EXPOSED
The modal worker here is a retail broker or financial services sales agent whose analytical work — screening securities, building model allocations, drafting client proposals, summarizing research, generating suitability documentation — is exactly what robo-advisors and LLMs already do at usable quality and near-zero marginal cost. What survives is the licensed, relationship-carrying part: FINRA Series 7/63/65 registration, Reg BI suitability accountability, and clients who pay for a named human to answer the phone when markets drop 20%. Institutional and complex-product desks (derivatives, structured products, capital markets sales) hold up better than commission-driven retail product sales, which robo platforms have been compressing for a decade.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. Screening tickers, rebalancing to a model, running Monte Carlo retirement projections and drafting the pitch book are all deliverables Betterment and a spreadsheet already produce, which pins this at 9 rather than 14 — the residual non-automatable work is the discovery conversation, the objection handling, and the cold-call-to-funded-account conversion, not the analysis.
Fully desk- and screen-based. Everything from order entry to CRM notes to Zoom client reviews happens on two monitors; the 3 rather than 0 reflects that book-building still runs partly on in-person seminars, golf, and branch walk-ins that a purely remote agent loses.
Licensed human required and personally liable. Series 7 plus 63/65 or 66 is a hard gate — an unregistered person cannot solicit a trade, and Reg BI puts the recommendation on the named registered rep with FINRA arbitration and U4/U5 disclosure attached — but the 12 rather than 18 is because the broker-dealer's supervisory system and E&O absorb most claims, and firms substitute registered bodies routinely.
The human relationship is the product. Clients transfer seven-figure rollovers on the strength of one named person who picks up in March 2020 and talks them out of selling; that fee follows the rep to the next firm, which is why recruiting deals are priced on trailing production rather than firm brand.
Meaningful discretion. Calls on whether an illiquid alt or an annuity is suitable for a 68-year-old with concentrated employer stock are genuinely contestable and defended in arbitration, but the 12 rather than 16 reflects that compliance-approved product menus, model portfolios, and pre-trade suitability screens bound the discretion before the rep exercises it.
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