“Are financial advisers under threat from AI?”

Jan 4, 2024 | Financial Services

An independent (financial adviser’s) view

We’ve been going AI crazy in recent months. Will it be the end of the world as we know it? Will robots rule and leave us Matrix-like, wired-up and dreaming? Will chatbots replace financial advisers and make financial advice affordable for the young and older unadvised? Our regulator, and perhaps those running giant investment-come-advice firms with call centres, are hoping that ‘simplified’, AI-driven non-advice will be at least a part of the future. It may, but if it does, it will, I believe, cement the niche that we and other minnows of the financial services world occupy as real people who can talk to people who need people. Which many, or certainly enough, will continue to do.

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“HMRC: ‘digitalising tax process could close gap’”

“HMRC: ‘digitalising tax process could close gap’”

You, like a majority of both taxpayers and accountants, may have been sweating and cursing over a keyboard last week to submit a last-minute tax return. Many by the end of that accursed process will have been shouting ‘bring back paper!’, a vain and pointless hope, I’m afraid.