Issue 04 · 18 August 2026
Three separate studies landed in one week, on three different populations, and they all found the same thing. Plus AustralianSuper puts personalised advice in front of 3.6 million members, and a regulator publishes the questions it's actually asking.
The Take
Three studies in one week. A US one, an Australian one about wealthy advised clients, and an Australian one about everybody else. Different researchers, different populations, no connection between them.
They all found the same thing, and it isn't the thing that got the headline.
The headline is always adoption. More than one in three Australians have already asked ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude about their super. Around 80 per cent of high-net-worth Australians who already have an adviser have used AI for a financial task. Fine. We knew that was coming.
The bit underneath is better.
Nearly half of Australians say they'd verify what the AI told them by checking with their super fund. Thirty-five per cent of those advised high-net-worth clients are using AI to sense-check advice they already paid for. And in the US study, people reported confidence in advisers at 79 per cent and in AI at 27 per cent, while using their own internet research and AI far more than they used an adviser.
Nobody is swapping you for a chatbot. They're using it as a first draft and then going somewhere else to confirm it.
That second step is the whole relationship. It's also the one nobody is competing for.
Right now the default place to check is a super fund, and not because funds answer better. Because a member knows how to contact one, and knows a small question costs them nothing to ask. That's the entire advantage. It's availability, not expertise.
Which is a strange thing to lose on, given what most practices actually sell.
Also Worth Knowing
AustralianSuper is rolling personalised digital advice out to its 3.6 million members through the member portal, staged from later this year, covering investment options, voluntary contributions and retirement health checks. Phone and video advisers sit behind it, comprehensive referrals behind them. Ignition Advice is building the platform. Michelle Levy, who chaired the Quality of Advice Review, has joined the board of AustralianSuper Advice. Every figure there is the fund's own, via ifa.
The competitive read is the obvious one, and it's mostly wrong. Almost none of those 3.6 million members were ever going to ring a private practice. The change is quieter. The words “personalised advice” are about to be attached, for free, to a portal journey that recommends an investment option and a contribution level. Once a client has seen that, your fee conversation stops being advice against no advice, and becomes what does yours do that the free one didn't. Most practices have never had to answer that out loud, because they were never being compared to anything. Worth writing your answer down in one paragraph before somebody asks you for it, and worth noticing that the honest version is almost never about the recommendation itself.
New Zealand's FMA has opened a thematic review into AI in financial advice. It describes the work as exploratory and fact-finding, which is regulator for we haven't decided yet. There are four surveys, one of them for advice providers and advisers, and they close on 4 September. The adviser survey asks about governance, oversight, suitability, record-keeping and consumer outcomes.
It's New Zealand, so this is a read-across and not a rule you're subject to. Read it anyway, and read it now rather than when it reports. A regulator publishing its questions before it has formed a view is one of the more useful documents you'll get all year, because those five words are the shape of the file review that eventually turns up here. Governance, oversight, suitability, record-keeping, consumer outcomes. If you can answer all five about the AI already running in your practice, you're ahead of most. If you can't, you've just been handed the agenda months early, for nothing, by somebody with no power over you. Better deal than it sounds.
AMP chief executive Blair Vernon told ifa that North's “whole AI development pipeline is driven by adviser feedback”, pointing at the North Interactive Wealth Portal and AI FileNote from the group's 1H26 results, and taking a swipe at the “bolt-on AI stuff” being sold at practices' front doors. He also says AI on North will always be subject to human review. “I call it the ‘human in the loop’.”
Two things sit in that, and neither is a criticism of AMP. First, most practices doing an AI stocktake write down the tools they bought and miss every one that arrived by software update. So the honest first question isn't what should we buy, it's what has our platform already switched on, and who signed off on using it. Second, “the human in the loop” is the right idea and also the phrase that hides the most. A loop is only real when you can name the step it sits at and the person whose name is on it. Vernon can, for his end. If you can't do the same at yours, the control only exists on one side of it. Practical version: list every piece of software the practice pays for, tick the ones that now do something with AI, and count how many ticks you didn't choose.
That's the fortnight. Read past issues, or reply to the email if you want to argue with any of it.
Get It In Your Inbox
One email a fortnight. Three or four things worth knowing, read in five minutes. Unsubscribe whenever you like.
We'll email you a confirmation link first, so nobody ends up on the list by accident. Your address is used for the Brief and nothing else.From Bax Advisory
Three minutes, twelve questions, and a scored report telling you where your practice actually stands. Free.
Take the checkSixty minutes. You leave with an AI policy, a tools register and a clear RACI, yours to take to your licensee.
Book the sessionThirty minutes, no pitch deck, no obligation. A straight read on where AI fits in your practice.
Book a discovery call