From a prospect's documents to a draft financial plan

Situation

Bringing on a new client required a great deal of retyping. Operations staff copied figures from bank and investment statements, tax returns, pay stubs, employment records and insurance policies. Advisors then wrote each financial plan and its recommendations by hand, and operations entered the same new client into the CRM and several other systems.

Solution

A custom application follows each prospect from first contact to onboarded client. Staff add the documents and digital records a prospect provides, and the application sorts and reads them, so no one keys in a prospect's information. Before the discovery meeting, it shows what is known about the prospect and what is still missing.

From that information, the application drafts a complete financial plan covering estate, tax, protection, cash and debt, retirement and college. The planning engine was trained on hundreds of the firm's actual financial plans, so each draft follows the firm's own pattern of advice and is customized to the client. When the prospect becomes a client, the application sets the client up in the firm's systems and drafts the welcome emails.

Design decisions

Before development began, Jeff Hunt mapped the prospect and onboarding workflows step by step with the team, and the application follows those maps. AI-drafted plans were compared with the versions the firm finished and sent, and the drafting was adjusted to read closer to the firm's own writing. Advisors review and edit every plan, and every email is a draft for a person to send.

Outcome

Operations staff no longer key in a prospect's information, and advisors start every plan from a complete draft that reflects the firm's own advice. Information gathered once carries through to the plan, the welcome emails and the client's setup in the firm's systems.