As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes the landscape of every industry, including financial services, it's tempting to assume the future belongs to machines. But in reality, the future of financial planning could be defined by the symbiotic relationship between AI and human-Led advice. And in that future, Scenario Planning (SP) will play a pivotal role.
Scenario Planning isn’t just another planning tool. It represents the next generation of digital planning experiences, built not only to handle the math but to foster the conversations, decisions, and emotional clarity that true planning requires.
Financial planning software has come a long way over the past few decades. We’ve seen three broad styles:
As AI becomes more embedded in financial technology, it’s tempting to imagine it making decisions on behalf of clients. But the truth is that AI can assist with financial planning, but it will not replace the human decision-making process. Certainly, many technologies will try and claim success, but in this world, we don’t just let robots make our decisions. You wouldn’t want that and I’m sure that regulatory bodies will not want that.
Why? Because financial planning isn’t purely logical. It’s emotional. It’s personal. It’s filled with uncertainty and shifting priorities. And in that messy reality, Scenario Planning shines as a tool advisors will engage, though the scenarios themselves might be initially created by AI. The testing through iteration and evaluation of tradeoffs still needs to happen.
Imagine a client going through a risk-tolerance assessment. AI can certainly administer the questionnaire, track behavioral cues, and even surface inconsistencies in the responses. But can it decide how much risk the client should take? No.
That decision must ultimately reflect the client’s own values, priorities, and comfort level. The same holds true for big financial questions like: “Should I work three more years or retire early?”, “Is it better to pay off my mortgage or keep investing?”, or “Can I afford to help fund my grandchild’s education?”. While a computer could choose a mathematically optimal path, without the client actively exploring the trade-offs and consequences, the decision lacks personal context and therefore, by definition, can’t be the right one.
These aren’t math problems. They’re life decisions. And AI, no matter how advanced, cannot make those calls for people. What AI can do is support the process, offering insight, surfacing options, and identifying blind spots. That’s exactly what Scenario Planning does.
In traditional planning software, the plan is often treated as a static report. I believe Scenario Planning flips the script here.
In SP, the scenario becomes the central unit of decision-making. It’s not just a plan. It’s a sandbox, a place to test ideas, explore tradeoffs, and refine assumptions. It’s where advisors and clients can ask “What if we delay Social Security?”, “What if we spend more in the first 10 years of retirement? or “What if we sell the business earlier?” It's typical for a planning experience to have levers and buttons that model part of those scenarios, but Scenario Planning allows for more depth, thus more opportunities for advisors to educate and showcase their expertise.
More importantly, scenarios are not theoretical questions. They're about real life, and they should be client-led.
This is where the connection to mathematics becomes both elegant and powerful.
In mathematical analysis, Successive Approximation is a method of solving complex problems by starting with an estimate and refining it step by step until a usable solution is found. You don't leap to the perfect answer, you iterate your way there. I would argue this is how a financial plan is built in reality, thus a good scenario planning User Interface promotes quick changes with real time feedback.
Scenario Planning brings this same methodology to life in a financial context. It’s not about dropping every possible input at once. It's watching how the pieces interact and stabilize over time. This is not just good math, it’s good psychology. When clients can move step-by-step through their options, they understand the “why” behind recommendations, build confidence in their decisions and take ownership of the outcome. It’s education disguised as planning.
For Scenario Planning to work well, the user interface must support fluid, confident iteration. That means instant feedback, visual clarity, the ability to isolate and compare small changes, and no assumptions hidden behind black boxes.
In too much planning software today, small changes feel like a burden. You change one assumption and get dumped into a new report. That kills momentum. It stops clients from engaging. Pages built on sliders are good, but often lack the ability to iterate beyond some simple inputs. That's great for speed, but often lacks the power to promote the advisor's skill the way Scenario Planning does.
A good Scenario Planning interface lets you tweak assumptions and see ripple effects in real time. It encourages exploration. It supports Successive Approximation, not as a theoretical feature, but as a practical tool for decision-making.
This isn’t just about better design, it’s about better outcomes. When clients engage in Scenario Planning (i.e. their own real-life scenarios) three powerful things happen:
A major flaw in today’s planning software ecosystem is its overreliance on the investment management process as the core of all planning conversations. This is an important conversation because AI will eventually take advantage of the areas of planning that many advisors leave out due to its lack of expediency.
Much of the digital infrastructure has been built around AUM growth, Asset allocation models and Investment policy statements. This focus makes perfect sense for advisors whose primary role is portfolio management.
But what about conversations where investments aren’t central? Paying down debt, Early retirement decisions, Business sale timing, Insurance funding strategies, Charitable giving or legacy planning?
In these cases, investment-centric software becomes clunky and awkward. It forces advisors to bend the conversation back toward portfolios, even when clients are focused on lifestyle, timing, and family needs.
Scenario Planning allows the conversation to stay where the client wants it, on life choices, tradeoffs, and preferences, while still being grounded in real numbers, and yes, an investment management focused conversation if that is what’s appropriate for the client.
Let’s be clear: AI will not replace financial advisors anytime soon, but that has more to do with regulatory institutions and how your Boomer clients think about financial services. It has nothing to do with ability. Make no mistake, AI very much has the capacity to take the positions of a large segment of this industry. The advisors that remain will not just be service oriented, but will have found a way to get their clients to engage in their technology. In the next generation of financial planning AI will promote smarter questions. Advisors will guide clients through better answers, and Scenario Planning will be the shared interface between them.
The future is co-creation, not automation. Clients don’t want answers from a machine. They want tools that help them think better, not think for them. They want a process that feels personalized and human even if it’s powered by sophisticated tech in the background.
Scenario Planning is the perfect expression of that balance.
The era of “Here’s your plan, sign here” is over. The next era of financial advice, especially in a world shaped by AI, will be defined by fluidity, personalization, and decision support. Scenario Planning isn’t just a nice feature. It’s a new way of life for the financial services field.
It empowers advisors. It respects clients. It builds better plans. And it reflects how real decisions are made, in steps, not leaps. If your software, your process, or your practice isn’t built around Scenario Planning, it’s time to take a hard look at what your clients really want. Because while AI may support their journey, it’s Scenario Planning that will help them find their way.
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