How to run a two-week practicum for wealth advisers

A wealth adviser's practicum is two weeks of deciding what an advice agent drafts for live clients: suitability reports, rebalancing proposals, review letters and trade instructions. A senior adviser marks each decision. Pass at 95 correct in every 100 with no missed red line, the clearest being a recommendation that does not fit the client's recorded circumstances.

What does the practicum check, and who owns it?

Advice agents prepare a great deal of the paperwork behind advice: they gather the client's holdings, compare them with the agreed risk profile, draft the review letter and propose rebalancing trades. The adviser stays responsible for the advice. The practicum tests whether the adviser reads those drafts as advice they are about to give, not as admin they are about to sign.

The head of advice or the compliance lead for advice owns the practicum. The assessor is a senior adviser or file checker from another team. The guide to AI literacy and certification for people who work with agents explains how this sits beside foundations training for client-facing staff.

What are the steps?

1. Person (head of advice): assign live client reviews due in the fortnight. Include at least one client with a recent change in circumstances.
2. Person (head of advice with compliance): write the red lines. Sending a recommendation inconsistent with the client's recorded objectives, risk profile or capacity for loss; placing a trade without the client's authority; sending a communication that implies a promised return; missing clear signs of client vulnerability recorded in the file.
3. Agent, depth 1: assembles the client picture. Holdings from the platform's sealed records, the risk profile, recent notes and contact history.
4. Agent, depth 2: drafts the review letter and any rebalancing proposal. With the reasons it gives and the sources behind each.
5. Person (adviser): decides every draft. Approve, edit, reject or hold for a client conversation, with a reason.
6. Agent, depth 4: trade instructions stay held. Trades are hard to undo and need both the adviser's approval and the client's recorded authority.
7. Person (assessor): file-checks each decision. Within a day for routine reviews; before sending for anything near a red line.
8. Person (head of advice): sign off or extend on day ten.

Which controls matter, and what evidence do they leave?

Client facts are dated and sourced. A risk profile from three years ago is a weak basis for today's advice. The agent shows when each fact was last confirmed. An adviser who approves a recommendation on stale facts without a conversation has made a marked error.

Client authority is recorded before trades. The verdict on each trade shows the adviser's approval and the reference to the client's instruction.

Language is checked. The assessor reads every letter for wording that could be taken as a promise of return or a guarantee. Edits that remove it count in the adviser's favour.

Vulnerability is acted on. Notes about bereavement, illness or cognitive decline are flagged. The record shows what the adviser did with each flag. In the UK, the FCA's Consumer Duty expects firms to deliver good outcomes for retail customers, including those in vulnerable circumstances; other markets have comparable conduct expectations. This is an explanation of the rules, not legal advice; confirm how they apply to you with counsel.

What should the assessor measure?

• Accuracy against the 95 in 100 bar.
• Red-line misses: zero.
• Edit depth: how much the adviser changed the agent's drafts, and whether the changes improved suitability or only style.
• Stale-fact catches: recommendations held for a client conversation because the profile needed updating.
• Vulnerability handling: every flag with a recorded response.

The practicum log template for wealth advisers has columns for each.

Where does it usually go wrong?

Familiar clients get less scrutiny. Advisers who have known a client for years approve drafts on memory. The record may say something the adviser has forgotten. Assessors should check long-standing relationships as closely as new ones.

Style edits pass for review. An adviser who rewrites every letter's opening but never questions a proposed switch is reviewing tone, not advice.

Accountability is misread. The adviser is responsible for the advice whoever drafted it. Whether wealth advisers are accountable for an AI agent's mistakes explains where that line falls.

Other adviser roles follow the same pattern with different red lines; see the practicums for HR advisers and caseworkers.

Where the Academy fits

Certified Pryme Operator closes with a practicum of two weeks of real review decisions, at least 95 in every 100 correct and no missed red line, signed off by a Pryme assessor. Tests are set in the learner's industry and role, so an adviser is tested on advice files. A firm can choose to tie the right to approve agent-drafted advice to a current certificate.