Real experiences from the advice community

The world is changing, fast. Technology, and particularly AI, is shifting the balance of where advisers spend their time, away from the more technical processes of planning to where human judgement and empathy make the greatest difference.

At the same time, socio-economic and demographic shifts are reshaping what clients need from financial advisers. Nowhere is this more evident than at the point of retirement, as we will explore in this guide, supported by Standard Life.

Financial advisers who truly understand the whole client – their fears, motivations, life experiences, preferences and emotional relationship with money – and who help clients uncover and understand these aspects of themselves, consistently tell us they see significant benefits:

• Deeper and longer client relationships

• Competitive differentiation

• Enhanced trust

• Compliant processes; better suitability

• Better long term client outcomes

• Satisfied staff

This guide is not about replacing traditional planning practices, but enhancing them by considering human behaviour more deeply. You understand this intuitively but are you creating the conditions for it to happen consistently? This isn’t necessarily about rigid processes or scripted conversations. Some financial advice firms do this by simply slowing down and listening more deeply. Others build it into their processes with specific tools and frameworks that work at scale, or that ensure every client gets this experience, not just the ones you connect with naturally.

Methodology

The findings in this guide are based on:

• 9 in-depth interviews with financial planners, conducted between 14 May and 17 July 2025
• 3 in-depth interviews with behavioural finance specialists and a financial psychotherapist
• Quantitative data analysis is based on an online survey of 200 financial advice professionals, conducted between 2 and 10 June 2025.