Part 2 of 2 | The digitally enabled adviser series
Recently I wrote about new Anthropic research showing that financial guidance is one of the most overrepresented AI use cases in Australia. That the advice gap is being filled — not by the industry, but by a general-purpose AI that any Australian can access for free.
If you read that piece and felt the urgency, this one is for you.
The question is not whether digital tools and AI are relevant to your practice. That debate is settled. The question is where you are on the spectrum from digitally aware to digitally native — and what the next honest move is from wherever you stand.
The four stages of digital enablement
Not every practice needs to be at Stage 4. But every practice needs to know which stage they are at, and have a deliberate plan for what comes next.
01 Digitally aware
What it looks like: You understand AI exists and is changing client behaviour. You may have experimented with it personally. But it is not embedded in how your practice operates or how you position your value.
The honest signal: Clients are coming to meetings having already researched their situation with AI. You are not sure what they read or how to address it.
The next move: Build personal fluency before anything client-facing. Commit to 30 intentional hours with an AI tool applied to real work tasks — draft client emails, summarise documents, prepare meeting agendas. Stop evaluating AI. Start developing it as a capability.
02 Digitally active
What it looks like: You use digital tools consistently. Your communication is prompt and channel-appropriate. You have some form of content presence that demonstrates your expertise between meetings.
The honest signal: Your content is inconsistent. You know what questions clients bring to first meetings but you are not systematically addressing them in advance.
The next move: Map the ten questions clients ask most in first meetings. These are the exact questions they put into AI. Build a content answer for each. Schedule one piece per week for 12 weeks. This is not about virality — about being findable and credible when a prospect goes looking.
03 Digitally integrated
What it looks like: AI and digital tools are embedded in your advice process. Onboarding is digital. Meeting preparation is faster and more thorough. You have reclaimed time from administrative tasks and reinvested it in relationship work that drives retention.
The honest signal: Your tools are siloed. Your CRM does not talk to your fact-find. Client communication between reviews is still largely reactive.
The next move: Audit the three highest-friction points in your client journey — most commonly: first-contact to first-meeting conversion, fact-find completion, and advice document turnaround. Pick one. Find the digital solution. Implement it, measure the outcome, then move to the next.
04 Digitally native
What it looks like: Your practice is designed around digital from the ground up. AI assists across research, drafting, scenario modelling, and communication. Your content generates warm leads independently of referrals. You use data to identify which clients are most engaged, most at risk, and most ready for additional services.
The honest signal: You are not waiting for technology to catch up with your practice. You are ahead of it.
The next move: Maintain the edge. Stay current. Document what you have built — your process is a competitive asset. Contribute to how the industry shapes regulation and standards around AI in advice.
The tools worth knowing now
You do not need to master everything. You need to know what exists and choose deliberately.
Focus area | Tools | What to aim for |
|---|
Client communication & content | AI writing assistants | Draft, edit, and personalise communications at scale. Produce better, faster, and more consistently. |
Advice document production | AI-assisted drafting tools (emerging in AU market) | SOA generation is developing. Practices experimenting now will have a head start when compliant solutions mature. |
Client engagement | Digital fact-finds, pre-meeting questionnaires, post-meeting summaries | Reduces friction and improves data quality. Clients arrive at meetings ready to move, not ready to start. |
Lead generation & content | LinkedIn (primary), email newsletter | Consistent, experience-backed content compounds over time in a way referral networks alone cannot replicate. |
The honest assessment
Most practices reading this will identify as Stage 1 or Stage 2 of digital enablement. That is not a criticism — it is a starting point.
The practices that will be very difficult to compete with in five years are the ones that move deliberately to Stages 3 and 4 now, while the window is still open. Not because AI will replace advice. It will not. But because the client experience of a Stage 4 practice — faster, more personalised, better prepared, more proactively engaged — will be genuinely difficult to match from a standing start.
If a prospective client spent an hour with AI researching their financial situation before meeting you — and they will — would the experience of your practice be meaningfully better than what they got for free?
The digitally enabled adviser is not a futurist concept. It is what the profession needs to look like within five years to remain the first choice for Australians navigating complex financial decisions.
The practices building toward that now are not just surviving the shift in client behaviour. They are positioned to lead it.
Conrad Francis,
Founding Director, Inspired Money
Missed Part 1?
Read The Advice Gap Has a New Competitor for the full research findings.
Sources
- How Australia Uses Claude — Anthropic Economic Index — Anthropic, March 2026
- Investment Trends 2025 Financial Advice Report — Investment Trends / Money Management, December 2025
- FAAA Demands Recognition of Adviser Skill Shortage — Financial Newswire, March 2026
- Australian Financial Advisers at the Forefront of AI Adoption — FAAA / FPSB Global Research, May 2025
- Young, Motivated and Missing Out: Australia's Advice Gap Leaves a Generation Locked Out — Council of Australian Life Insurers, July 2025
- Can Australia Fix Its Financial Advice Problem and Lower Costs? — Money Magazine, February 2026
