Nathalie Burrows, Editor at EBnet
If a client can ask an AI tool to analyse their investments before breakfast, what exactly are they paying a financial planner for?
It’s an uncomfortable question. But it’s also a useful one that ran through the content of Day 2 of the 2026 FPI Convention in Cape Town. Under the theme “Build to Lead”, the day’s programme brought together leadership, financial wellness, client experience, trust, culture and the future. Read together, those sessions suggested that tomorrow’s financial planning practice will need more than clever technology. It will need a much clearer understanding of its human purpose.
The opportunity isn’t simply to produce the same financial plan faster. It’s to build a different relationship with clients: more responsive, more personal and more connected to the lives they actually want to live.
And, perhaps surprisingly, the starting point isn’t a software upgrade.
Before upgrading your practice, look in the mirror
Dr Sizakele Marutlulle’s session, “Leading from who you are” was honestly the most powerful talk I’ve heard this year. Her distinction was between positional power, the authority that comes with a title, and personal power, which comes from character, integrity and how we treat people. The latter, she argued, lasts longer.
For financial planners, that raises a question worth sitting with. Does a client trust you because you have impressive credentials, or because they feel understood, respected and safe enough to tell you what’s really going on?
Technical competence matters. But Dr Marutlulle’s invitation was to look beyond status and revisit purpose: why did you enter the profession, and does that motivation still shape how you work? She also challenged assumptions about people, encouraging leaders to stay curious beyond the point where something feels comfortable or familiar.
That’s relevant to advice. The client who doesn’t fit your usual profile, the younger colleague who questions your processes, or the family whose priorities don’t match your expectations may be offering an opportunity to learn.
Future-ready planning starts with the willingness to stop assuming you already know.
Your next competitor might be your client’s AI
Stafford Masie’s session really brought the technology challenge front and centre: clients can now arrive with substantial analytical capabilities of their own and their own research done.
That fundamentally changes the financial planning conversation.
A planner can no longer build an entire value proposition around having information the client can’t access. Masie argued that the real value lies in judgement, confidence, behavioural intervention, accountability and trust, which become particularly important when decisions must be made in an uncertain environment.
When contemplating what he wanted from his financial advisor, he shared the need to have someone to talk to about the deeply personal decisions: his children’s futures, his ambitions and what the money should mean in his life.
And there’s the distinction that much of the two days’ conversations centred around. Portfolio analysis can inform a decision, sure. But it doesn’t automatically resolve a family disagreement or help someone decide whether a bigger house is worth another five years of work.
The future planner’s job is not to defend every task against automation. It is to recognise which tasks support the relationship, and which parts of the relationship clients genuinely value.
Less friction, not another login
Masie’s vision of technology was also different from the usual “we’ve launched an app” announcement.
He argued that technology becomes truly powerful when it disappears into the experience, for example when you step out of an Uber you don’t need to fiddle with the technology to pay for your ride. Customers want the outcome, not an extended relationship with your technology interface.
Apply this thinking to financial planning, and you should be left with fewer repeated requests for information, less waiting and less administrative homework for clients. Rather a meeting that flows with readily available information, mixed with a deep understanding of where the client is in their journey and what they want from their lives.
The question for a practice becomes: where does our process make the client’s life unnecessarily difficult? Technology should help remove those obstacles. It shouldn’t simply move them from a paper form to a screen.
A healthy portfolio isn’t the whole story
Dr Sonya Lutter’s financial wellness session broadened the definition of a successful outcome. She connected financial wellbeing with psychological, physical and social wellbeing, describing these as interacting parts of a person’s overall life satisfaction. And in her research she found that the one thing that impacted all these elements of wellbeing was the efficient use of time.
That gives planners another way to frame their value to clients. By helping someone organise their money, you’re also giving them back time and reducing the mental load of managing it.
But doing that well requires understanding the person behind the balance sheet. Being curious was mentioned many times throughout the conference.
It’s about personalisation with substance. Not an email with the client’s first name inserted at the top.
The best plan still needs someone to act on it
Lutter also addressed a familiar frustration: the client who leaves with an action list and returns having done absolutely nothing.
Be careful of jumping to the conclusion that clients like this need more education. People differ in their readiness to change, and your advice needs to meet them at whatever stage they’re at. Someone who doesn’t yet see a reason to act is unlikely to be persuaded by another impressive projection.
That connects closely with Masie’s emphasis on behavioural intervention. Better analysis is useful, but helping a person move from understanding to action is a separate skill.
For the future practice, the implication is significant: use the time technology frees up to explore a client’s hesitation, competing priorities and the next manageable step, not just to squeeze another appointment into the diary.
Upgrade your thinking, too
Closing the day with “What the Future!?”, Dr Justin Cohen framed AI as a partner: augmented intelligence rather than a rival. His focus was on the “mental software updates” people need to respond to change, including agility, personal responsibility and a willingness to learn.
He also warned against using AI without engaging your own brain. A thinking partner is not an excuse for you to stop thinking. The practitioner’s experience, judgement and goals still shape the quality of the interaction.
The underlying theme of the 2026 FPI Convention pointed towards humanness as the organising principle for financial planning’s next chapter: character before authority, relationships beyond returns, service without unnecessary friction, and technology that strengthens rather than dilutes judgement.
For a planner, that might mean preparing more efficiently, then using the meeting to ask a better question. For a practice leader, it might mean making room for colleagues to challenge an old process. For a client, it should mean leaving with more than a document: a clearer sense of what matters, what comes next and who will help them follow through to achieve the life they’re wanting to live.
ENDS
