InMarketing Today

Fidelity Adviser Solutions' latest IFA DNA study shows advice-firm AI adoption accelerating fast. Use of AI for meeting notes has risen to 48% of advisers, up from 25% a year ago; for report personalisation, from 15% to 42%; for suitability assessments, from 11% to 40%. Larger firms are moving first — those with six or more client-facing advisers are more than twice as likely to have adopted AI for meeting notes as firms with five or fewer (72% versus 31%).

That is a branding problem as much as an efficiency story. Once every firm can produce a polished, personalised report in seconds, the report stops being what clients are paying for. Fidelity's own data backs this up: 71% of advisers expect AI to free up client-facing time, and 69% believe it will increase the importance of human judgement, not diminish it. The mechanics are being commoditised; the relationship is what remains scarce.

Stop selling AI capability as the differentiator — within two years it will be table stakes, not a pitch point. Redirect that marketing effort towards proving the judgement and trust AI has freed you to spend more time demonstrating.

UK Finance, working with Oliver Wyman, today published a roadmap for securities tokenisation, warning the UK risks losing ground to international competitors if it doesn't move faster. The report makes four recommendations: a single, holistic vision for digital wholesale markets; closer alignment between digital money and tokenisation strategy; a strengthened Digital Markets Champion role; and a focus on priority markets including sovereign debt, repo and collateral management.

The report's real message is a communications one, not a technical one. UK Finance chair Bob Wigley put it plainly: “Tokenisation will reshape market infrastructure — the question is whether the UK wants to shape it or adapt to decisions made elsewhere.” That is a positioning fight as much as a policy one, and positioning fights are won by whoever states the terms of the debate first, loudest and most credibly — not by whoever has the better technology.

If your institution has a genuine tokenisation capability, say so publicly and specifically now, before the standard gets set by someone else's press release. Waiting for the framework to be finalised means arguing for a position instead of defining one.

New research from Knak, cited today by MarTech, found that 85% of marketing teams missed at least one campaign launch date over the past year because of workflow constraints — despite 64% of teams now using AI to generate first-draft copy and 56% using it for images. Marketers still spend at least half their time on production rather than strategy, according to 82% of respondents, and 69% go through two or three rounds of revisions before a single campaign is approved.

AI has shortened the first stage of the process — the blank page — without touching what comes after. The biggest reported delay, cited by 47% of respondents, is securing approvals and sign-off, followed by design production (38%) and cross-team coordination (36%). A faster first draft that still needs four people and three rounds of revisions to clear isn't a faster campaign; it's a faster start to the same queue.

Before buying another AI tool, map your approval chain and count the handoffs. The hour you save generating a draft is worthless if it just gets absorbed by the next sign-off meeting — fix the workflow bottleneck first, then let AI compound the gain.