From Future Proof to Wall Street, advisers get a preview of the next era of advice  

A client can now ask a chatbot for a financial plan and get a competent answer in minutes. When that happens, the value of advice has to come from somewhere else. That question followed a delegation of Australian advisers across two American cities last month, as The Inside Network’s INUSA Study Tour wrapped up in New York. 

The tour ran from 13 to 21 September and opened with three days at Future Proof in California, one of the fastest-growing wealth conferences in the US.

Artificial intelligence dominated that programme, and delegates carried those conversations straight into a week of sessions with managers, consultants and technology firms on the East Coast. 

Advice after AI 

At Accenture, delegates looked at how AI is pulling apart the traditional advice bundle. Clients increasingly arrive with a chatbot’s answer already in hand, yet most still want a person to make the final call. The discussion kept returning to proactive advice, and why contacting clients before they ask is becoming one of the clearest ways to show value. 

The Australian advisers pushed back on how easily the US examples would travel. Many independent practices run several CRMs and multiple platforms at once. That makes it hard to build the clean, connected view of the client these tools rely on. 

Data before tools 

Amazon Web Services picked up that thread across two sessions. The first showed how firms in banking, credit ratings and wealth management are using AI to shrink hours of work into minutes, and what that does to fees. For practices, the lesson was to put the time saved into serving more clients rather than simply finishing tasks sooner. 

The second session used Formula One as a case study in handling data at speed and scale. The lesson carried over neatly to advice businesses. The quality of a firm’s data limits every tool it builds on top. 

Private credit beyond the headlines 

Blue Owl hosted a session on private credit as the sector faced heavy scrutiny in both countries. Delegates worked through how evergreen funds handle redemptions, and why the default index a commentator picks can change the whole story. They also compared large US direct lending with the property lending behind many Australian headlines. The key reminder for client conversations was that a fund structure on its own does not make an asset liquid. 

Infrastructure and the power problem 

Brookfield looked at unlisted infrastructure as a source of contracted, inflation-linked income. The discussion covered mandate creep, where higher-risk strategies carry an infrastructure label, and how a fund’s return target can be an early warning sign. It then turned to AI’s appetite for electricity, and why power generation and the grid may shape the AI build-out as much as chipmakers do. 

Outside the meeting rooms, a hosted breakfast, a Warburg Pincus lunch and an NFL game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Jets give delegates time to compare notes. They use it to test the US ideas against the realities of their own practices.

The same thread ran through both cities. Technology can draft the plan and private markets can broaden the portfolio. Advisers still have to explain both to clients in plain terms, and that judgement is what clients keep paying for. 

The week brought plenty of moments outside the formal sessions too, from Future Proof’s beachside welcome to a Sunday afternoon at MetLife Stadium. Scroll through the gallery below for highlights from both legs of the tour: 

From all of us at The Inside Network, a massive thank you to every adviser who made the trip, along with the hosts and speakers in both cities who opened their doors and answered the delegation’s hardest questions.  

There’s more to come closer to home, with the Alternatives Symposium heading to the Hydro Majestic Hotel in the Blue Mountains, NSW, on 9 and 10 November.