Total Wealth Planner Weekly |24th January 2026 |
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From Advice to Agency. From Precision to Purpose. From Industry to Integrity. Hi ##firstname##,
This week at the Academy has been a powerful illustration of the shift that’s now unmistakably underway. Not a trend.
Not a theory.
A lived transition.
We’ve been working with what I call “the bridge” — the Academy itself — the place where traditional advisers and industry professionals come to cross from old-model financial advice into Total Wealth Planning.
It’s not just a change of tools.
It’s a change of worldview. And 2026 is making that unmistakably clear. |
🌉 The Bridge: Where the Old Model Ends — and the New One Begins
Throughout this week, we’ve been talking about the bridge as: - A practical transition space
- A psychological reorientation
- A business re-architecture
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A values realignment
It’s where advisers stop being product gatekeepers…
and start becoming sovereignty builders. It’s also where people come to:
- Build a Total Wealth Planning business
- Shift from AUM dependency to empowerment economics
- Learn how to work with AI instead of defending against it
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Re-ground their practice in human capital, not just financial capital
This is no longer about “adding life planning” to a financial model.
It’s about replacing an extractive architecture with an empowerment architecture. |
🤖 AI Has Shifted Agency — Permanently One of the most important developments we’ve been tracking this week is this:
The knowledge centre is no longer the adviser’s office. It’s the client’s phone. The public is no longer arriving at meetings with a blank sheet. They’re arriving with: - AI-generated cashflow models
- What-if scenarios
- Comparative fund analytics
- Retirement timelines
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Human capital ideas
- Career and lifestyle transition strategies
This isn’t a threat.
It’s a liberation. And Total Wealth Planners are adapting for it — not resisting it.
We’ve published a series of articles this week showing how: - Agency has shifted from the professional to the individual
- AI is now the first planner, not the second opinion
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The adviser role is evolving into a sense-maker, integrator, and steward
- Empowerment beats dependency in 2026 — every time
The winners won’t be those who defend old monopolies. They’ll be the ones who help people use AI well, safely, and wisely. |
🎯 Money Precision Is No Longer the Problem We’ve also been challenging a long-held industry assumption this week: That the core value of financial planning lies in squeezing out an extra 1% of investment performance. That era is ending. Not because money doesn’t matter.
But because money precision isn’t the binding constraint anymore.
The real constraints now are: - Burnout
- Loss of purpose
- Career fragility
- Health erosion
- Relationship breakdown
- Cognitive overload
- Fear-driven decision-making
- Lack of agency
- Lack of time
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Lack of optionality
Total Wealth Planning flips the sequence:
Plan your life first.
Then build the money around it. That includes: -
Human capital strategies
- Income resilience planning
- Career optionality design
- Time wealth engineering
- Lifestyle architecture
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Psychological safety
- Meaning-aligned resource deployment
This is where real wealth is now being built. |
⚖️ Advice-Only Fiduciaries: Halfway Across the Bridge We also explored how advice-only fiduciaries are positioned on the bridge.
They’re ahead of the traditional AUM model — but not yet fully across. Why?
Because while they’ve: - Removed product bias
- Reduced commission conflicts
- Improved transparency
They often still: - Centre financial capital over human capital
- Retain expert-dependency structures
- Under-utilise AI
- Avoid full agency transfer
Treat life planning as a side layer, not the core architecture They’re on the bridge. But Total Wealth Planning goes further. It redesigns the system from the ground up. |
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🎥 Coming Next Week: Practice Management Circle Showcase – Geoff Dyckes
Next week we’re hosting something special for Practice Management Circle members.
Geoff Dyckes will be showcasing his real business model — not a sales deck, not a theoretical framework, but the lived architecture of his Total Wealth Planning practice. We’ll be covering: - His service design
- His client journey
- His commercial structure
- His mindset transition
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His practical lessons from the bridge
The session will be recorded and made available on the Video On Demand channel for members. This is exactly what the bridge is about: Real people.
Real practices.
Real transition stories. |
🧭 Davos, Integrity, and Taking Your Sign Down
We also published a reflective piece this week inspired by the Canadian Prime Minister’s Davos speech. The core message was simple: Take your sign down.
If you know something isn’t true anymore —
about your industry, your role, your business model, or your ethics —
stop repeating it just to appease everyone.
