Did you hear? This year’s Linktank and Hadeda Advice Technology Survey found that 64% of South African advice firms are now using AI, up from 41% last year and 23% in 2024, yet 75% still have no formal AI governance policy in place.
This week in Seed Analytics Advisor Connect:
Upcoming events: Chances to network & earn CPD points.
The AI register: 5 things to write down before anyone uses AI.
Reliable service: One place for your client investment data.
New opportunities & advisory jobs for you to explore in SA.
SA's pension paradox & R88bn in unclaimed benefits.
Prompt of the week: Draft your own AI-use policy.
Take Note
FPI Professionals' Convention – Cape Town, 7–8 Oct: The FPI's flagship annual event returns to the Century City Conference Centre, with the FPI Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner on the evening of the 7th. Worth 11,5 verifiable CPD hours (3 ethics, 6,5 general, 2 technical). Details here.
FPSB Psychology in Practice – Online, anytime: An on-demand FPI course pairing a video series with an e-book on the behavioural side of advice. Paid, self-paced, and worth 4 CPD points on completion. Details here.
5 things to consider before anyone uses AI on a client file
The one-page record that keeps the use of AI in your process defensible…
Advisors and paraplanners are already using AI to draft emails, summarise documents and prepare for meetings. But South Africa does not have an official rulebook yet (our draft national policy was withdrawn in April and a replacement is still in the works).
Until it arrives, the rules that can actually impact you are grounded in POPIA and FAIS, plus general good practice we can source from international guidance.
Here are five things to note while we wait for the national policy to be finalised…
1. The tool and who owns it
Record the name, the version and one named person responsible for each tool. A tool nobody owns is a tool nobody reviews and monitors when terms or outputs change.
Take action: List every AI tool already in use across the team, and ascribe an owner to each one.
2. What it may be used for (and what not)
List the approved tasks (drafting, summarising, formatting) and those that are off-limits. Being explicit is what keeps a valuable and useful tool delivering exactly what you need it to deliver.
Take action: Agree on a short approved-use list per tool, and a matching not-for list.
3. The actual POPIA position on client data
POPIA does not prohibit the use of AI tools, but it does govern sending personal information out of the country: section 72 permits sending personal information out of the country only if the recipient is bound by an agreement giving protection substantially similar to POPIA, or if the client has provided explicit consent. Now, obviously, you don’t have such direct agreements with AI tool providers offshore, and the law might consider them a vendor if you let them process client data on your instruction, which would make them an operator you are responsible for.
It’s safe to assume that no one wants to legally vouch for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Copilot, etc. so let’s just say it’s probably prudent not to input personal client information into a chatbot.
Take action: Write down which tools your team may input client information into, and confirm compliance it with your compliance officer before continuing to use these tools in that way.
4. Who checked the output and when
You remain accountable for the advice, and POPIA keeps you as the responsible party even when a foreign vendor does the processing. The withdrawn draft national AI policy is a good example of a cautionary tale: It contained plausible-looking output that passed through several layers of review seemingly unchecked.
Take action: Before any work with elements that were AI-assisted goes to a client, write down who checked it, on what date, and which document or statement they checked it against.
5. What you tell the client
No South African legislation currently requires disclosure of AI use, but the global Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB)'s guidance does recommend disclosure of AI use early in the engagement, and POPIA already obliges you to tell clients what happens to their data. Most teams have not yet articulated their disclosure of AI use to their clients.
Take action: Draft two plain language sentences on how your team uses AI, and add this to your engagement letter or onboarding pack.
None of this requires new software or a compliance hire. A single page, kept current, is usually enough to answer the question all five points above ask: whether you can show, at any time, the proper use of AI when it comes to your clients' information.
Join the conversation…
How many AI tools are already being used across your team?
One controlled place for your client investment data
The AI points above are really about control: knowing where client information goes, and being able to account for it. The same logic applies to the investment data your team works from every day. When that data is copied into spreadsheets and pasted between tools, it becomes harder to say who has it and where.
Seed pulls each client's investment data automatically from over 65 platforms into one advisor-controlled system, with statements delivered through Seed's client reporting portal and the option to password-encrypt what goes out. It gives you a single, accountable source rather than data scattered across logins and exports. Therefore there is no need for data to be copied into spreadsheets and pasted between tools.
