Today is already here

Kevin Press recently published a piece featuring Mike Floyd, CEO of ThinkForces Advisory Group, on the future of financial advice. Floyd makes a compelling case. AI is not a technology project. It is a business model transformation. Firms that treat it as the former and ignore the latter are at genuine risk. The Blockbuster analogy is apt. The centaur model — humans and AI working together, each contributing what the other cannot — is the right frame.

I read it twice. And both times I finished with the same question: What is the advisor sitting across from a client today supposed to do with this?

The article is addressed to firm CEOs and board-level leadership. That conversation is necessary. It will also take years to resolve. Meanwhile, the advisor in the field is reading about transformation initiatives and waiting for instructions that are not coming — at least not soon.

The piece that is missing from that article, and from most of the AI-in-advice conversation, is the practical one. What does the centaur model look like at the advisor level? What can an advisor do differently, starting today?

The answer is not complicated. And it does not require a board decision.

Floyd reaches for the Garry Kasparov idea — humans and computers working together outperform either alone — and he is right to. Kasparov’s insight after losing to Deep Blue was not that computers were better than humans at chess. It was that the combination was better than either alone.

Floyd applies that correctly to the advisory business. But the implementation he describes — predictive modelling, hybrid robo-advice platforms, firm-level engagement strategies — is a multi-year project.

The advisor-level version of the same insight is available now. It looks like this.

Before the client meeting: use AI to stress-test the recommendation. Ask it to argue the other side. Ask it what you might be missing. Ask it to model the comparison you haven’t built yet.

AI does not replace your judgment. It challenges your assumptions before the client does — and before a regulator does.

During the meeting, the analysis you bring is better. The math has been checked. The alternatives have been considered and documented. You can show your work because you have done your work.

After the meeting, the rationale is in writing. Not the compliance forms — those have always existed. The recommendation. The math. The alternatives considered and the reasons they were set aside. In a form the client can read, question, keep and share with their accountant or their adult children.

That is the centaur model at the advisor level. It does not require a platform. It does not require a budget approval. It requires a decision to work differently — starting today.

Floyd is clear that firms which fail to adapt are at risk. He is right. But the risk is not only at the firm level. It is at the advisor level too — and it is arriving faster than the board-level conversation.

For a long time, the advisor held the information and the client held the trust. Documentation was a compliance exercise, not a communication tool.

That design served certain interests. It did not always serve consumers. And it allowed a practice standard — undocumented rationale, unwritten comparisons, verbal recommendations that leave no trail — to persist well past its defensible shelf life.

AI is closing the information asymmetry that made that standard survivable. A consumer who can ask an AI to explain their policy, model an alternative or identify what is guaranteed versus what is projected is no longer entirely dependent on the advisor to hold the information. The gap is narrowing. The advisor who has been relying on that gap is facing a different reality than the one they faced last year.

Avoidance has always been a choice. It is a choice with a shrinking runway.

AI is not a threat

I want to be precise about what I am and am not arguing. I am not saying advisors who have not been documenting rigorously are bad advisors. The system did not require it of them, and in many cases actively discouraged it. That is a design failure, not a character failure.

I am also not saying AI is a threat to good advisors. Floyd is right about that too. The advisor who knows their client — who has sat at the kitchen table, who understands the family dynamic, who has seen the emotional reality behind the financial picture — has something no model produces. AI augments that. It does not replace it.

What I am saying is that the combination is more powerful than either alone — which is exactly Floyd’s point. The advisors who act on that insight now, without waiting for the firm’s transformation initiative, will build a practice standard that compounds.

The documentation habit, once established, becomes the competitive advantage. The client who receives a written rationale, a clear comparison and a plain-language explanation of what is guaranteed versus projected does not leave easily. They have something real. They know it.

The board-level transformation Floyd describes will take years. The practice-level version is already available. Here is what it looks like in three concrete steps.

1. Compared to what? Document why you recommended this product over the alternatives. Not in a compliance file. In plain language the client can read. If you used AI to model the comparison, say so. The transparency is the value — and it is defensible in any review.
2. What does the contract actually say? Show the client where to find what is guaranteed versus what is projected. The guaranteed column and the illustrated column are not the same thing. Most consumers have never been shown the difference. Show them. Provide page references.
3. Is this in writing? Not the compliance forms. The recommendation. The math. The rationale. In a form the client can read, question, keep and share with their accountant, their lawyer or their adult children. If you would not hand it to a skeptic, it is not done yet.

Floyd is right that the firms which figure this out will win. But the advisor who figures it out today — without waiting for the board — will have already won.