled with financial planners who don't really understand what's going on in the space, you can't you can't keep up to date. I mean, it it's moving so quickly, and there's so much that you can do. It's it's very difficult. I mean, most of the stuff on AI here from is from Mansell and Juan and people like that. They're telling me what's going on and telling me I should have a look at this. Like it you will struggle to to actually understand the true capabilities of it. We joke, I mean, we speaking to Julia earlier, and she was saying, you know, putting your grocery list on it. I mean, that's what people are using it for. They're using it for like that much of what um you know what it's what it's capable of. Um, and it'll be really interesting to to see uh to see how it goes, uh, how it goes. I know we are heavily investing into it at the moment, um because I see it as the future and I and I see it as the way to go. I think you do have to be mindful with it that a lot will change quite quickly. So therefore focusing on the things that are unlikely to change. So for me, at the moment, it's undergoing. Getting your data in order and making sure that you've got a lot of data to feed into it because that's not going to change. It would always work better if it has more learning. If you can give it more learning over a longer period of time, it's going to provide you with better outcomes. So focusing on that won't change. The models are changing at like lightning speed. I mean, GPT-5's out, that's got rid of all the individual GPTs now that you use. It's better for coding. It's giving you it's more of a generalist tool. And then obviously you've got the other LLMs that are obviously maybe more specific on different tasks. But yeah, you've got to keep up with the times, otherwise, otherwise you're going to get left behind, aren't you? For sure.

SPEAKER_01:

You mentioned the pace of evolution. How quickly do you think things change, and what do you think our professional industry will look like in say three to five years versus ten years?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you've seen it. I mean, this time last year, how much were we talking about AI and how much we were using it in our business? We're using it there or thereabouts, but nowhere near to the extent that we're using it today. I would say, you know, the we have the opportunity to integrate AI and reduce headcount by 80% from what we would need. That's not 80% of what we've currently got, because I believe the what exactly. Um I, you know, I am super excited. I think that happens in the next three to five years. Amazing. Like I do genuinely believe we will get there very quick. And the stuff that we're building in the background, that is very, very impressive and very, very good. Um, I think you know, we're really starting to cut costs, we're really starting to speed up service, we're really starting to get there with certain things. Um, you know, it's it's it's very, very uh impressive. What things are you doing to kind of stay ahead of the curve and keep up your learning on it?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh well, uh you mentioned we weren't overly uh well, we weren't using the same level as we we are now 12 months ago, and I'll be really honest when I f I I was just starting to look into and understand AI. Um, and I do something, so I'm not sitting in the car talking to AI yet, but um I use AI every day with Chat GPT. We spend a lot of time talking about how it can enhance our business, uh learning and understanding about it and seeing how it we can embrace it and use it in the future um is obviously important for me, for us, uh, so that we make sure that we're we've got a future-proof our business. Uh and we've uh and AI is at the heart of that. Um, so if I'm gonna be left behind if I'm not fully embracing and understanding what what a AI can do. So it's basically just um using it and using the tools, the high-level tools that uh that we can use and then learning more as we go.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Some practical tips that I found that are really good uh on how to keep up to date with it. So actually just signing up for the uh for the LLM's training. So OpenAI have shed loads of content, like looking through that. Uh, one of the other things that I'm thinking of doing, and other business owners or other people that are interested might be interested in doing it as well, is actually going to find someone who does this all day, every day, and bring them into the business for to have a chat with my senior team and tell them the stuff that they should be using it, like finding experts so you get better. Yeah, you can fumble around in the dark, but actually a much quicker way to get there is actually to go and seek out people who actively have these use cases and uh and get it. Um I think it's I think it's really uh I think it's really, really important uh to to do and and to make sure you're staying abreast of because otherwise you are gonna get left.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. Well look, I think anything else you want to add on that or not before we go?

SPEAKER_01:

I don't think so. I think we covered it all uh basically. Embrace it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um you're gonna be fan wanted. AI won't replace financial advisors, um, but it will replace parts of what we do. I think is the I think is the message. Um, and you know the winners uh will be those who embrace it and adapt and focus on what AI can't uh what AI can't do, building trust, clarity, guiding people through life's biggest financial decisions is gonna be key. AI won't replace advisors, but advisors who don't use AI will be replaced by those who do. I hope you've uh enjoyed our session today. Really, really great speaking to you. Uh as always, JJ, thank you very much for your time. Um, and yeah, I hope you found that useful. If you did, give us a like and subscribe. Uh, thanks very much, and I hope to see you on the next one soon. Cheers for now.