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With reports suggesting that technology and automation will make finance brokers and accountants redundant, futurist Mark Pesce says these roles will change, not disappear.
On Thursday (4 August), the Australian Financial Review (AFR) ran a story with the headline: “Finance brokers top list of jobs most at risk of automation”. The article was based on research undertaken by analytics platform Faethm by Pearson, which found that finance broking was the profession that was most at risk of being made redundant by automation (at 59 per cent).
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According to the researchers, this was based on the premise that jobs such as finance broking and other finance professions, such as accountancy, which rely heavily on routine tasks or data inputting, could be replaced by artificial intelligence and automation.
However, Mark Pesce, futurist and co-inventor of 3D vector graphics VRML, said that rather than being disrupted and replaced, he believed these professions would instead evolve to harness and embrace technology.
During an event on digital transformation within the legal and property sectors hosted by Galilee Solicitors on Friday (5 August), Mr Pesce outlined that technology can deliver manifold benefits when it comes to time savings and efficiencies, but that these largely exclude personalised analysis, strategy and education.
Speaking to The Adviser about whether jobs and accountancy could be made redundant by automation, the entrepreneur and educator explained: “What tends to happen in this situation, and what we’ve seen before, is that the work changes.
“The work that people do changes because of the technology, and it changes to encapsulate and incorporate technology.”
Mr Pesce gave the example of his own mother, who spent her entire career “doing roughly the same thing” but found that her role evolved over time as technology changed.
“In the first half of her career she was called a secretary and she did a lot of typing on very nice electric typewriters,” he said. “But then she became an executive assistant.
“While she was always working for presidents or vice presidents (and she was still doing some typing on a word processor), she was also doing all of the other tasks that you do when you’re an EA. So, it’s just the definitions, the words we use, that change as a profession changes.
“I think that’s going to be true for brokers and accountancy. Now, that doesn’t mean that how we think of those professions remains the same, because I don’t think it does. But I also don’t think that how we think of what a broker or accountant does today, in 2022, is the same as it was in 1982…
“The fact that there’s a need for someone in that role doesn’t change. It’s just that the technology provides more capability for them to be able to do their jobs, and provides more options.
“We haven’t seen something come along that says there’s no need for a broker or an accountant. What we’ve seen is that finance and accountancy tools have become more and more accessible.”
Indeed, the argument has long been made that broking will be disrupted or replaced by technology. But, as history has so far proven, the skills and advice of the mortgage and finance broking have only become more and more in demand, even as technology advances.
Mr Pesce himself revealed that he had recently chosen to use a broker when accessing a mortgage product.
The futurist told The Adviser that he had chosen to use the third-party channel as he had “never done the process before” and wanted “someone to sit down with me and explain variable rates and offset accounts and how all that works”.
“[Getting a mortgage] is a big deal for me because it’s the first time I will have bought property. So, actually having someone who knows his stuff is reassuring to me,” he told The Adviser.
“I’m trying to suck a lot of what he knows out of every interaction and that’s been really helpful and made me feel empowered to be able to make my own decisions.”
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