As my readers know, I spent much of my career in private wealth management with several of the iconic Wall Street brokerage firms. Now, in addition to my novels, I write a regular column for financial advisers who subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.

I am fascinated by the threats to old world financial advice, particularly those driven by regulation and new technology. Here’s an excerpt from my column in today’s WSJ. To read the column in its entirety, click on this link to The Lure of Wealth, Power and Glory.

But now, courtesy of the Internet, clients don’t always need us. With a little digging, they can easily locate what they want to know about any investment-fees, past performance in down markets, even what other industry professionals think.

“What’s a financial adviser without some sort of edge?” asks Nadir Khan, CEO of Bidness Etc. His company is a website that seeks to simplify investment research and offer wealth advice for free. “We’ll figure out how to make money some other way than assets under management,” he says.

Do you hear the wake-up call?

I do, and it’s pretty clear what happens next. The Internet will put downward pressure on pricing as clients routinely assess if they’re getting more from their advisers than what they can find somewhere else for free.

How can a hungry, financial adviser fight back?

To answer this question, I spoke with Bo Lu, CEO of FutureAdvisor, and Chris Nicholson, his head of communications and recruiting. FutureAdvisor is an online adviser that advertises, “Our technology cuts costs in half.”

“Financial guidance must be more sophisticated,” says Mr. Nicholson. “The easy money is over.”

Uh-oh.

That makes firm-sanctioned asset allocation models a legacy of “easy money” days-even if the traditional advice industry hasn’t yet realized its days are numbered. The graphs and bar charts added value when clients were less knowledgeable. Today, they’re nothing special. They certainly won’t protect an adviser’s business from websites that offer similar services for free.

“The nature of disruptive change,” Mr. Lu says, “is that by the time you recognize a problem, it’s too late.”