This Week in Brief

Three threads run through this week’s AI news for IFAs. The FCA’s Supercharged Sandbox opened for its second intake today with agentic AI — systems that take autonomous actions rather than just give answers — as the stated focus. A landmark global study from Cambridge shows financial services firms are racing ahead of regulators on AI adoption, with data privacy and unreliable outputs the top concerns. And a fresh survey of UK financial planning firms pushes back on fears about job losses: most practices say AI will improve how they work, not shrink their teams.

Key Developments

Update: FCA Supercharged Sandbox Cohort 2 Opens — Agentic AI Takes Centre Stage

Last week we noted the second intake of the FCA’s Supercharged Sandbox was due to open on 5 May. That date has arrived, and applications are now live. The FCA has signalled it is particularly interested in firms testing agentic AI this cohort — meaning AI systems that can take autonomous actions such as compliance agents, customer interaction tools and payment automation, rather than simply responding to queries. The first cohort drew 132 applicants, with 22 firms selected for the programme. Results are published at the end of each cohort and directly inform the FCA’s thinking on what good practice looks like. For advice firms watching from the sidelines, what comes out of this cohort will be worth reading.

Seven in Ten Financial Planning Firms Say AI Won’t Cut Jobs in 2026

A survey of more than 200 senior leaders at UK financial planning firms — the second edition of the Saltus and L.E.K. Consulting Financial Planning Growth Index, published on 1 May — found that 70% do not expect AI to affect their staffing levels this year. Only 3% plan to cut existing roles because of AI, while 13% expect it to reduce future hiring needs. The most commonly cited benefit was administrative improvement, flagged by 55% of firms, followed by financial planning support efficiencies at 32%. This sits alongside last week’s FT Adviser piece about AI gradually changing the junior adviser career path — the two findings are not necessarily contradictory. Firms may not be cutting headcount now, but the shape of how practices hire and train people over the next few years is changing more quietly than the headline number suggests.

Cambridge Study: Banks Racing Ahead of Regulators on AI — and the Risks Are Rising With Them

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance published its 2026 Global AI in Financial Services Report this week, drawing on responses from financial services firms and regulatory authorities across more than one hundred countries. Eighty-one per cent of firms surveyed are adopting AI at some level. More striking is the agentic AI figure: 52% of industry respondents say they already have agentic AI in active use, with a further 29% in the piloting stage. On the other side of the desk, 48% of the 130 regulatory authorities surveyed are still in early exploration or not yet engaged with AI at all. Regulators are, by design, measured in how they move — but the gap between where industry is and where oversight has reached is growing. The top risk flagged by respondents across all groups was data privacy and protection, cited by 73%. Model unreliability — where AI gives confident but wrong answers — came second. Both matter directly to IFAs whose clients are already using AI tools to research investments, compare providers and make financial decisions before they ever pick up the phone to call you.

AdvisoryAI and Plannr Launch Two-Way CRM Integration

AdvisoryAI, which reported generating more than 110,000 AI reports for UK advisers in the first quarter of 2026, has gone live with a new integration with the Plannr CRM platform. The integration works in both directions: advisers can pull existing client data from Plannr before a meeting, and push updated information back afterwards, all in four clicks. Before any data is written to Plannr, the system flags field-level differences for the adviser to review, protecting against errors being introduced automatically. For firms already using both tools, this removes one of the most persistent friction points in AI-assisted workflows — the manual re-keying of client information between systems after every meeting. It is a small change in isolation, but it is indicative of how the adviser-tech ecosystem is maturing: tools are beginning to talk to each other rather than sitting in separate silos.

From the Trade Press

Note: direct login to FT Adviser and Professional Adviser was not available this session — items below are sourced via web search across the trade press.

  • “Most financial planning firms say AI won’t cut jobs in 2026” — Survey of more than 200 UK financial planning senior leaders finds 70% do not expect AI to reduce headcount; 55% see administrative improvement as the biggest benefit. FinTech Global, 1 May 2026

  • “Advisory and Plannr announce integration to improve advice workflows” — New two-way data sync between AdvisoryAI and Plannr CRM reduces the manual work of updating client records after meetings. Professional Paraplanner, May 2026

  • “Explainable AI will finally close the UK’s advice gap” — Opinion piece arguing that AI tools which can show their reasoning, rather than just delivering a recommendation, are the key to building consumer trust and reaching underserved clients. Professional Adviser, April/May 2026

  • “Global regulators trail banks in AI as oversight concerns mount” — Coverage of the Cambridge CCAF 2026 report, noting that financial regulators worldwide are falling behind the pace of industry AI adoption, with data privacy and model hallucinations topping the risk list. Yahoo Finance, May 2026

What to Watch

The FCA’s Mills Review — launched in January to examine how AI will reshape retail financial services by 2030 — is due to deliver its recommendations to the FCA Board in summer 2026. That is now only weeks away. The output will shape the FCA’s formal guidance on how Consumer Duty and the Senior Managers regime apply to AI in advice firms. It is the most important single document the regulator is likely to publish on this topic this year, and worth having in your diary.

Sources: FCA.org.uk, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, FinTech Global, Professional Paraplanner, Professional Adviser, Yahoo Finance, web search. Compiled 5 May 2026.