Afternoon. Ben here, having not done that thing you always made sure to do at school which is making sure you were physically sitting on your hands when the teacher asked for a volunteer. More fool me.
But it’s fine, as I quite like writing the TCWU, if only to subject Mark and Mike to my deliberately contentious (in their minds) music choices. More on that later.
Plus, I promise not to mention mince pies as I did around this time 12 months ago. I’ve only had a couple so far…oh.
But back to business, and I did deliberately put my hand up a couple of months ago, to join a ‘not dedicated to financial services’ webinar on practical uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI), hosted by a good friend of mine. I’ve been to plenty of events in the last few months, including our own Catwalk back in June (did we say, we’re doing it again next year, sign up here!) and it was great to be able to share a bit about our research and experience in this area.
The summary is that it’s mainly about the data; how you gather it and keep it up to date, yes, and of course how you can interrogate it to help your clients. But most importantly it’s about how you keep it safe, as without this the other stuff falls apart. I think we all know by now that it’s not at all sensible to simply drop the transcript from a client meeting into ChatGPT and get it to generate you a suitability letter, but we do still hear about personal data being used incorrectly, be this when using AI or otherwise.
Most advisers, wealth managers, paraplanners or anyone else involved in the process of providing financial advice will probably use a CRM, and one with a decent client portal is a good idea; but then how to build on this solid base and develop a piece of AI-enabled technology that can really help the end client get a faster, better performing, and possibly even lower cost, outcome? The concept of ‘if we build it, they will come’ is not a new one, but it’s very hard to get that right – even if you’re a big advocate of using new technologies, will your clients trust it? So, before you rush out and buy something with AI in the title because it sounds cool or grab a ChatGPT connection and build something yourself (other LLMs are available), speak to your clients and interrogate your data to get it right first time.
But who really trusts AI? We’ve used the graphic below, originally from our State of the Advice Nation publication from back in February, a few times, and I’m using it here as it shows how our industry is perhaps sceptical about the use of AI in places, but also how we are making progress to adapt to its wider social acceptance.
On a non-AI related note, Mark’s back from South Africa, but then has immediately left again, probably hiding away with all the Pinotage he smuggled back in his luggage waiting for The Budget to launch. He may or may not be back next week, but one thing’s for sure, there will be lots more on The Budget (although it’ll be a few hours late for this Update, unless we change it to the TCTU?), which will at least mean we can all stop speculating, and clients won’t feel they have to make decisions about their retirement plans without knowing the whole story.
And before I go, I have excellent news from The Samaritans, our charity partner for this year: your generosity at HomeGame 4 means they raised over £1,500! Online donations were £1,423, which will go straight to the central charity. They were also given £160 in cash on the day, which will go to their Edinburgh branch which is where local volunteers go to answer calls. This money will go a long way to helping them help others, so a MASSIVE THANK YOU to everyone who donated.
A few people told us they were interested in The Samaritans workplace training, which helps upskill employers to support their staff. There is more information about this on their website, or if you have any questions or specific requirements, the team can be contacted directly at step@samaritans.org.
Now the fun bit. Your music choice this week could have been the obvious, hands-up related Reef number, Place Your Hands, but I’m not a particular fan. So, to keep m’colleagues at least half happy, I’m going with something completely unrelated but still a bit rocky, and a bit of a throwback for me: Bush by Machinehead. Saw them at the Brixton Academy in 1997 and it was good.
