There Is No Spoon: Why the Advice Gap Debate Is Based on the Wrong Question
We only think there's an advice gap because "advice" is our frame of reference. Reframe the question and the entire landscape changes.
The advice gap is the industry's favourite talking point. 39 million people without access to regulated financial advice. The implication: we need more advisers, or we need advisers to be more efficient, or we need to make advice cheaper. All of these solutions share the same assumption — that regulated financial advice is the thing people are missing. But what if that assumption is wrong? Consider a parallel. Approximately 80 percent of the UK population do not meet minimum physical activity guidelines. There are roughly 23,000 registered personal trainers in the UK. Is there a personal training gap? Nobody frames it that way. We do not say personal trainers are responsible for fixing UK obesity. We recognise that exercise is the goal, personal training is one way to achieve it, and there are many other pathways — gym memberships, running clubs, yoga apps, cycling, swimming, walking. The goal is movement, not personal training. Apply the same logic to finance. The goal is financial wellbeing — what we call financial exercise. Regulated financial advice is one pathway to that goal, not the only one. When you frame the problem as a gap between those who get advice and those who do not, you predetermine the solution: more advice. That constrains thinking to stretching the existing model — make advisers more efficient, lower the cost of advice, expand adviser capacity. These are worthy goals, but they will never close a gap of 39 million people. Currently, advisers serve approximately 115 clients each on average. To impact the gap through efficiency alone, that number would need to reach 2,000 to 3,000 per adviser. The only way to achieve that is by fundamentally redefining what a client is, what advice means, and what an advice business does. Financial exercise — education, tools, engagement, guided journeys, community — can reach millions. Regulated advice cannot. Both are valuable. Both have a place. But only one can operate at the scale the problem demands.