What Brain Science and Automation Reveal About the Future of Paraplanning

From Mental Load to Meaningful Work

Suitability reports, a core domain of paraplanners hunched over word processors, wrestling with compliance language and portfolio breakdowns, are increasingly being written by advanced software. That shift might sound like yet another footnote in the story of automation, but if you step back, it tells us something much bigger about how our brains work, how we allocate human effort, and what modern tools like Automwrite are quietly changing.

Let’s start with the science. According to psychiatrist Dr. Tracey Marks, the brain is hardwired to seek efficiency. In her most recently published video on habit formation, she explains how the brain offloads repeated tasks to the basal ganglia—its own autopilot system—so we can reserve mental energy for decisions that matter. We don’t actively think about brushing our teeth, checking our phones, or driving familiar routes. These routines become automatic. They free up cognitive capacity.

In a similar way, paraplanning is often a sequence of learned behaviours. Advisers take notes, transpose them into standardised structures, and translate advice into report templates—a process repeated so often it becomes rote. That repetition, while necessary, takes time and mental bandwidth. And just like habit loops, once they’re formed, they’re difficult to escape without deliberate intervention.

Cue automation.

According to a recent modelling study from Oxford and the University of Leeds, as much as 44% of employment in the UK could be at risk of automation over the next two decades. Professional services are not exempt. The study notes that "high-skill, process-driven roles that involve documentation, interpretation, and output standardisation are particularly susceptible." Paraplanning ticks all three boxes. Yet, that doesn’t have to be a threat.

The study is careful to note that automation isn’t a guillotine. It’s a slow turn of the wheel. Routine cognitive roles, like paraplanning, will evolve steadily, shaped as much by wages and firm culture as by software capability.

The challenge is not whether automation will arrive, as it already has. The real question is how we use it.

By automating the writing of suitability reports, software like Automwrite doesn’t eliminate roles but rather it enhances them. It lifts the weight of repetitive documentation off both advisers and paraplanners, allowing client conversations to be richer, advice to be faster, and firms to scale without additional administrative strain. And perhaps most critically, it redirects energy toward what people do best: complex thought, emotional nuance, and sound judgement.

Dr. Marks talks about “habit stacking”—the practice of attaching new behaviours to existing routines so they stick. There’s an argument to be made that tools like Automwrite function as habit stacks for the modern adviser. Instead of manually drafting the same paragraphs over and over, you finish a meeting, and the system begins writing. It becomes second nature. A new layer of output added to an old layer of input.

This isn’t about removing humans from the sequence. It’s about asking what humans are uniquely good at, and designing the sequence around that. Paraplanning, when unburdened from the burden of tedious document analysis and text writing, becomes an exercise in quality control, oversight, and customisation.

When automation is built to mirrors how the brain already works - optimising for efficiency, freeing up attention, and reinforcing value based habits - it doesn’t feel disruptive. It feels inevitable.