HomeGame 6
You’ll get everything you normally get from a lang cat event, but this time we’re inviting you to Leith – our actual home. It’s going to be mostly Scottish.
You’ll get everything you normally get from a lang cat event, but this time we’re inviting you to Leith – our actual home. It’s going to be mostly Scottish.
HomeGame 6 isn’t just another HomeGame. It’s a homecoming for the lang cat. This year we bring our annual event to just a few hundred metres from The Lang Cat Port Authority (that’s our head office) and we want to invite you to join us for an event quite unlike any other.
HomeGame this year lands at a time when the financial advice market has lots of new things to think about. For decades now, the profession has had a trump card – “yeah but if you want actual financial advice then this is the only place you can get it.”
That’s not true any more – or is it? We already know that general AI tools are widely used by clients not only to find out what to do with their money, but even to check recommendations or provide guidance on what to do when you meet an adviser. Alongside this, the D2C market is exploding; growth of the two channels used to be like tramlines but now the direct market is sprinting ahead.
All in all it’s a good time to work out what’s what out there. And that’s what we’re going to do.
We know AI is giving advice, or what consumers perceive to be advice. What we don’t know is how consistent that advice is, or how good it is. It might be decent. It might be a bin fire. Most in our industry are afraid of the former and hoping for the latter. The only way to know for sure is to put it to the test.
Here’s how it’s going to work.
The storied, dilapidated, regenerating and peerless Leith Theatre will turn into our communal AI lab for the day and will host an event unlike anything financial services has seen before. The audience won’t be sitting and listening. You’ll be working in teams, making decisions, prompting AI tools and – hopefully – disagreeing loudly with each other whilst having a thoroughly enjoyable time.
Before that the day will open the way a lang cat event always opens: with research, honesty, doomed attempts at entertainment, and the scene set for the sessions to come.
Then we do something really risky.
Every table becomes a client: the same client. Every client has an AI terminal already hooked up to one of the big generative models that clients typically use. You’ll receive a client brief, written the way a real person writes about their own financial life: incomplete, slightly emotional, and missing the things they don’t know they don’t know. You’ll find out more about yourself as the day progresses and use that information to prompt your AI more fully. We ask the audience to don a veil of ignorance and pretend to be a client – no cheeky prompts saying “are you sure my portfolio will be optimised according to Markowitz’s efficient frontier theory?” or anything like that. Each table will have a Highheidyin[1] to make sure everything runs smoothly.
At the end, you’ll ask your AI to summarise what it’s told you and to recommend your next actions. We will gather that all together using witchcraft and Ancient Wisdom and will give the audience an initial playback before fuller details are published later on.
Throughout, a small crack team of roving camerapeople and hosts will, er, rove and find out how everyone is getting on.
While all this is going on, a small team of financial planners will be going through the same exercise also enabled with AI, but rather than a general system they’ll be using a leading adviser-focused AI tool. They won’t agree on everything, but they’ll need to come up with a consensus view. That will give us a benchmark against which we can measure the outputs from the tables.
At the end, we’ll have 35 or so exercises which are all based off exactly the same data, produced at exactly the same time. The only difference will be the prompts each table/client chooses.
From that we will learn a lot. We’ll be able to see if we think the “advice” is actually advice or not. Whether it falls inside the definition or not, we’ll be able to see if we think it’s any good. And we’ll be able to see how consistent or not it all is.
One of three outcomes are possible: the advice is consistent and good. It’s consistent and bad. Or it’s not consistent at all. Whatever the outcome, you’ll leave properly equipped to consider what if any impact AI plus D2C may have on you, and how to respond when (not if) clients bring a new robot friend to their next meeting.
This will take up most of our day, but we do have a bit of time spare to talk about wider industry issues, hear from planners doing interesting things, think about the regulatory response to all of this and how to navigate that, and more. We are also waiting with giddy excitement for a special guest to be confirmed who we know you’ll love to hear from.
No-one has tried anything like this before in our sector; possibly anywhere. It’s going to be quite a ride. And it’s all going to happen in our home – Leith. We don’t ask you into our house unless we’ve got something very special prepared. And also fine food and drinks sourced from local suppliers. When you come to the lang cat’s gaff, you get taken care of. Those are the rules.
So if you want to take a chance on the bunch that first brought you live financial planning on stage at New Blood last year and have a reckless disregard for how conferences are meant to be run, then get your tickets booked now.
