Pocock Sanders Speaker Session: Exploring Practical AI Use for Independent Financial Advisers

Client: Pocock Sanders

Event: Speaker Session

Industry: Independent Financial Advisers

Date: 28 January 2026

Consultant: Rufus Curnow

The session brought together the Pocock Sanders team to work through how AI could be applied directly to their day-to-day business activity. Participants engaged with a live exploration of current AI tools and discussed where these technologies could support real business impact within an independent financial advisory context. Working with current AI tools

The group was shown the capabilities of several emerging tools, including Notebook LM and agentic systems such as Manus. Rather than remaining theoretical, these demonstrations were used to surface practical questions about what these tools can realistically support today and how they might fit into existing workflows. Discussion focused on how quickly outputs could be generated and what level of human oversight remained necessary.

Applying prompts to advisory workflows

A substantial part of the session was spent actively working with prompts tailored to the independent financial adviser industry. Participants experimented with reusable prompts to generate written content, infographics, outreach materials and marketing assets. The emphasis was on creating prompts that could be reused consistently, rather than one-off experiments, and on understanding how small changes in structure affected output quality.

Purpose, execution and judgement in practice

The conversation then shifted to decision-making around AI use. Participants explored how to decide when AI was appropriate, when it was not, and where human judgement needed to remain firmly in control. Barriers to adoption were discussed openly, alongside practical ways of overcoming them, including concerns about confidence, reliability and where responsibility sits.

The session moved quickly but covered a wide range of hands-on activity, with participants engaging directly throughout. By the end, the focus had shifted from curiosity to concrete next steps for using AI more deliberately in everyday work.

If you’re evaluating how AI fits into your business, we’d be happy to discuss how a Speaker Session could support your objectives. Contact us to start the conversation.