Agentic AI and Hyper-Personalisation

Robo-advice and the new advisory

What changes when AI stops answering and starts acting. The module explains agentic systems and tool use, then applies them to the advisory frontier: robo-advice, hyper-personalised recommendations, suitability and mis-selling risk, and the competitive position of the human adviser — alongside the supervision duties that agentic delegation creates. Delegation without abdication is the theme, and the FAIS conduct regime is the frame.

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By the end of this module, you can

Explain how an AI agent plans, uses tools and acts, and where autonomy creates new risk.
Assess robo-advice and hyper-personalisation for suitability, manipulation and conduct risk.
Set the supervision and accountability posture required when work is delegated to an autonomous agent.

Skills taught

Agentic-system literacy
Suitability and conduct analysis of automated advice
Supervision design for delegated AI
Competing with, rather than being replaced by, a robo-product

Lessons in this module

From answering to acting: how AI agents work

Explain how an agentic system plans, uses tools and acts across multiple steps, and identify where autonomy introduces risk that a single-response model does not.

30 min

Robo-advice and hyper-personalisation: suitability, manipulation and conduct risk

Assess automated advice and hyper-personalised recommendations for suitability and mis-selling risk, and distinguish legitimate personalisation from manipulation, within the FAIS conduct frame.

30 min

Delegation without abdication: supervising agentic AI

Set the supervision and accountability posture required when work is delegated to an autonomous agent, and design the permission, gating and oversight controls that keep accountability with the human.

30 min

Case 09.1

Case file: The agent that rebalanced overnight

An applied fact pattern worked against a model resolution, followed by the timed assessment (30 minutes, pass mark 70 percent).

25 min

How it lands across the four desks

Wealth & Advisory

Your frontier, most directly. You learn how robo-advice and hyper-personalisation actually work, where they create suitability and manipulation risk, how FAIS binds them, and how a human adviser competes on exactly what the agent cannot do.

Compliance & Risk

You own the suitability and supervision framework for automated advice — the FAIS Fit and Proper requirements for automated advice, the oversight design for delegated agents, and the accountability posture when an agent acts.

Fraud & AML

You preview the agentic automation arriving in your own workflows — and carry Module 8's containment discipline into it: an agent that acts across your systems is blast radius before it is productivity.

Credit & Underwriting

You preview agentic automation of underwriting workflows, and apply the delegation-without-abdication supervision model to any agent that touches a credit decision.

Key literature · 6 sources

Every module rests on a verified scholarly and institutional evidence base. The full core and further reading lists open with the module.

Chan, A. et al. (2023) 'Harms from Increasingly Agentic Algorithmic Systems.' FAccT '23 — the risk vocabulary and the agency-as-spectrum framing.
Shavit, Y. et al. (2023) 'Practices for Governing Agentic AI Systems.' OpenAI — the governing principle and the supervision practices this module operationalises.
D'Acunto, F., Prabhala, N. & Rossi, A. G. (2019) 'The Promises and Pitfalls of Robo-Advising.' Review of Financial Studies 32(5) — the empirical benefits and limits of automated advice.
IOSCO (2016) 'Update to the Report on the IOSCO Automated Advice Tools Survey' — the international supervisory frame for automated-advice suitability.
Susser, D., Roessler, B. & Nissenbaum, H. (2019) 'Online Manipulation: Hidden Influences in a Digital World.' Georgetown Law Technology Review 4(1) — the service-versus-manipulation distinction.
SARB Prudential Authority & FSCA (2025) 'Artificial Intelligence in the South African Financial Sector' — Box 1 on automated advice and the FAIS Fit and Proper requirements; adoption and governance findings.

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