Financial Advisors

Where should a financial advisor use AI first?

By Matthew HenryLast updated July 16, 20267 min read

Key takeaways

Start internal and low-stakes, where a human reviews the output before a client ever sees it. Meeting prep and first-draft internal writing are the safest on-ramps.
The market already voted with its feet: notetaking and documentation are by far the most common first AI use at RIAs, because they are repetitive and reviewable.
The wrong first move is client-facing advice or automated recommendations. That is the highest-stakes, least-documented corner of your firm.
Whatever you pick first, it only works if the underlying process is written down. AI amplifies the workflow it reads, good or bad.

A financial advisor should use AI first where the work is repetitive, internal, and already documented, and where a human still signs off before anything reaches a client. For most firms that means meeting prep and internal first drafts, not client-facing advice or automated recommendations. Start where a wrong answer is cheap to catch and easy to fix.

Last updated: July 16, 2026

What is the safest first place to use AI in an advisory firm?

The safest first use is internal and low-stakes: work that repeats, that you already have a rough process for, and that a human reviews before it becomes anything a client sees. Meeting prep is the classic on-ramp. Before a review meeting, you already pull the same handful of things, the portfolio changes since last time, the open action items, what the household said they cared about. That is a defined, repeatable task with a human reading every output. If the AI gets something wrong, you catch it at your desk, not in front of a client.

The industry has already voted on this. Among billion-dollar RIAs, 70% use AI for notetaking or call documentation, by far the most common application (Cerulli Associates, U.S. RIA Marketplace 2025). That is not an accident. Documentation is exactly the kind of repetitive, reviewable, internal work where AI earns its keep without putting your fiduciary duty on the line. The firms that started there did not start there because it was exciting. They started there because it was safe and it worked.

Where should an advisor absolutely not start?

Do not start with client-facing advice, automated recommendations, or anything that speaks to a client without a human in the loop. That is the highest-stakes, least-documented, most heavily regulated corner of your entire firm, which makes it the worst possible place to point a tool you are still learning to trust.

Here is the reasoning in plain terms. The value of an advisory relationship is judgment applied to a specific human’s life, and most of that judgment is not written down anywhere a model can read it. When you let AI generate advice directly, it fills the undocumented gaps with confident, fluent, plausible fiction, and it does it inside a regulated relationship where a wrong answer is a real problem. You want your first AI experience to be forgiving. Client-facing advice is the opposite of forgiving.

Why does everyone seem to be doing this ad hoc?

Because that is how AI arrives, one helpful tool at a time, from the bottom up. At most firms, 82% of RIA AI users are relying on generative AI mostly through individual experimentation rather than any firm-wide system (Schwab Advisor Services). One advisor found a note-taker they like, another is drafting emails in ChatGPT, and nobody decided any of it on purpose.

That is fine as a way to discover what is useful and dangerous as a way to run a firm. The scattered experimentation is how you end up with client data in unvetted tools and records generated outside your compliance program. The move is to take the thing that is genuinely working, meeting prep for most firms, and make it deliberate: one approved tool, one documented process, one clear rule about human review. You get the productivity without the shadow-AI mess.

How do I know my chosen first use is actually ready?

You know it is ready when you can write the process down before you automate it. If you can hand a new hire a one-page description of how your firm preps a review meeting and they could follow it, AI has something real to read and amplify. If the honest description is “it depends, ask Sarah,” you have found the gap, and that gap is exactly where the AI will fail. This is the whole thesis: AI only amplifies what it can read. Point it at a documented meeting-prep process and it makes that process faster. Point it at a process that lives in one advisor’s head and it amplifies your guesswork.

That readiness check is cheap to run before you commit. It is the entire point of the AI Readiness Audit: find out which of your candidate first uses is genuinely documented and ready, and which one needs its process written down before a tool touches it.

Your next step

Pick the boring, internal, reviewable use and do it deliberately. If you want help choosing and pressure-testing it, the AI Readiness Audit is $750, credits to the build, and tells you which first move is actually ready in your firm.

Go deeper on the most common starting point in AI for meeting prep and client notes at an RIA, make sure the foundation is there with do I need documented workflows before adding AI, or start from the top with the RIA landing page.

Key figures

Figure	Value	Source
Billion-dollar RIAs using AI for notetaking or call documentation, by far the most common first use	70%	Cerulli Associates, U.S. RIA Marketplace 2025, January 2026
RIA AI users relying on generative AI mostly through individual experimentation rather than firm-wide systems	82%	Schwab Advisor Services, RIA and AI Research Study, January 2026

“Advisors always want to start with the flashy thing, the AI that talks to clients or picks the portfolio. Start with the boring thing instead. Point it at meeting prep, where you already have a process and you're going to read every word before it leaves the building. Get a win where a mistake costs you nothing, learn how the tool actually behaves in your shop, then move up. Simplicity is king.”
Matthew Henry, Co-Founder & CEO, EffiWise Solutions

The next step

AI Readiness Audit

A paid diagnostic that scores your data hygiene, process documentation, systems, and team readiness, then hands you a verdict and a roadmap. The paid front door to everything else we do.

$750, fixed. The fee credits toward the AI build.

Get started Learn more about the AI Readiness Audit

Keep reading

Financial Advisors

AI for financial advisors and RIAs: where to start when you're curious but concerned

You know AI matters for your advisory firm. You are not sure where to start or how to use it without tripping the SEC marketing rule, your books-and-records duty, or client trust. Here is the honest starting point: a paid readiness check before any build.

9 min read

Financial Advisors

AI for meeting prep and client notes at an RIA

Meeting prep and client notes are the most popular first AI use at RIAs for a reason: repetitive, reviewable, high-value. But an AI note-taker creates records the moment it runs, so the win only holds if your CRM process and your recordkeeping are set up to catch them.

7 min read

Financial Advisors

Do I need documented workflows before adding AI to my RIA?

Yes. AI works off what your firm has written down, not what your advisors know. Undocumented workflows are the single biggest reason AI projects fail, and at an RIA the undocumented gaps are also where your compliance and data problems hide. Document first, then automate.

8 min read