Financial adviser / financial planner — tasks, one by one

Finding out the client's situation

Online forms, risk questionnaires and account data now collect much of this before a meeting, and Singapore's financial regulator has set out conditions under which a fully automated service may advise on less information. What forms do not capture well — a client's real worries, a coming change in a family, the answer behind the answer — still comes out in conversation with an adviser.

This rests on the tools and one regulator's framework rather than on a record of how advisers now spend this part of their time.

Recommending what fits

Singapore's law requires a licensed firm to have a reasonable basis for a recommendation, grounded in the client's objectives, financial situation and needs — and a licensed firm may meet that through an algorithm as well as through a person. So the rule shapes how recommendations are made rather than who makes them. For simple needs, software now recommends a portfolio on its own; for anything involving several products, tax, a business or a family, the adviser's judgement carries more of it.

This is an inference about how the work is split between software and advisers; the rule it cites governs how advice is given, not whether a person gives it.

Building and rebalancing portfolios for smaller investors

Banks now sell this as a product rather than a meeting. One Singapore bank's managed-portfolio service, announced for customers with no prior investment experience from SGD 1,000, uses portfolios put together with the bank's investment strategists and rebalanced when necessary, bought online. For a small account, that route does not pass through an adviser at all.

One bank's announcement shows the route exists and who it is for; it does not show how many small investors take it instead of seeing an adviser, and larger or more complicated portfolios are a different matter.

Documenting advice and compliance

Software that drafts advice records from meeting notes or recordings, fills in disclosure forms and checks for missing steps takes over much of the writing. The adviser still has to check that what the record says is what was advised, because the record is what the firm answers for.

This rests on what the software can do rather than on a record of how many advisers use it.

Staying with the client over time

A new child, a job loss, an inheritance or a falling market are the moments clients most want to talk to a person they trust. Even the bank service cited here describes its portfolios as watched over by its investment specialists; the reassurance and the change of plan are relationship work.

This rests on the nature of the work rather than on a record, and younger clients may come to accept more of it from an app.

Checking advice clients bring from software

Clients increasingly arrive having already asked software what to do. Part of the adviser's work becomes checking that advice against the client's whole situation and explaining the gap — work that did not exist before the tools did.

This is an inference about where the work is heading, not a measurement of how often clients bring such advice.