Nathalie Burrows, Editor at EBnet
Financial planning’s future may be increasingly digital, but its value remains deeply personal. That was the thread running through Day 1 of the 2026 FPI Convention: understand the person behind the portfolio, measure what changes in their life, and use technology to make more room for both.
Held at Cape Town’s Century City Conference Centre under the theme “Build to Lead”, Day 1 of the programme brought human capabilities, client outcomes, ethical leadership and AI into the same conversation. Rather than competing priorities, the sessions suggested these are increasingly inseparable parts of good advice.
Listen before you solve
Kim Potgieter’s presentation, “Beyond Technical Capabilities – Human Capabilities that Build Trust”, challenged planners to look beneath what clients say and do. An angry call from a client about falling markets may not really be about markets at all. Underneath the anger could be fear, anxiety or a sense of losing control. Responding only to the behaviour risks missing the person.
Her message was to stay curious. Before explaining, reassuring or recommending, find out what is happening emotionally. Reflecting a client’s feelings back to them helps check understanding and makes space for a more useful conversation. It also requires planners to recognise their own emotions.
That matters for younger planners, too. They do not need to have experienced every loss, divorce or retirement transition to connect meaningfully with someone who has. Understanding the emotion is more important than matching the life experience.
Alongside empathy, Kim highlighted care, curiosity, practical wisdom, self-awareness and deep listening. Practical wisdom means helping clients balance today’s life with tomorrow’s security. Self-awareness means recognising when the planner’s own beliefs are colouring the advice. And listening means resisting the urge to spend the meeting waiting for a turn to speak.
Questions about a first money memory, childhood money messages and what money represents today are therefore not conversational extras. They can help explain why technically sound advice might meet resistance. Her underlying point was compelling: technical expertise establishes what is financially possible; human capabilities help identify what is personally meaningful. Trust needs both.
What changed in their lives?
The panel on measuring the real impact of financial planning picked up that thread. Moderated by Ricardo Teixeira, it brought together Ian Beere, Nicola Langridge, Warren Ingram and Wouter Fourie to explore what the impact of financial planning looks like in real life. Peace of mind, preparedness and the ability to live well emerged as important outcomes, even when they can’t be measured by a neat formula or spreadsheet.
Each panellist shared an experience to convey the impact of the profession – the outward sigh of relief when a client knows they’ll be ok. One story concerned a business owner who appeared financially ready for retirement but remained unhappy. Another example showed how childhood financial insecurity shaped an adult’s extreme caution. The most moving examples involved serious illness and bereavement.
Rather than dismissing that emotions as irrational, understanding their origins in each example helped frame a plan the client could feel comfortable following. A technically efficient solution is not necessarily an effective one if the person cannot live with it.
And the value became visible in what happened afterwards: goals remained supported, decisions had already been considered, and a grieving spouse had someone he trusted. That is preparedness in a much fuller sense than having the right documents filed.
None of this meant abandoning financial measures or lowering technical standards. The panel’s challenge was to broaden the conversation alongside them. Ask whether clients feel more confident, notice behavioural changes and revisit what really matters to them. Not every relationship needs a score, but the difficulty of measuring human outcomes should not make them invisible.
AI needs more human judgement
The closing AI Fintech panel brought an urgent question into the discussion: are advice businesses adopting technology faster than they are learning to govern it?
Moderated by FPI CEO Lelané Bezuidenhout, the panel included Linktank’s Jen Mckay, PROpulsion founder Francois du Toit, Marloo’s Millie O’Brien and Liberty’s Henry Van Deventer. Mckay presented survey findings indicating that 65% of advisers used AI daily, while 75% lacked an AI policy or governance guardrails. Only 20% reported adequate integration across their systems and data.
The concern was not just inaccurate answers. Even apparently straightforward meeting transcription can expose sensitive client information. Adding AI to fragmented systems does not automatically fix the underlying data problem; it can carry those weaknesses into new processes.
Du Toit urged advisers to look beyond whether a tool is free or paid. Licensing, data-processing agreements, privacy terms and record keeping all deserve attention. Opting out of model training is not the same as resolving every privacy concern. His approach was deliberately measured: understand and test the tool before making it part of the advice process.
There was plenty of optimism, too. Van Deventer described opportunities to reduce administration, support compliance processes, identify relevant client conversations and translate complex information into accessible communication. Used well, AI could make advice more personal by freeing planners to spend time on relationships. O’Brien similarly emphasised tools designed around advisers’ actual workflows and the need for practical guidance on responsible adoption.
But a human in the loop must be an informed human. Bezuidenhout pushed back against the idea that AI reduces the need for technical expertise: without that expertise, how will a planner recognise a wrong answer? The panel’s message was to strengthen technical competence, ethical accountability and interpersonal skills together.
Leadership beyond the checklist
Rianne Potgieter’s session on principles-based regulation and principled action in the AML/CFT context offered a useful lens for that responsibility. She distinguished following a rule from understanding its purpose, and principles-based regulation from the risk-based decisions that put those principles into practice. Greater discretion brings greater responsibility: the question becomes not merely whether something is allowed, but whether it is right.
In “Together we Build, together we Lead”, PPS group CEO Izak Smit returned to the purpose of helping people live the lives they want. He also outlined a “life operating system” PPS is developing, envisaged as a brand-agnostic platform connecting financial planning with broader life goals and adviser engagement. His ambition was technology that deepens relationships at scale, not another tool that leaves money disconnected from life.
As technology reshapes financial advice, planners need to double down on their humanness: listening with curiosity, responding with empathy and building the trust that turns a financial plan into meaningful support for a life.
Looking forward to Day 2!
ENDS
