Paraplanners are already seeing jobs being lost to the AI note taker – FT Adviser

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Financial services companies are already seeing entry level roles and paraplanning roles disappear due to AI, a panel has warned.

Damian Zhang, paraplanner with Quilter Cheviot, told attendees at the Empowering Advice Through Technology conference that the “world of paraplanning was changing significantly”.

“There are fewer starter roles; we are already seeing this. I predict we will end up with a smaller number of paraplanners, but these will become chartered and focus on ultra-high net worth and estate planning.”

This is a result of AI being employed across financial advice companies to do basic administrative and report-writing tasks.

However, Zhang said it was important for paraplanners to become the people who are “prompting and inputting and understanding” how these systems work, so that the very best outputs are created, and there is always a knowledgeable human in the loop.

“We are at a caveman stage with AI. You have to train it.”

He also said a “robot was just a robot” at the end of the day and while AI will eventually do a lot of the roles a paraplanner used to do, companies will still need an experienced paraplanner.

“It shows the client there is a huge team behind the adviser, which is vital for trust and transparency.”

Also on the panel, which was hosted by FTRC founder Ian McKenna, was Bertie Scott-Hopkins, founder of EXE Capital Management.

He said the company did have a paraplanner (one) but the “end goal” for that person was to become a financial adviser.

According to Scott-Hopkins, the company has adopted the AI technology on offer from Marloo, which can do all the note taking and is “starting to take over the paraplanning role”.

Similarly, fellow panellist Toby Bentley, director of Bentley Wealth Partners, said advice firm owners had a “lot of decisions to make”.

He said one of these big decisions was working out what systems could be integrated into the business to optimise it operationally “from a lens of profitability and long-term scalability”, and AI was “changing everything”.

Bentley said: “Some people struggle to write live notes with their clients and to focus on them at the same time. With these AI note takers, you can be fully present with your client.”

While a poll taken on the day among the audience found the majority of attendees had not changed their use of paraplanners because of AI, Zhang and others said change was coming fast, and companies would need to adapt.

The panel agreed it was a challenge to find these entry-level roles, which are much needed. McKenna cited a figure from the True Potential conference in Birmingham (January 27), where one speaker said there were fewer than 200 advisers under the age of 25 coming into the industry in 2025.

The panel suggested there should be more, dedicated industry infrastructure to help identify how to migrate the talent it has have among paraplanners into new roles.

McKenna added: “If these basic levels of jobs will be lost to AI, how do we train up new people to come into the industry?”

Advice opportunities

The discussion also focused on how AI could be used to create “advice opportunities”, due to popular AI systems being rolled out in the US.

According to McKenna: “Call it creepy or clever, but there are systems advisers can use which constantly scrape wider social media to notify advisers when anything happens in the clients’ lives.

“A promotion announced on Linkedin is an advice trigger. A new baby announcement or an engagement. Of course, we’d need to do it in a tactful and subtle way.”

The panellists agreed this could be useful, if a little creepy, but it would need to be done tactfully and not erode clients’ trust.

Scott-Hopkins also said “trust” was the main challenge initially when it came to adopting AI, but the margin of error was “getting less and less”.