There's why you need the cover - that's which issues would affect you more than others and which issues are more probable than others.

Some clever people have worked out how consumers perceived risk varies with the scale of the perceived risk, which explains why more people buy life insurance when they are more likely to get disabled.

That's a component of advice that these systems don't go near. But it's something most advisers have developed an instinct for, as they have talked to hundreds of clients over the years. It's used whenever you make a prioritising decision on a risk protection proposal.

There's also how you choose a company - and while research systems can provide a good contribution to this debate, the essential glue is figuring out what is important to a client and then responding to that with guidance.

There's what particular product you select - and making a set of product selection rules and then applying them with consistency in every client situation, is again very rare. Some of the research systems have a go, but the approach is so clunky, I have met very few advisers that even incorporate the results into their reports.

Add all that up and quite a lot of clever stuff gets done by the adviser "around" all the systems. But the systems could sure do with catching up so we can make it easier to record and prove the advice given.