I started using AI, but what now?

By Aaron Kane

As generative AI expands across personal and professional use, financial advisors are finding new ways to integrate digital tools to streamline their practice.

We are continually finding new ways to improve efficiency across our teams and make more time for client interactions. In my business, we experimented with AI capabilities to solve pain points in our internal process. For some advisors, the recent tech advancements meant adding an AI note-taker to meetings. This is a great start, but what are you doing with those notes? What is next?

Some advisors are unsure where to go next with their technology. It can be challenging to manage clients and integrate a new digital tool into the business at the same time.

But here is the good news: You do not need to overhaul your practice all at once. Learn from my experience incorporating AI and consider some of these recommendations.

Identify pain points to inform decisions

When wondering where to start with applying possible AI solutions, take a moment to reflect on your client's journey with you/your company. How do you first interact with them? What do the first few meetings look like? What forms do they need to fill out, and who on your team is managing this data?

Questions like these can help you map the steps involved in serving a client and identify where the process slows down. List out the steps needed to support a client’s journey and decide where the pain points lie.

For example, after a client meeting, my team and I need to enter notes to keep track of progress and what was discussed. Rather than spending 40 minutes or more creating the notes manually, we can use the meeting transcript to assist in generating the text, review the information for accuracy and complete the task in less time.

Identifying the pain points in your client process is especially important before researching new tech stack elements. Exploring tools without first understanding where your business could benefit from automation or AI can make the process feel overwhelming and stall progress.

Knowing where you can streamline work before exploring digital solutions can save time and help you implement strategies that create more opportunities to focus on clients.

Examples of tech in practice

At my own business, we continue to find ways AI and other digital tools can enhance our internal process. One of the pain points we identified to streamline was developing review meeting agendas.

What used to take 45 minutes we can complete now in about five. Our AI system pulls from past meetings, client documentation and email communication to draft an agenda specific to the client. With our own input and review, this creates the same outcome as our manual process, so we can use the time we get back for other business needs.

We can even use the AI tool to create a five-page summary of 60+ page documents. Summaries are especially popular with our clients as they are clear and direct with the next steps. This requires our review to ensure accuracy, but overall it reduces time spent on routine tasks that support the client process.

As we got more comfortable with digital capabilities, we expanded our tech to enhance other elements like our internal trainings or documents. Using Replit, an AI tool that allows users to design custom applications and internal tools, we built an intranet of sorts to house all the information we need to help us support clients more consistently.

While this may sound like a major undertaking, it was an intuitive process that only required me to chat with Replit and describe what I wanted. The tool began coding and developing what I was looking for and then made adjustments along the way.

The site contains example presentations, our policies on ethical standards and AI usage, calculators specific to financial planning elements and more. After building this site, we have a toolkit that helps our staff to provide a more consistent client experience and access internal support at the click of a button.

What’s next?

As AI evolves, I expect it to become more embedded in the systems advisors already use. Rather than waiting for us to enter a prompt, tools may proactively flag client milestones, upcoming review meetings or any financial changes.

Just as with taking notes, this can support your business in efficiently managing clerical tasks to spend more time focused on client connection and support. I also expect the technology to become increasingly customizable to adjust to a business’ specific needs and the client journey.

Begin with one specific pain point in mind. For example, if you find yourself spending what feels like a lot of time on a mundane task like scheduling reminder emails, find a solution that meets that specific need like finding a tool that drafts reminder emails and schedules them while also letting you customize the note to each specific client.

Most tools are not a one-size-fits-all, which is why it is important to understand what you want to achieve through the tool. Automating the note-taking process is helpful in allowing advisors to focus on their clients in meetings but stopping there and not thinking through what you can do with those notes means overlooking other ways the technology could strengthen your work.

As you reflect on the tech you have available, continue to keep the most important detail at heart: how is this supporting the client experience? Technology will continue to get smarter, but our goal remains the same: provide the best service for our clients. Explore your options to streamline internal processes and create more time to build trust and respect with your clients.

About the author

Aaron Kane, B. Bus is a 12-year MDRT member and Managing Director of EK Financial Group. Kane’s work as a financial adviser and mortgage broker is especially focused in financial planning and mortgage broking areas, including superannuation, insurance, debt recycling, investment planning and self-managed super funds.