Charles Schwab's CEO recently told reporters that clients under $1 million will be served by AI—not a human advisor. The headlines treated it as a tech story. It is not.
It is a quiet admission about what wealth management has always been.
A “dedicated relationship” at a big custodian—even at $1 million or more—is investment management: portfolio reviews, rebalancing, and quarterly check-ins. It is not retirement income planning.
The questions that matter near retirement
Most successful professionals do not realize the difference until age 60, when they begin asking the real questions:
- When can I actually retire?
- What will my income be?
- How much will I owe in taxes between ages 65 and 75?
- Should I convert part of my IRA in my first low-income year?
If those questions have never been answered for you in writing—with assumptions you can review—the issue is not AI. It is the service model you have been in for years, or even decades.