When I first entered this profession, I had no idea what financial advice really was. I did not understand what it could do, or what it could mean, for someone’s life. Three years later, I do. And that realisation is the reason I have decided this is what I want to do for the rest of my career.
I started as a part-time Client Service Officer, studying alongside work, figuring things out as I went. I am now a full-time Associate Adviser completing a Graduate Diploma of Financial Planning. What changed between then and now was not just experience or qualifications. It was understanding. Understanding what it actually means to sit across from someone, help them make sense of their finances, and play a part in shaping what their future looks like.
That is what this profession does. And right now, it is changing in ways that will allow it to do that for more Australians than ever before.
When I started in 2023, finalising a file note meant deciphering an adviser’s handwritten notes across several sheets of paper and carefully typing them into a template, or transcribing a long unformatted block of text from a voice recording with no punctuation, no paragraph breaks, no structure. It was meticulous, time-consuming work. Today, the same outcome is achieved in under ten minutes through an AI-powered tool that captures the meeting, structures the summary, and generates a draft file note automatically.
That is just one example. But it points to something much bigger.
What AI is doing in practice right now
Let me be specific, because the reality of how AI is being used in financial advice today is something most people, including many inside the profession, do not fully appreciate.
Many financial planning firms across Australia are already embedding AI into how they operate every day. A Statement of Advice (SOA) that once took days of careful drafting can now be generated in approximately 30 minutes. Financial modelling that previously required an adviser to manually work across multiple software platforms is now completed within a single integrated application. Client-facing presentation documents, designed, structured, and summarised from the advice itself, can be produced in minutes.
For anyone unfamiliar with the profession, the SOA is the centrepiece of financial advice. It is the formal document that captures a client’s full financial situation, their goals, and the adviser’s recommendations. It carries significant legal weight under Australian law. It used to take days. It now takes 30 minutes.
This is not a small shift. It is a fundamental change in how much an adviser can do and how many people they can help.
The real question: What does this mean for access to advice?
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, made a point in his commencement address to Carnegie Mellon University’s graduating class earlier this year that stuck with me. For years, experts predicted radiologists would be among the first professionals replaced by AI. The prediction turned out to be exactly wrong. More radiologists are being hired now as a result of AI, not fewer, because technology freed them to see more patients and focus on what they were actually trained to do: diagnose disease, not just read images.
The parallel to financial advice is hard to ignore.
Australia currently has around 15,000 practising financial advisers, down nearly 50% from 28,900 in 2019 (Driscoll, 2026). At the same time, an estimated 16.4 million Australians indicated a need for help or guidance on finance related matters (Cambourne, 2024). The gap between the people who need help and the professionals available to help them is wide and growing.
AI will not close that gap on its own. But it gives every adviser the capacity to do more. When an SOA takes 30 minutes instead of days, when file notes write themselves, when financial modelling is completed in a single application, an adviser can help more people. Not by cutting corners, but by spending less time on process and more time on people.
This is why AI in financial advice is not a story about replacement. It is a story about reach.
But here is what AI cannot do
For all that AI can produce, process, and automate, there is one thing it cannot replicate: the human relationship at the heart of financial advice.
Financial decisions are rarely just financial. They are emotional, personal, and deeply tied to what people value and what they fear. A client who has just received a serious health diagnosis and wants to immediately liquidate their life savings does not need a document. They need a person, someone who knows their history, understands what they are really afraid of, and can sit with them in that moment and help them think clearly.
A client approaching retirement after decades of hard work is not just making an investment decision. They are making a decision about what the rest of their life looks like. That conversation requires trust built over years, not an algorithm.
People make better financial decisions when they feel understood, not just advised. They stay the course through difficult markets because they trust their adviser, not because a model told them to. They take action on things they have been avoiding for years because someone they respect encouraged them to. That dynamic, human to human, is something no amount of technological capability changes.
More capacity, same heart
What excites me most is not the technology itself. It is what the technology makes possible for the people on the other side of the table.
Think about the Australian who has been putting off getting advice because they assumed it was too expensive or too complicated. Think about the family navigating retirement without anyone to turn to, or the young person drowning in debt with no idea where to start. These are the people the advice gap is leaving behind. AI is changing that equation. When the administrative burden shrinks, the human work expands. More clients seen, more conversations had, more Australians with someone genuinely in their corner.
I came into this profession not knowing what it could do. Three years later, I cannot imagine doing anything else. Not because of the technology, not because of the tools, but because of what happens when a person finally feels like someone understands their situation and has a plan to help them through it.
That is what financial advice does. And with the right technology behind us, we can do it for more Australians than ever before. That is worth fighting for. That is worth building a career around.
References
Cambourne, K., 2024. More than 10m Australians open to seeking financial advice. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ifa.com.au/more-than-10-million-australians-open-to-seeking-financial-advice/
[Accessed 01 July 2026].
Driscoll, A., 2026. Adviser numbers drop nearly 2 per cent in Q1. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ifa.com.au/adviser-numbers-drop-nearly-2-per-cent-in-q1/
[Accessed 01 07 2026].
Curious to learn more? Explore the Become A Financial Planner Now and Roles in Financial Advice pages of this website or contact FAAA at [email protected].