[1] A boss, in Scots, literally “high head one”.
Come with us to Leith. Come home.
THE PRACTICALITIES
The date to mark in your calendars is Wednesday 7 October – join us in person on the day. There is no streaming option – you’ve got to be there!
Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, tickets are free for advice professionals working at an advice firm; so advisers, planners, paraplanners, compliance and admin fill your boots (if you work for a huge provider with an advice offshoot you only qualify if you’re in an advice-giving or paraplanning role).
Everyone else is asked to buy tickets at a cost of £100 plus VAT.
CPD
This event will provide 5 hours of structured CPD. Certificates will be sent out to attendees in the weeks following the event.
THE VENUE
For more on the venue, travel information and tickets, click here or use the button at the top of the page.
10.30 |
Doors open |
11am |
Welcome |
11:10 |
How this is going to work |
11.50 |
AI Lab: Round 1 |
12:20 |
AI Lab: Round 2 |
12.45 |
Leith Theatre: Why we’re here |
12.55 |
LUNCH |
13.55 |
AI Lab: Round 3 |
14.30 |
Panel: Making AI Sweat |
15.05 |
BREAK |
15.40 |
Keynote: Hollie Davidson |
16:20 |
Playback / Close |
Greg is a Chartered Financial Planner, with 20 years’ experience advising clients, plus a few years in agency side marketing in the middle. He set up a financial planning team at law firm WBD, before founding 11.2 Financial Planning, a boutique financial planning and multi-family office, in 2019. Away from work, he is a youth football coach, keen trail runner, reader and photographer, mainly of his dog Scout.
Hollie Davidson is a Scottish professional rugby union referee contracted to the Scottish Rugby Union, and one of the most groundbreaking officials in the sport’s history. A former Scotland Under-20 player who studied economic history at the University of Edinburgh before spending two years in banking which she gave up in 2017 to become Scotland’s first full-time professional female referee. Her list of firsts continues to grow. In November 2025 she became the first woman to referee an All Blacks test match, refereeing Wales vs New Zealand in Cardiff. On 14 February 2026, she became the first woman to referee a Six Nations men’s match, taking charge of Ireland v Italy in Dublin, and on 18 April 2026 she became the first woman to referee a Top 14 match, between Clermont-Auvergne and Lyon. She has also refereed two Women’s Rugby World Cup finals (2021 and 2025) — a feat matched only by South Africa’s André Watson — and in 2025 was inducted into the Scottish Rugby Hall of Fame, the same year she was named World Rugby Referee of the Year. Now firmly established as one of the game’s most respected officials, Davidson continues to break new ground with every appointment, cementing her place as one of rugby’s most influential figures on and off the pitch.
Spentwell was started by Keith Boyes – a Chartered Financial Planner with over a 18 years of industry experience and hatred of industry jargon. Keith’s worked in many of the industry’s biggest financial planning firms and had a spell in Hong Kong, advising ex-pats. He’s motivated by the little moments of joy that sound financial planning allows. Helping people get the most they possibly can from life is a constant source of satisfaction. He lives in Blackhall, Edinburgh and loves Anna, his two adorable little daughters, family and friends, coffee, eating out, the occasional gin and tonic, travelling and playing any sport that involves a ball. Especially football. He’s a Director of The Spartans Football Club and you’ll find him there most Saturdays (when the kids allow!) – come rain or very occasional shine.
Wendy has been with Acumen Financial Planning for seven years, moving from paraplanning to financial planning. Based in Edinburgh, she works with clients to understand what they want from life and helps them build a plan to make it happen. Alongside her planning work, she has been involved in researching and implementing AI solutions, something she believes has real value for the profession and the people it looks after.
We provided the research for a report, in conjunction with Parmenion, which reveals how far short of expectations many adviser platforms are falling. The research found that over the last 12 months, 88% of advisers needed to apologise to at least one of their clients on behalf of a platform, and that poor service delivery from platforms impacts 91% of advisers every day.
We provided the research for a report, in conjunction with Parmenion, which reveals how far short of expectations many adviser platforms are falling. The research found that over the last 12 months, 88% of advisers needed to apologise to at least one of their clients on behalf of a platform, and that poor service delivery from platforms impacts 91% of advisers every day.
Service means a lot of things to a lot of different people. It’s so subjective it can be hard to put your finger on. This paper aims to challenge the status quo and inertia that’s built up in the sector for many years.
