Once what was a fulfilling career to support clients and their G2 G3 on their journey to and thru retirement has now turned into an exercise of making sure to click the required buttons to get credit for making sure you get the '"income". What is missing is that the clients are not getting the "outcome" that is in their best interest. Not to mention that G2 and G3 has become a non event when we push products because we have to hit numbers. Way too many "coaches" that have never been in a client facing role and never will be. Combined with Branch managers that manage to maximize their pay/shares, it's just a matter of time before AI takes over once was a highly skilled job and creates more value for the Johnson family.
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The more the advisor role becomes about flows, required conversations, button clicks, product penetration and documented activities, the easier that job becomes to automate. AI is exceptionally good at standardized processes and LLMs can achieve processes at enormous scale.
The common "advisor cope" is, "AI will never replace me because clients want a human relationship." Maybe. But that's only protection if the firm actually allows the advisor's judgment and relationships to be the value proposition. If the job is increasingly scripted, measured and standardized, the human moat gets becomes thinner and thinner. Don't think for a second that, given the opportunity, the Glorious Leader wouldn't replace thousands of advisors and their salaries, bonuses and benefits with an AI model that can deliver a standardized Fidelity experience at a fraction of the cost.
It's not the green machine it's the greed machine- let's face it, flows are all that matters whether it makes sense or in best interest or not.
It reminds me of reading about a city in which police officers had to make a certain amount of arrest quotas per month to maintain employment so you know what happened, arrests went up of course many of them unwarranted or false as the police officers have bills to pay and family to feed.
When unrealistic quotas are set, normal honest hard working employees become desperate so they will bend the rules or manipulate the situation to continue to receive income. Senior leaders are not the ones getting their hands dirty and sacrificing their morals so it is easy for them to continue to ratchet the requirements higher and higher for the ones desperate to hold onto their jobs. It's not just Fidelity as you can see by the example I mentioned but most places that makes the client/ consumer to constantly question is this in my best interest truly or is an employee under the g-n to complete a sale? Fidelity can be better than that