New research from the Financial Planning Standards Board Ltd. (FPSB) shows that Canadian financial services firms are embracing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) at a faster pace than their global peers. Financial planners within these firms, according to the 2026 Impact of AI on Financial Planning global report, are calling for clearer guidance from their firms to support their responsible use of the technology.
According to the report, nine in 10 Canadian respondents said their firms already use AI or plan to do so in the next 12 months. That said, they add that firms don’t yet have AI policies or guidance in place to govern the technology’s use: 37 per cent said their firm had a comprehensive policy, 26 per cent reported having some general rules and 16 per cent report having no policies yet, at all.
The global average of firms with a comprehensive policy came in at 23 per cent.
“There’s still a gap in terms of that governance,” Tashia Batstone, president and CEO of FP Canada told the Insurance Portal in an interview. “There is a need, I think, for organizations and for firms to catch up and make sure that the right protections are there in terms of policies and how and when people should be using AI.”
Interestingly, fewer Canadian respondents than their global peers agreed that AI will reduce the cost of financial planning services – half of Canadian respondents agreed with the sentiment, compared with two-thirds of the survey’s global respondents.
Although there is no clear reason for the disparity given, two factors could be at play: Canadian firms have been adopting AI more readily and for longer than some of their global peers, giving them more real-world experience with the technology, all while the penetration of actual financial planning is higher in Canada than in any of the other FPSB affiliate countries.
“The U.S. has a lot more financial planners, however we have greater penetration into the market. As a country, we have more people working with financial planners than anywhere else in the world,” Batstone notes.
New opportunities
According to the FPSB’s research, Canadian financial planners say AI will enhance the quality of financial planning advice and create new opportunities for planners. The survey results indicate that 71 per cent say AI will enhance the quality of financial advice, up from 67 per cent in 2025, while 59 per cent, up from 57 per cent, said the technology will create new opportunities.
FP Canada says it hopes this means planners will see more clients in underserved communities. Planners, however, point out that realistically there are still only so many relationships that humans can maintain at any given time.
“In general, the trend with technological adoption by the industry since inception has been towards fewer clients, not more,” Jason Pereira, CFP, FP Canada fellow, partner and senior financial planner with Woodgate Financial Inc. told Insurance Portal in an interview. “Does it allow me to do more for my clients? Absolutely, it does. It allows me to do what I’m doing faster. It allows me to do more, faster.”
Pereira himself is a power user of the technology, public speaker on the subject and advisor to multiple technology companies who uses AI heavily in his practice.
Step 1: Use the technology
The FPSB survey found that 38 per cent of financial planners say AI has slightly improved their work efficiency to some degree, 21 per cent say it has significantly improved their work efficiency and seven per cent say the impact has been very significant.
Pereira effectively describes the efficiencies he is realizing in his business but notes that the cognitive load to achieve the same is great and the learning curve can be steep.
“At this stage in the game, we are still very early. I would say that the cognitive burden required to truly master this type of thing is far too great for the average advisor to contemplate worrying about,” he adds. “It will get easier. Technology will get easier, but first and foremost they need to actually utilize the thing themselves and play around with it to try and understand the art of the possible. Educate themselves on what is even possible.”
Once advisors understand what is possible, he then encourages them to look at their processes for everything. “You can’t improve something that’s not defined, right? They need a defined process. They need to understand the technology, then they start putting the pieces together.”
Personal responsibility and entrepreneurship
Waiting for dealers to figure out the equation, he adds, is not the answer – a real amount of personal responsibility and entrepreneurship is needed at this stage of the game for those interested in being leaders in the use of AI in their practices.
“They’re going to figure this out for their general purposes and for a general audience, never for your specific business,” he points out. “Take ownership of it or accept the mediocrity of being in the middle.”
Once a planner or advisor has figured out the art of the possible as it is related to AI, he says they will realize that report generation and meeting notation are the easiest use cases.
Rethink workflows
“The reality is that for most people, they’re using AI like a better form of Google, which is a more expensive form of Google, quite honestly. In actuality, it can literally do the work of humans. For a company to truly harness this, they need to sit back and rethink their workflows – the jobs to be done, their workflows, when a human gets involved, when a deterministic standard traditional software gets involved and when an AI gets involved,” he explains. “The only way you actually harness the true power of this, is by reinventing the way you work, full stop.”
He also says part of the digital maturity needed for running an AI-enabled business is owning the output when tasks are delegated to the AI, taking responsibility for understanding how the technology arrived at its solution and taking responsibility for verifying the validity of the program’s output.
“It may work faster. It might look more impressive, but that sure isn’t any different,” Pereira points out. “There’s no blaming the tool,” he adds. “The danger with AI, like it is with many other technologies, is treating it like a black box. You are responsible. You’re responsible for understanding how it got to that solution, what you put into it and how it reached that conclusion.”
As for how the technology is changing clients, Batstone notes that the survey’s results indicate that more clients are coming into their meetings asking questions, having already consulted an AI program generally. “They’ve already gone into an AI and asked a question and they’re trying to get validation,” she says. “The consensus was that this gives the financial planner a really great opportunity to have a conversation with the client that they may not have had in the past.”
What planners want
With AI adoption becoming more established in the world’s respective financial services industries, planners surveyed for the FPSB report says AI education and training is the single biggest lever for safe and responsible use – 34 per cent called for more education and training – while 50 per cent say they want further professional development in data analysis and interpretation.
“It’s pretty consistent in Canada in terms of what our stakeholders are looking for. They’re looking for more assistance with making sure they meet the compliance requirements around using AI,” Batstone says.
To meet the demand, FP Canada published guidance in February 2026 on the responsible use of AI in planning and launched a new course on professional responsibility as it relates to AI usage in October 2026. The association has also partnered with organizations to increase the amount of AI-related content available through its professional development offerings. Pereira, meanwhile, recommends power users keep abreast of the information available on x.com, formerly Twitter.
Existentialist concerns abate
Finally, Batstone says an interesting shift in the data which has occurred over the past year, is the number of planners who are less concerned about disruption in the profession. “This year, what we’re seeing is I think more of a comfort level that AI is not necessarily going to completely disrupt the profession. More of the concerns being raised are about responsible use of AI, making sure the customer is protected and understanding the governance side of it,” she says “Financial planners are becoming less concerned. They’ve found their value; they know that they have value in those client relationships. There’s a sense of being less threatened by the AI and more seeing its potential.”
Pereira succinctly sums up the phenomenon, saying technology has commoditised the simple, forcing planners to expand their value proposition. “That trend is only going to accelerate,” he says.
