In various presentations and discussions at last week’s big Personal Finance Society Conference, various advisers told us of their business models and of how ours should or might be. One runs a ‘lifestyle business’, working four days a week, seeing clients only at 10am Mon-Thurs and always taking a long lunch – his team, apparently, do the rest. Another talks of ‘over servicing’, ‘I’m genuinely open 24-7 to all of my clients’. One constant was the role – more precisely the potential role – of AI in all this. Many, including our regulator, think it will ‘empower’ us to offer advice to the masses who currently cannot afford or maybe just avoid us. Another take, however, is that its place will only ever be to free us up from the many backroom tasks which take so much of our time, report-writing, researching and endlessly documenting every word in case some claims management company comes after us in twenty years’ time. And that, ultimately, this will never cease to be a people business, and without a reborn supply of the right (young) people, there will not be much that we can do to ‘physically scale advice’.
Should we be rethinking ‘low risk’ investment portfolios?
When we talk about risk, more generally means more shares, less more bonds. The rationale being that, when shares are sold, the money generally goes to lower risk investments.
