Back to me again, siblings, after a spirited and erudite maiden Update by Ian last week. We are fortunate to have a wheen – technical term – of fine writers like Ian and Hannah and many others in the lang cat basket; in a time of endless AI slop that’s every kind of valuable. Real people, putting real effort in to getting communication right, because they want to. Or are being paid to, which in late-stage capitalism is the same thing, right?
Ho ho, and of course if the machines are that good then you’ll never know whether this is me, or if I am sitting in a fine restaurant, perhaps nibbling on the odd almond and slice of jamon, a cold glass of amontillado in front of me, prompt-engineering my own way into the abyss. Why the Spanish theme? Because I’ve never done it in the Update and either a) that novelty is what the algorithm has decided is necessary to be believable, or b) it’s a way of secretly pointing out that it’s really me here, in the man-cave close to midnight, grimly tapping away. All without the machines seeing. Dammit.
Having spent two paragraphs on AI, I should really make it the theme for this week, but I’m not going to. So that’s that. Plus there are already a good couple of bits on it out this week – try this one and this one.
Instead, I want to propose a new exam. We could call it CF EleventyBillion or something like that. I’m open to suggestions. The reason I want to propose a new exam isn’t because I want to write the textbook for it – I did that for the old J11 platforms exam back in the day. It’s because there’s a skill I think planners need to be trained on, and it’s not happening.
The skill is this: universe-building. I know that sounds a bit grand, but if we’re going to make a new exam why not make it one people actually want to sit? It came to me when I was speaking at a bunch of conferences last week. I did three in two days; all on different subjects, at least on the surface. Parenthetically, one of them was reflections on having worked in and around the advice sector (though not as an adviser; that was earlier) for 25 years. A quarter century on you lot. Crikey.
Anyway, I did that and a due diligence session on MPS and some stuff on the advice gap and while on one hand it was a mighty pain in the ass, on the other there was definitely a linking theme although I didn’t intend for there to be, and it was universe-building.
It goes like this: you’re all brilliant at tax and wrappers and trusts and all that, and if you’re not then there are these amazing things called paraplanners who are. Big tick. You’re mainly all the way there with the financial planning stuff, and we all know how important that is. You’re elite squadron leader level at protecting your clients from the ineptitudes of the wider industry and taking the pain on their behalf – 100 points for that.
But the shift in power from providers to advisers and planners over the last two decades has led to an explosion in options for every bit of kit required to stitch a proposition together. The planner is required to stand in the middle and create her own universe, while everyone else skulks around outside, looking for wee wormholes.
No-one teaches you how to be a universe creator. They teach you tax and trusts, and investments, and planning and soft skills, and sometimes basic business stuff, but the designing of the universes? Not so much. And with literally millions of potential combinations of platforms and CRMs and all the rest of it, there are a lot of universes out there.
This isn’t total moonbeams. It is quite a lot of moonbeams, but not total. As part of it I’d make sure new advisers were taught the basics of proper due diligence and good procurement. I’d make vendors come clean on which integrations are actually in place and how they work. I’d show how each part has a proper impact on the client outcome. And I’d give examples of good and poor practice to try and help out.
I used to say that most adviser businesses are actually admin shops with some advice and planning tacked on. Ever since platforms cunningly outsourced all the typing in to you that’s been true and it still is – but now I think the main job is universe-building. Because without that no-one will be sitting still long enough to let you put any plans in place.
(And yes, I asked an AI to design me an end to end proposition for a financial planning business. You know that wee horrified emoji with the red cheeks? Yep, that one.)
Your music choice this week is from one of the bands I’m going to see on Saturday because it’s going to be magic and I’m excited. You haven’t had any Eluveitie this year, so here is some; please enjoy The Prodigal Ones. You know, I’m not sure those instruments are even plugged in.
