Abraham Okusanya and Matt Pitcher are back around the SoapBox, and this week they are joined by Ali Fanshawe, Co-Founder of SENDA. Most advisers will tell you that special needs planning is not really their world. Ali's whole point is that this answer is almost always wrong, and that some of the most exposed families are already sitting in every client bank, unseen. What follows is a frank conversation about the products that quietly work against these families, the money that ends up locked away, and whether the advice industry is anywhere near ready for it, before the panel turns to a consolidating wealth management sector, a landmark platform deal and what AI really means for the future of advice.
The Clients You Don't Know You Have
Ali's opening challenge is a simple one. Special needs and disability are not a niche. A client bank of any size will already contain families affected, whether or not the adviser has ever thought to ask the question. What makes it hard is that the need is often invisible, and the traditional advice playbook, built around an assumption of independence, does not always fit. Both hosts are unusually candid about how little the industry really sees of the end client behind the pot of money, and how recently that has started to change.
"Even if you don't get someone's situation, show that you are curious about it, that you are willing to ask the questions."
The Junior ISA Cliff Edge
The junior ISA looks like an obvious win: tax efficient, simple, something any parent can feel good about. Ali makes the case that for a family whose child may lack mental capacity, it can be quietly damaging. The reason is what she calls the age 18 cliff edge. The day the child turns eighteen, the money is legally theirs, and if they cannot manage it, the only route in is the Court of Protection, which is slow, costly and emotionally draining. Money held in a young person's own name can also disturb the means-tested benefits and care their whole life is built around. SENDA's ARC framework, access, risk and care plans, is the lens Ali uses to test whether a product is right for these families in the first place.
"At seventeen and 364 days, that money is not theirs. Within 24 hours, it becomes theirs."
The Lost Child Trust Funds
From junior ISAs the panel turns to the Child Trust Fund generation, now reaching adulthood. Many accounts have been left behind, with providers unable to trace the families they belong to, and some owners unable to legally reach their own money. The regulator is pushing providers to find them. The team weighs up whether that push is a genuine fix or simply hands the problem on, especially where the cost of unlocking a small pot can outweigh the pot itself. There is a free government tracing tool, linked below, worth flagging to any client with children of this age.
Can Every Wealth Manager Keep Growing?
The regulator's latest wealth management survey gives the second half its spark. The discretionary sector looks very different from the advice profession: more consolidated, with a small number of large firms holding the bulk of the assets and the clients. That sets up the question nobody in the sector really wants to answer. If the market is already this concentrated, where does the growth actually come from? The panel argues the honest answer is an uncomfortable one, and that a good independent adviser has a real opening to win clients who are paying handsomely for very little beyond the surroundings.
"Posh biscuits and a deep carpet. That is a market that is ripe for advisers to get stuck into."
AI and the Future of Advice
The episode closes on technology. A major US platform deal has put a combined custody, AI and financial planning stack in the spotlight, and the panel debates whether anything like it reaches UK advisers any time soon. From there the conversation turns to what AI can already do, and where the human adviser still wins. The shared view: for complex, vulnerable and special needs cases, human judgement and genuine care remain the edge, with AI as the tool that frees advisers to focus on exactly that. For everyone else, well built direct-to-consumer technology may end up doing a great deal of the job.