{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/personal-financial-advisors/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Personal Financial Advisors",
    "soc_code": "13-2052",
    "category": "Business",
    "us_employment": 266800,
    "median_annual_wage": 105070
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 52,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 8,
    "embodiment": 3,
    "liability_shield": 11,
    "trust_premium": 16,
    "judgment_accountability": 14
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "An 8 reflects that asset allocation, rebalancing triggers, Monte Carlo runs, RMD and Roth-conversion math, and the 60-page plan deliverable are all executed today by eMoney, MoneyGuidePro and Betterment's engine with no advisor keystrokes — what pulls it above the 0-6 band is the discovery meeting where a client's stated goals contradict their spending, and the annual review where the real work is behavioral, not computational.",
    "embodiment": "A 3 is right because everything happens on Zoom, in a conference room, or in Redtail — the only physical acts are handing over a signed ACAT form and driving to a client's kitchen table, neither of which requires a body that a courier or a screen share can't replace.",
    "liability_shield": "An 11 sits at the bottom of the licensed band because Series 65/66 and state RIA registration are genuine legal barriers with individual Form ADV disclosure and personal FINRA/SEC exposure for unsuitable recommendations, but the license is a proctored exam and a filing rather than a residency, and an unlicensed AI can lawfully do all the analysis so long as a registered human signs the recommendation.",
    "trust_premium": "A 16 is earned in March 2020 conversations — clients keep paying 1% of AUM to someone who knows their divorce, their special-needs child's trust, and their fear of dying broke, and the highest-value moment of the year is convincing them not to liquidate, which requires a person they have known for a decade rather than a correct answer.",
    "judgment_accountability": "A 14 reflects fiduciary calls with no single right answer and irreversible consequences — whether to recommend a QLAC over a bond ladder, when a 72-year-old's cognitive decline requires contacting the trusted contact, how to allocate an inheritance between two adult children with different creditors — decisions where the advisor's documented reasoning is the only defense in an arbitration."
  },
  "rationale": "The analytical core of this job — portfolio construction, rebalancing, Monte Carlo retirement projections, tax-loss harvesting, plan document production — is already commoditized by robo-advisors and planning software, and LLMs now draft the client-facing narrative around it. What survives is the part clients actually pay a fee for: talking a panicked retiree out of selling in a drawdown, mediating spousal disagreements about money, and owning a fiduciary recommendation with a name on it. Licensure (Series 65/66, CFP, state RIA registration) plus fiduciary liability keeps a human in the loop, but that shield is regulatory and thinner than a medical or CPA license.",
  "outlook": "Headcount holds roughly flat but the job splits: advisors who only manage portfolios get compressed by robo and fee pressure, while those doing behavioral, tax-adjacent, and estate-complex planning for complicated households keep their pricing power.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "SEC or state securities regulators adopting an explicit rule that AI-generated investment recommendations delivered to retail clients must be reviewed and attested by a named Series 65/66-registered person who retains fiduciary liability — the direction FINRA's 2024-25 AI guidance and the SEC's 'AI washing' enforcement (Delphia/Global Predictions, March 2024) already gesture at. A hard attestation requirement, not just supervisory policy, would move this several points.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "A DOL fiduciary-style rule (or successor to the vacated 2024 Retirement Security Rule) that extends fiduciary status to rollover and annuity recommendations and specifies that an algorithm cannot be the fiduciary of record, forcing a licensed human signature on every rollover recommendation.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "CFP Board enforcement precedent or arbitration awards holding the advisor personally accountable for failing to override a model output (e.g., unsuitable AI-driven allocation for a client with known liquidity needs), making the override decision itself the compensable duty.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: if robo-platforms absorb allocation, rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting and plan-document production entirely, the residual day is behavioral coaching in drawdowns, spousal and intergenerational mediation, business-sale and equity-comp timing, and special-needs/divorce planning — work that resists automation. Watch for the shift showing up as fee models repricing from AUM basis points to retainer/flat planning fees.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Already near ceiling at 16; the marginal route is a visible retail-investor loss event traced to an unsupervised AI advice tool, of the kind that would generate FINRA arbitration claims and make 'human fiduciary' an advertised differentiator rather than a default.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Trust premium is already high and cannot carry much more; the realistic upside is concentrated in liability_shield, which remains regulatory rather than statutory-monopoly and can be thinned as easily as thickened — a robo-friendly SEC exemptive order moves it the other way. Embodiment has no route."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 200920,
        "wage": 90640
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 200260,
        "wage": 88890
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 210190,
        "wage": 87850
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 218050,
        "wage": 89330
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 263030,
        "wage": 94170
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 283060,
        "wage": 95390
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 272190,
        "wage": 99580
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 270480,
        "wage": 102140
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 266800,
        "wage": 105070
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 32.8,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}