Katie Brinsden, Managing Director of Truly Independent, reflects on the rise of “vibe coding” and what it signals for advisers in an AI-driven world.
Twelve months ago I explored the prospects for 2025 through the lens of the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year. Given the lingering effects of the festive season, I hope you will forgive my lack of imagination in treading a similar path now.
Last year’s word was “brat”, which Collins described as appropriate “for a year when hedonism and society have combined to form an intoxicating brew”. This year’s is “vibe coding” – which is two words, of course, but not to worry.
The term comes from the all-consuming sphere of artificial intelligence. It refers to the use of natural language to prompt AI to write computer code – or, to quote Collins, “telling a machine what you want rather than painstakingly coding it yourself”[1].
Should the mere existence of this type of technology fill advisers’ hearts with dread? Does it mean that we are being rapidly herded ever closer to the brink of obsolescence or even that we are already teetering on the precipice?
Perhaps we have all grown weary of such questions already. Yet the fact remains that they need asking – and, indeed, answering.
As investment professionals, we are familiar with the growing debate over whether AI will prove as spectacularly transformative as originally envisaged. A number of key events shaped this narrative as 2025 wore on.
One came in August, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a study into the impact of businesses’ generative AI pilot schemes. To widespread surprise, it revealed a 95% failure rate[2].
This bombshell intensified concerns over AI’s long-term capacity to add value and drive significant productivity gains. Numerous high-profile prophecies of doom followed, including an ominous warning from the International Monetary Fund[3].
Another notable twist in the tale came in November, when AI chip maker Nvidia announced better-than-expected revenues and profits. The world’s most valuable company conveyed the happy news in an earnings call that was arguably more anxiously awaited than a US government jobs report.
Your guess at to what all this might ultimately mean is as good as mine. In my view, though, a simple yet compelling interpretation is that AI might not be quite as revolutionary as first thought – at least over the short term – but is nonetheless extremely unlikely to vanish from our lives anytime soon.
All things considered, this could constitute a favourable scenario for advisers. It taps into an idea I have written about in the past: technology’s ability to empower rather than overpower us.
The right AI could improve our products and services. It could substantially ease many of the burdens that advisers have had to cope with for decades. It could give each and every one of us more freedom to concentrate on client relationships and optimised propositions.
And that, I suspect, is what we would all like it to do. We do not want it to render us redundant. We want it to streamline and enhance the delivery of independent, affordable, expertly tailored advice.
Naturally, there must be a caveat or two in advocating this way forward. Above all, it strikes me that we must proceed with caution. A tech-enabled future might well be bright, but we cannot let it blind us.
A major thrust of MIT’s aforementioned study was that AI’s apparent inadequacies to date should not necessarily be blamed on AI itself. They should more likely be blamed on how companies are seeking to implement it.
As detailed in an article last year, my colleagues and I have already had a few brief encounters with supposedly cutting-edge software that has been not just fundamentally unimpressive but wholly unsuitable for our needs. Some has been so far removed from the successful provision of financial advice that invoking the Trade Descriptions Act would have been a reasonable response.
It is therefore vital to be certain of an AI package’s utility. Adviser firms must take every care to embrace the sort of tech that encourages positive disruption – as opposed to the sort that could lead to total ruination.
In making uninformed choices, in neglecting to look before we leap, in getting unduly caught up in the AI frenzy, we risk undermining established and effective practices. Needless to say, this would be very much to the detriment of our industry and the people it aims to serve.
The goal must instead be to use AI to build on what we already have. By any standard, it represents a remarkable opportunity to make our businesses more accessible, more resourceful and more efficient while retaining the human touch that has always underpinned what we do.
The road ahead might not entail the wonders of “vibe coding” in the strictest sense. But it should still boil down to telling machines what we want – a fascinating possibility for advisers as 2026 gets under way.
Katie Brinsden is Managing Director of Truly Independent.
[1] See, for example, Collins Dictionary: “Collins Word of the Year 2025: AI meets authenticity as society shifts”, November 6 2025 – https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/collins-word-of-the-year-2025-ai-meets-authenticity-as-society-shifts/.
[2] See, for example, MIT: The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, 2025 – https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf.
[3] See, for example, Reuters: “AI investment boom may lead to bust but not likely systemic crisis, IMF chief economist says”, October 14 2025 – https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/ai-investment-boom-may-lead-bust-not-likely-systemic-crisis-imf-chief-economist-2025-10-14/.
