Become an "Embedded" Advisor. AI Is Coming for White-Collar Work.
As planning, analysis, and portfolio management get automated, the real value of an advisor is shifting fast—to emotional guidance, embedded insight, and decision-making support.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic—one of the most advanced AI labs in the world—said this week that half of all entry-level white-collar jobs could vanish within five years.
Think about that.
Half.
And not just in spreadsheets and tech. He was talking about finance, law, compliance, research, planning—the exact types of knowledge work the financial advice industry is built on.
At the same time:
JPMorgan is embedding generative AI across 200,000 employees.
RSM just committed $1 billion to AI-driven workflows.
Revelio Labs reports job listings in AI-exposed sectors like finance and compliance are already declining.
This isn’t theory. This is active displacement.
So the question becomes: Where does that leave the modern financial advisor?
The First Jobs to Go
Let’s not kid ourselves.
Most advisory firms still justify fees to produce documents, build plans, and create customized investment portfolios. These services used to be expensive because they were hard to deliver.
But now?
Portfolio construction is largely data science problem.
Financial plan generation can be done by ChatGPT with access to your tax return and basic goals.
Cash flow modeling, risk tolerance questionnaires, Monte Carlo simulations? All plug-and-play.
And even if you don’t want to admit it, the machines are doing it better—and faster—than most humans.
As I’ve written before, there will always be a set of wealthy delegators that won’t really analyze the necessity of your value proposition—they will simply delegate without seriously contemplating the cost-benefit. But that group is shrinking, and fast.
So What Can’t Be Automated?
As I wrote about a few weeks, ago there are a lot of ways to break down the value-chain. But let’s consider these five stages:
Data Collection
Data Analysis
Decision-Making
Implementation
Ongoing Monitoring
Stages 1 and 2 are already clearly within AI territory. Stage 4 is likely a difficult but extremely valuable, and monetizable frontier for a variety of platforms, and we’re halfway there. Stage 5 can be mostly automated as well.
That leaves just one safe zone:
Stage 3 — Decision-making.
And here’s the good news: it’s also the most important.
Because real decisions are emotional. Contextual. Messy. They involve trade-offs, relationships, timelines, fears, dreams, and buried motivations. AI can run the math. But it still can’t read the room—or the client.
Why This Changes Everything About Niching
In a commoditized world, being a generalist is no longer safe—it’s exposed.
Advisors who are trying to serve everyone, using standard software and generic language, are going to get priced out by tech. Fast.
But if you’ve spent the last 10 years working with one profession, one company, or one kind of client—you’ve built something AI can’t replicate:
Pattern recognition. Contextual memory. Empathy. Insight.
You know how to coach decisions—not just present options. And humans don’t make decisions in clean, binary, 0-1 fashion.
They hesitate. They overthink. They rationalize. They self-sabotage. There are so many different ways in which humans hurt themselves in this process of making financial decisions.
They weigh invisible trade-offs and seek meaning in what’s technically a spreadsheet This is where you bring value—not as an information provider, but as a guide through ambiguity.
AI can give them speed, and even answers. But it often takes another human to help them live with their choices.
The Rise of the Embedded Advisor
Here’s another great opportunity for advisors to pursue—another “next” I believe in:
One niche that is on the rise will be advisors who embed themselves inside of organizations—in partnership with the employer. Imagine the value that you can deliver to an employee within an organization that might be difficult for someone outside:
You know their benefits system.
Their compensation quirks.
Their RSU schedules.
Their promotion ladder.
Their HR blind spots.
From entry-level to VP. You help them navigate internal transitions, make decisions about life changes, and optimize their finances inside their employer’s ecosystem—not just around it.
You can remain independent, and balance the inherent conflicts of interest that might come from being employed by the organization.
This is financial advice + internal strategy + behavioral coaching. But to a market that is open for the taking, paid for by a customer who has an incentive to retain their people, and engage them deeply, making them feel at home.
The Numbers Back It Up
This concept isn’t new, but financial stress and anxiety are increasing and employers are starting to notice this benefit as one of the most important benefits they can offer.
There are over 24,000 enterprise-sized companies in the U.S. (1,000+ employees).
Hundreds of thousands more mid-sized firms could support embedded advisory.
Over 50% of employers plan to roll out financial wellness benefits by 2026.
And yet… most of those programs are passive, compliance-filtered, or app-based. They don’t actually help people make decisions or take action.
That’s where a huge opportunity lives.
From AUM to Advocacy
The old game was: “How many assets can I gather?”
The new game is:
“How indispensable can I become inside one, “decision-making” system where AI is unlikely to touch?”
Advisors who succeed in the next decade won’t be portfolio architects or PDF printers. They’ll be human decision partners with niche expertise, pattern memory, and a seat at the table where it counts.
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Reese Harper, CFP®, is a founder at Elements, helping financial professionals build and scale financial wellness programs. Reach him directly at reese@getelements.com.