Every few years, a new technology arrives with the promise – or the threat, depending on who’s talking – of making the financial intermediary obsolete. Ones that come to mind are robo-advisers, direct players and algorithm driven underwriting. Each wave generated genuine anxiety and each time the independent financial advisers adapted, endured and, in many cases, emerged stronger.
Artificial intelligence is different. Not because the existential threat is greater (though it may be), but because the opportunity is genuinely transformative. The intermediary practices that engage AI intelligently will operate at a level of sophistication, scale, skills and client service that was simply impossible five years ago. Those who ignore it – or worse, fear it – will be outpaced by those who don’t.
The question is not whether AI will reshape our industry. It already is. The question is whether the independent intermediary channel will shape how AI is used within it, or whether we will be shaped by it.
Let’s be clear about what AI can already do well in our context. Compliance monitoring tools are flagging anomalies before a human reviewer would notice them. Client communication is being drafted, personalised and sent at a scale that would previously have required a team twice the size. Research that once took hours is being synthesised in minutes.
For the small to medium FSP, which represents the backbone of FIA’s member base, this is not a luxury. It is a competitive lifeline. AI levels the playing field between the sole proprietor in Polokwane and the financial planning division of a major banking group. That is genuinely exciting.
For FIA as an organisation, AI has already created new possibilities in how we serve members, how we communicate with members, to more targeted regulatory guidance using our extensive submissions going back almost a decade. Our recently launched MIT V3 data platform is one step in that direction: giving members access to structured, evidence-based insights that support better business decisions.
The accountability doesn’t move
Here is where I want to be direct, because I think the industry conversation sometimes skips this part. AI can draft the client communication. It cannot be held accountable for it. AI can flag a potential compliance gap. It cannot appear before the FSCA to explain why it was missed. AI can suggest a portfolio allocation. It cannot sit with a client whose retirement savings have just been hit by a market shock and help them make sense of what comes next. The current regulatory frameworks that govern our members do not contain an AI exception, the FSP licence sits with a human being, the duty of care sits with a human being/FSP, the relationship and the responsibility remain ours as people.
This is not a cautionary note. It is a professional clarification: AI is a tool of extraordinary power. Like all powerful tools, it amplifies both capability and risk. The advisory business and financial adviser who uses AI to enhance their advice process is better positioned than the one who doesn’t. The financial adviser who uses AI to replace their judgment, or who outsources accountability to an algorithm, is taking on regulatory and reputational exposure they may not have fully considered.
What remains irreducibly human
I have spent nearly a decade leading an organisation whose entire existence is premised on a belief: that the independent intermediary adds value that cannot be replicated by a product provider, a platform or a machine. That belief is not nostalgia. It is evidence-based. What clients value most, in study after study, is not the best-performing fund or the cheapest premium. It is trust. It is the confidence that someone who understands their situation, their family, their business, their risk appetite, their history, is genuinely looking out for them. It is the relationship that means a client picks up the phone when markets fall, rather than making a panic driven decision alone.
AI can analyse sentiment; it cannot build trust. AI can personalise a message, it cannot sit across a table and read the room. AI can optimise a portfolio; it cannot tell a widow what to do with the life cover payout while she is still in shock.
These are not soft claims. They are the commercial moat of the independent intermediary, and they are more defensible now than they were 10 years ago, precisely because AI is making the transactional parts of financial services increasingly commoditised. What remains is the judgment, the relationship, the human presence in moments that matter. These become more valuable as everything else becomes automated.
Equipping the next generation
The challenge we face is not only helping established members integrate AI into existing practices but also ensuring that the next generation of advisers enters the profession with AI fluency as a professional standard.
The young people currently completing their NQF Level 5 qualifications through the Sasria Broker Development Programme, hosted by FIA member firms, will work in an industry where AI is embedded in every workflow. We owe it to ourselves to be thinking ahead about how AI changes operations, what new competencies are required and how the regulator will eventually formalise AI governance within the imminent conduct standards framework.
This is part of our legacy work. FIA’s roots trace back to 1949; we have navigated more transformations than most. What has kept this organisation relevant across more than 75 years is not resistance to change, it is the willingness to lead through it on behalf of members who do not always have the time, resources or regulatory access to navigate it alone.
Own the machine. Use it with discipline, with judgment and with a clear-eyed understanding of where your professional responsibility begins and the algorithm’s ends. Invest in AI literacy within your practice. Stay close to how the regulatory environment is evolving – because it will.
And remember: the reason clients still need you is not because you can process information faster than software. It is because you can do something software cannot.
You can be trusted. That is not a small thing. It is everything.