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What South Africa's advice businesses told us this year about AI adoption, the governance gap, integration and the systems behind compliance
From the 2026 Linktank Hadeda Advice Technology Survey
Every year we ask financial advice businesses across South Africa a simple question in many different ways: how is technology actually working for you? This year advisers, paraplanners and practice staff from across the country answered, and the picture that came back is the most decisive we have seen in the life of the survey.
For years, adoption of new tools moved at the pace of caution. Advisers have historically been cautious about making technology changes, and adoption has traditionally been a long and thorny road. Over the last couple of years this story seems to have changed somewhat, and nowhere is it clearer than in the numbers on artificial intelligence.
AI has crossed from curiosity to daily habit
Almost two-thirds of advice businesses, 64 percent, are now using AI tools in some form. The bulk of that, 61 percent, is internal use inside the practice, with a further 4 percent putting AI to work in a client-facing capacity. To put the shift in context, the share of businesses reporting internal AI use has climbed from 23 percent two years ago to 41 percent last year, and the momentum has not slowed.
The adoption is decisive, but it is also measured. AI is used most for time-consuming tasks that sit away from the client, drafting and editing communications, research, and summarising documents. It reaches financial analysis or reporting less often, cited by 38 percent of those using AI, where caution about accuracy and client data still holds many back. The pattern is a pragmatic one: use AI freely for the work behind the scenes, and tread carefully where client information and professional judgement intersect. Only one in ten businesses now says it has no interest in AI at all.
Adoption has outpaced governance
Among the businesses using AI, three in four have no formal policy governing how it is used. Only a quarter have a formal governance policy in place. Another group is developing one, and a substantial share rely on informal approaches or have not yet treated it as a priority.
That combination, fast adoption and thin governance, is the most important finding for a practice principal. AI is already touching client communications, research and, for some, financial analysis. The businesses that will navigate the next few years comfortably are the ones putting robust policies guardrails in place now, before a regulator, a professional body or a client demands it.
Integration remains the top technology challenge
If AI is the headline, integration is the story underneath it that never quite goes away. Asked to name their greatest technology challenges, 54 percent of advice businesses again pointed to the lack of integration between their systems, keeping it at the top of the list. Finding and selecting suitable software drew the same share.
The cost of poor integration is easy to underestimate. It shows up as data manually re-keyed from one system into another, as reports that take an afternoon to assemble by hand, and as time that would otherwise be spent with clients. The survey also shows businesses are willing to spend to address it. Investment intentions remain stable compared to previous years, and a growing minority now commit a meaningful share of their budgets to technology.
This is not a burden advice businesses carry alone, nor one to lay solely at the door of their suppliers. More than half feel their technology providers are not yet keeping pace on AI, at 55 percent. Yet the parallel survey Linktank and Hadeda ran of the vendors themselves shows a market investing heavily and wrestling with the very constraints advisers feel, from regulatory uncertainty to the cost and data-protection demands of building enterprise-grade AI responsibly. As one tech provider put it, the gap between what the global AI giants offer consumers and what it takes to connect that safely to a South African advice business is wide and expensive to close. The appetite is simply running ahead of what any single party can deliver alone. Getting the tools, the integration and the guardrails to catch up is a shared project for advisers and providers alike.
The systems behind compliance are improving
One of the more heartening trends this year sits in the numbers on compliance, and in a technology survey it is worth being clear about what they measure. These questions ask whether a business has the systems and data in place to support compliance, not how it feels about it in the abstract. Confidence that those systems keep client data current, support POPIA, and stand ready for COFI is all rising. Highly confident POPIA readiness has climbed to 64 percent of businesses, up from 46 percent two years ago. Just under half, 49 percent, report high confidence in their cybersecurity measures, and the systems behind client data and COFI are moving in the same direction.
What advisers invest in, and what they rate
Two main aspects of the survey speak to this. The first asks which categories of tool advisers consider worth investing in, with respondents free to name as many as apply. Financial planning tools and CRM or practice management systems share the top position at 77 percent each, the enduring core of a practice. Notably, 56 percent now count AI tools among the categories worth investing in, up from 34 percent last year, the largest single-year jump this question has produced, and bringing a young category within reach of the long-established ones.
The second aspect asks current and former users to rate the individual solutions they actually use, across six dimensions, so the scores reflect lived experience rather than reputation. A handful stood out and, to name just two of the strongest performers, ProfileMe and Commspace both earned standout marks from the advisers who use them day to day, compounding their multi-year trend in positive user ratings. The full rankings, and the best-in-class picks, are published in the research report.
The bottom line
The 2026 survey describes advisers who have gone all in on AI, moving faster than the infrastructure around them. They are adopting at pace, spending on the systems that matter, and steadily strengthening the technology behind their compliance. The work that remains is less about whether to embrace technology and more about doing so deliberately, with governance, integration and vendor delivery maturing together. That is a shared task for advice businesses and their technology partners alike.
The full 2026 Linktank Hadeda Advice Technology Survey Highlights Report, with a foreword by Financial Planning Institute chief executive Lelané Bezuidenhout, is available now. It carries a broad range of industry insights, the year-on-year trends, and the detailed user ratings that tell you which tools South African advisers rate most highly.
Get the full report at hadeda.co.za.
Linktank produces the Advice Technology Survey independently each year. It is privately funded and vendor-neutral, which is what allows us to report what advisers actually told us, without fear or favour.