The Future of Financial Advice: Why Successful Firms Must Think Beyond Technology

From the advice firm of 2030 to the Great Advice Divide, recent industry events have highlighted a fundamental challenge for financial advisers – how to build commercially sustainable businesses that deliver the right outcomes for different clients. 

Across Festival of Finance, Money Marketing Interactive and the Financial Advice Summit, Lifetime Enhance and colleagues from across the wider Tavistock Group have been engaging with advice professionals about the changing demands on their businesses. 

While AI and digital innovation remain important topics, the conversations point towards a broader strategic question: are advice firms building their businesses around the clients they want to serve, or simply adapting technology to existing ways of working? 

The advice firm of 2030: Building a business clients will choose 

At the Festival of Finance in Birmingham, Group Operations Director Andy Wealthall explored what building a successful advice firm that clients will choose would look like and the decisions business leaders need to make today. 

Alongside this, Scott Daniels, Managing Director of Plus Group, hosted two roundtables focused on designing a future-fit advice proposition and the advice firm of 2030. 

The sessions examined how firms can better align their client segmentation, service models, technology and resources with their commercial ambitions. 

A central question was whether firms are continuing to deliver broadly the same proposition to clients with fundamentally different needs. 

Effective segmentation goes beyond categorising clients by portfolio value. It should influence the services clients receive, how those services are delivered and the resources required to support them. 

For firms looking to grow sustainably, understanding which clients they are best placed to serve (and designing propositions accordingly) will become increasingly important. 

The Great Advice Divide: More than an AI conversation 

At Money Marketing Interactive 2026, Andy Wealthall continued this discussion during a plenary session exploring the Great Advice Divide. 

Much of the industry’s debate focuses on technology adoption – whether firms should embrace AI, how quickly they should implement it and which processes they should automate. The truth is that the “divide” runs deeper.  

The challenge is not simply choosing between technology and traditional advice. It is understanding how different clients want to engage, what support they need and how firms can deliver that support efficiently and sustainably. 

AI can help reduce administration, improve workflows and release adviser capacity. However, technology alone cannot determine which clients a business should serve or what its proposition should look like. Those are actually strategic decisions that need to be made by businesses depending on the commercial direction they want to take. The starting point must be the client and the business model, not the technology.  

Turning industry challenges into practical action 

The Financial Advice Summit provided another opportunity to explore the pressures reshaping financial advice, from changing client expectations and regulatory requirements to operational capacity and sustainable growth. 

Across these discussions, several priorities emerge for firms preparing for the future: 

• Segment with purpose: Design propositions around different client needs and commercial realities. 

• Create adviser capacity: Use specialist support, automation and more efficient processes to reduce administrative demands. 

• Protect the human element: Focus adviser expertise on the interactions where personal relationships and professional judgement add the greatest value. 

• Build for sustainable growth: Align people, technology, investment solutions and servicing models with the firm’s strategic objectives. 

The firms best positioned for the future will be those prepared to rethink how they operate, rather than simply adding new technology to existing processes. 

Supporting the next generation of advice businesses 

Through Lifetime Enhance and the specialist capabilities available across the wider Tavistock Group, we support advice firms seeking to build more efficient, scalable and commercially sustainable businesses. 

Our client carve-out proposition enables firms to adopt an alternative servicing approach for clients with lower portfolio values, helping advisers focus their resources on their core client relationships while supporting appropriate ongoing client outcomes through Lifetime.