'AI will take everything off your desk except the blame' – Flavin

12 months from now, a two-adviser firm somewhere in this country will be writing the business a six-adviser firm writes today.

They won’t have hired anyone. They’ll just have stopped doing the jobs that eat the day.

Criteria searching. Fact find summaries. Chasing documents. Client updates. Suitability letters. The admin that currently sits between a good conversation and a banked case.

That firm isn’t science fiction either. The tools largely exist. Brokers can already describe a client’s circumstances in natural language and get potential lenders or product options back instantly. Artificial intelligence (AI) can monitor outstanding documents, lender requests and offer statuses, all while preparing client updates automatically. The client hears something useful without the broker checking the case and writing the update from scratch.

And the industry is moving faster than most small firms realise. A Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) survey found 75% of UK financial firms are using AI, with another 10% planning adoption within three years (that’s far too long). At the British Mortgage and Protection Senate, Mortgage Brain’s chief commercial officer said the way mortgage sourcing works today would “undoubtedly” look different in three years, with the firm developing solutions on its own internal AI model scheduled to launch during 2027.

So, here’s my 12-month view. Three things happen.

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First casualty: ‘It’s a lot of work, this case’

For years, many brokers have justified their fee by the work involved. Hours on the case. Chasing solicitors. Wrestling the lender portal. When the admin collapses to minutes, that argument goes with it. Nobody’s paying £495 for effort that a piece of software did in the time it took to make a coffee.

What’s left to justify the fee is judgement. The conversation. Spotting that the client asking for a term extension actually has a credit card problem. Working out the husband’s accounts don’t tell the whole story.

Firms that have been charging for effort are about to find out whether they were ever charging for judgement.

 

The bank’s read his statement – you’ve read his fact find

There’s an example in McKinsey’s report on AI-powered personalisation that every protection adviser should look at. It shows a bank email selling income protection to a customer called Michael. The standard version is what you’d expect – a generic line about how illness or job loss can cause financial difficulty.

Then it shows the AI version. Subject line: are you spending more than your account balance? It’s been rewritten around the fact that Michael is in his overdraft by more than a quarter of his income and hasn’t bought any insurance in three years to protect the wages he’s so reliant on.

The bank knows he’s in his overdraft. It knows what he earns. It knows exactly how exposed he is. It wrote the protection message around his own bank statement. What have you got to go on? Only what he told you in a fact find three years ago.

Brokers have spent a decade under-selling protection and quietly assuming the gap would still be there when they got round to it. It won’t be. The bank will get there first, and it’ll be backed up with better information than yours.

 

The threat isn’t the bank – it’s the broker down the road

This is the one nobody wants to say.

The threat to most small firms over the next year isn’t a lender’s app. It’s the firm down the road with the same number of advisers, half your admin cost, faster offers, and a client update going out at every stage without anyone typing it.

Same market. Same leads. Same lenders. Different cost base, different client experience, different margin.

Two firms, and one of them has quietly become twice as efficient while the other was waiting to see how AI ‘settles down’. It isn’t going to settle down. That’s the point.

 

The part nobody’s reading in the small print

AI takes the process. It doesn’t take the responsibility.

The FCA’s 2026 Mills Review is examining how AI could reshape retail financial services, while Consumer Duty and SMCR accountability continue to apply. The broker remains responsible for advice, suitability, the accuracy of submitted information and any recommendation made to the customer, at every stage.

Read that again as a firm owner.

When the software writes the suitability letter, your name is still on it. When the criteria search misses something, it’s still your file. When the automated update tells a client the wrong thing, it’s still your complaint.

I’m not arguing against any of it. I use AI every day and I tell every client I work with to do the same. But I’ve been training my own for over 12 months. Every output critiqued. Every draft marked up – what I like, what I don’t, what sounds like me and what sounds like a brochure. 12 months in, what comes back is far more accurate than anything it produced at the start.

That didn’t happen because I bought a better tool. It happened because I kept telling it what great looks like.

Most firms will do the opposite. Buy the software, give it one instruction, get something average back and decide AI’s overrated.

It’s like hiring someone, handing them the manual on day one and never training them again. You’d never expect a new adviser or administrator to excel with that sort of training. Why would a machine be different?

You get what you deserve.

The trouble is that most firms are going to bolt AI onto a process that doesn’t exist yet. No documented standard. No review step. No one checking the output before it goes. They’ll get speed, and they’ll get it at the precise moment they lose sight of what’s actually leaving the building. Automate a good process and you get a better firm. Automate a messy one and you get the same mess, at scale, with your name on every page. Motivate an idiot and you’ll get stupid things done quicker. AI is no different.

 

So what does autumn 2027 look like?

Admin is nearly free. Protection gets pitched by the bank before you’ve mentioned it. The firm down the road runs on half your cost. And the only thing that still needs a human being is the thing that was always the job – judgement, and someone prepared to put their name to it.

Nobody will be asking whether you use AI by then. Everyone will.

They’ll be asking what you do that it can’t.

AI will take everything off your desk except the blame. Make sure what’s left is worth the fee.