We’re entering a phase where coherence matters more than conformity. This is especially relevant for advisers standing at the bridge. |
🚨 Recruitment Ads, Virtual Work Experience & Structural Misdirection Monday saw a wave of recruitment ads from a structurally untrustworthy industry presenting itself as structurally trustworthy. We’ve published a response aimed at: - Young recruits
- Career-changers
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Parents
- Teachers
- Career advisers
We’ve also written about so-called “virtual work experience programmes” being used to attract what we called Blue Monday recruits — people feeling stuck, vulnerable, or uncertain. These programmes often: - Present a highly curated version of reality
- Omit systemic risk
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Understate burnout and sales pressure
- Hide debt-based recruitment models
- Mask asset-stripping career structures
We want people going into this industry to do so with eyes open — not under illusion. |
🧠 Human Capital Strategies for Advisers Approaching the Bridge
This week we also released multiple articles aimed directly at IFAs approaching the bridge.
They focused on: - What human capital economics actually means in practice
- Why financial capital is now the secondary system
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How Total Wealth Planners generate value beyond products
- How AI makes empowerment scalable
- Why career transitions are now a planning discipline
- How to build future-proof income architecture
These aren’t soft ideas. They’re survival strategies for the next decade. |
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🛡️ Get SAFE: A Week of Highs, Lows, and Real Impact
It’s been an emotionally full week for Get SAFE. We’ve seen both deep strain and deep meaning. We received two powerful testimonials from Lisa and Andrea, which I’ve included below. They reflect exactly why this work exists. We’ve also:
Get SAFE isn’t about scale theatre. It’s about stabilising real people, in real distress, in real time. |
🏦 AI in Banking: Not Neutral. Not Consumer-First.
We also analysed new developments in AI use across the banking sector.
The pattern is clear: AI is being deployed primarily to: - Cut costs
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Reduce human staff
- Avoid regulatory exposure
- Automate complaint deflection
- Minimise legal liability
Not to: - Improve consumer outcomes
- Increase transparency
- Restore trust
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Reduce harm
AI itself is neutral.
Its incentives are not. |
⚠️ FCA Failures: British Steel & Get SAFE Cases We published two hard-hitting pieces this week:
1. On the British Steel pension scheme case
- Where the FCA fined an adviser
- But failed to meaningfully acknowledge its own systemic role
2. On multiple Get SAFE cases
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Where victims were deflected
- Silenced
- Batted away
- And left psychologically destabilised
We are now focusing on wellbeing recovery for those individuals. Because regulatory harm is still harm. |
🎭 The “Business Support Package” Recruitment Scam
We also exposed a long-running industry practice that needs far more public awareness.
So-called “business support packages” used in adviser recruitment often involve: - New recruits being given large loans
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To buy “client books” they don’t actually own
- With no asset transfer rights
- No long-term security
- And huge personal debt if they leave
What they end up with: - A broken career
- A broken balance sheet
- And nothing to show for years of work
We want people to know this before they sign. |
🤝 A Final Reminder: Transparency Task Force Fellowship
Finally, a reminder that Transparency Task Force Fellowship meetings run every Thursday.
And they’re not just for: - Victims of financial exploitation
- Whistleblowers
They’re also for: - Helpers
- Advocates
- Supporters
- Researchers
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Campaigners
- Practitioners
Because secondary trauma is real. And those who carry other people’s pain deserve a safe space too. |
🌱 Closing Thought 2026 is not asking for reform. It’s demanding replacement. Replacement of: - Extractive models
- Dependency architectures
- Expert monopolies
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Illusory certainty
- Financial reductionism
With: -
Empowerment
- Human capital
- Coherent design
- AI-augmented agency
- Whole-life planning
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Ethical business models
The bridge is open.
The question is no longer whether people will cross. It’s whether institutions will survive if they don’t. Stay engaged.
Stay grounded.
Stay coherent.
And I look forward to a productive and meaningful week ahead. —
Steve Conley
Founder, Academy of Life Planning
Total Wealth Planner Weekly |
P.S. 🌟 Support the Get SAFE Crowdfunder
Help us build the UK’s first citizen-led justice and recovery network. - Every £50 funds a bursary for one survivor
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Every contribution restores agency where it was taken
👉 Donate on Crowdfunder You can genuinely change a life. |
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