The admin between you and your clients, handled by software: fact-finds that fill themselves, suitability reports that arrive as drafts, reconciliations that run overnight. Built on the systems your firm already pays for, with compliance designed in from the first conversation, by someone who spent ten years running operations in financial advice and banking.
In an advice firm, AI earns its keep on the paperwork around advice, not the advice itself: drafting suitability reports for adviser review, pre-filling fact-finds from data the firm already holds, reconciling fees across platforms and flagging AML exceptions. Advisers keep every judgement; software does the typing, chasing and checking.
Every recommendation drags hours of drafting behind it, and the file gets written at the weekend. The knowledge is in the adviser’s head and the meeting notes; the typing does not need to be.
CRM, back office, platform, provider forms, the fact-find: the same names, dates and values re-entered by hand, and every re-entry is a fresh chance to introduce the error compliance later finds.
Consumer Duty, data protection, PI cover: the questions are legitimate, and without written answers the safest decision is always no. So other firms move while yours waits.
The pattern that works in regulated firms is drafts and checks, not autopilot: software does the assembly and the chasing, and a person approves everything that reaches a client or a regulator. On real adviser processes:
By hand todayWritten from scratch after every meeting
With softwareDrafted from the file and notes; the adviser reviews
By hand todayChased over email, re-keyed by hand
With softwarePre-filled, validated and chased automatically
By hand todayA spreadsheet marathon every month
With softwareRuns on a schedule; exceptions reach a person
By hand todaySampled when someone has time
With softwareScreened continuously; humans see the flags
By hand todayTyped up days later, if at all
With softwareCaptured, structured and filed the same day
I do not ask advice firms to be the experiment. These are real systems, built by the same process you would get, and most are live right now:
The full showcase, with live links, is on the Labs page; the system behind all of it is the Software Factory.
Ten years running operations in financial advice and banking made the constraints familiar: data protection, audit trails, a named human accountable for every client-facing output. Anything ambiguous is asked about before it is built, not guessed at. The written version of how firms govern this well is free in the knowledge base:
When the win is proven there are retainers to keep it compounding, the Software Factory for custom systems, and Managed Websites for the whole web presence, run for you.
The knowledge base exists so you can check my thinking before we ever speak. Start here:
There is no rule against it; there are duties that apply to it. Consumer Duty, data protection and your existing systems and controls all still apply, which is why every build here starts from governance: what the tool may touch, who reviews its output, what gets logged. The knowledge base carries a control-by-control guide for UK advice firms.
No. Systems are designed so client data stays inside services under your control, encrypted in transit and at rest where it matters, with AI providers configured not to train on your data. What holds the data, who can read it and how it is deleted are written down before anything is built.
No. The starting assumption is the opposite: build on Intelliflo, Xplan, Plannr, your CRM and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and add automation between them. Replacing a core system is occasionally the right answer; it is never the assumption.
With the process that hurts most and risks least: usually suitability drafting, onboarding chasing or a monthly reconciliation. Sift, the free scorer on this site, ranks your own candidates in a few minutes; the Automation Audit does the same job formally, with your team, across the whole firm.
Work is scoped and priced in writing before it starts: audits at a fixed scope, Kick-starter builds at a fixed price. Running costs of anything with an AI component are measured per system, so the ongoing number is known rather than estimated.
Sift is free and runs in your browser: list the processes that eat your team’s week, answer four quick questions about each, and leave with a ranked shortlist of what to automate first, and what to leave alone.
Get my automation shortlistPrefer to talk it through first? Book a free 30-minute call.
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