Already on Seed?
Before your team's next reporting run, check that client statements are going out through the portal rather than as email attachments.
New to Seed?
Featured Section
New wealth and fin advisory career opportunities in SA
Financial Advisor (East London) @ Old Mutual
Financial Advisor (Bloemfontein) @ SureX Life
Financial Advisor (Mpumalanga) @ Momentum Financial Planning
Broker Portfolio Manager (Johannesburg) @ Blackrose Capital
Broker Consultant (Port Shepstone) @ Sanlam
Financial Advisor (Durbanville) @ PPS
In Case You Missed It…
Industry Roundup
SA Holds Little Pension Wealth. OECD data puts South African pension assets at 83,2% of GDP (the highest among non-OECD G20 economies) yet modelled pension wealth for an average earner is just 1,4 times annual earnings for men and 1,7 for women, against an OECD average above 10.
R88bn in Unclaimed Benefits. Treasury wants a central administrator for unclaimed financial assets, 53% of which sit in retirement funds, and the FSCA has asked funds holding around 86% of those benefits to submit five years of claims data by 11 September.
The Economy Likely Shrank Last Quarter. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect second-quarter GDP to have contracted 0,1%, against 0,5% growth in the first quarter, as the Iran conflict pushed up oil and agricultural input costs, with manufacturing down 1,5%, mining down 2,7% and wholesale trade down 4,2%.
Internet Banking Fraud Costs Dearly. SABRIC recorded 110,074 digital banking fraud incidents last year, 89% of them through mobile apps at an average R17,389 per case, while internet banking accounted for under 9% of cases but averaged R73,582 each.
The FSCA Will Start Measuring Funds on Value for Money. The regulator is building a value-for-money framework for retirement funds, drawing on the Australian and UK models and using measures already common locally such as ROI and total expense ratio, as supervision shifts from whether rules are followed to whether members get fair outcomes.
Prompt of the week
If you want to draft your own one-page AI-use policy…
This prompt builds you a short, plain-language AI-use policy, a matching register template, and two sentences you can put in front of clients. You fill in the specifics; the AI only ever builds the frame.
How to use it:
Paste the prompt into your AI tool of choice.
Answer its questions in general terms only (the roles in your team, the kinds of tasks you'd use AI for), with no client names, balances or account data.
Save the output as your house version and review it with the team.
Important: Do not upload any client data, balances, ID numbers or account information into an AI tool. This prompt builds a policy framework only; you fill in the specifics yourself, offline.
The Prompt:
You are helping a South African financial advisory practice write a short, practical internal policy for using AI tools, so that AI use stays defensible and client information stays protected. Do not ask for, and I will not give, any real client data, names, balances or account information. Work only from the general descriptions I provide.
First, ask me three short questions, one at a time: (1) the roles in my team and who would use AI; (2) the kinds of tasks I'd want AI to help with; (3) the AI tools already in use, described by category rather than by name if you prefer. Wait for my answers.
Then produce, in South African English:
1. A one-page AI-use policy covering approved uses, uses that are off-limits, the position on client personal information (framed around POPIA's cross-border transfer requirements and operator obligations rather than a blanket prohibition), and a human-review step before anything reaches a client, with [BRACKETED PLACEHOLDERS] for anything practice-specific.
2. A simple four-column register template: tool and owner, approved uses, data rule, review sign-off.
3. Two plain sentences I could use to disclose our AI use to clients at the start of an engagement, covering what we use it for and what a person should always check. Give me a slightly warmer and a slightly more formal version.
4. A short note on how often to review the policy.
Do not recommend or name specific AI products. Note that South Africa has no AI-specific legislation in force and that the draft national policy was withdrawn in April 2026, so any AI-specific rules you suggest are practice guidance and not law. Flag anywhere I should confirm POPIA, suitability, disclosure or record-keeping obligations with my compliance officer rather than relying on your wording, and do not cite specific FAIS section numbers.
Did you know? On 10 Sept 1990, three students at McGill University released Archie, the first internet search engine, built to index public FTP archives so people could stop guessing where files were kept. The World Wide Web itself did not exist yet, so Archie searched the internet for a year before there were any web pages to find.
Till next time,
Seed Analytics Advisor Connect
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