AI for financial advisers: what UK IFAs can automate in 2026

Meeting notes are the first build for most advice firms, because every review meeting ends with the same job of writing a file note and updating the CRM. The build records the meeting on Teams, Zoom or the phone, after the client is told it is being recorded and why. It transcribes the recording, drafts the file note in the firm's format, and proposes updates to fact-find fields such as income, dependants and objectives. The adviser reads the draft, corrects it and approves it before anything is written to the CRM.

Back-office systems such as Intelliflo office, Curo and Xplan hold the fact-find and the client record. Intelliflo lists more than 140 integrations through its intelliflo store, and markets its own AI assistant, intelliflo IQ, with a vendor claim that it can "cut your cost-to-serve by up to 85%". For Curo and Xplan, confirm API access with the vendor before a build is scoped.

Worked example for notes and reports

No independent study gives the hours UK advisers save with AI drafting, so estimate it from your own diary. These figures are assumptions.

1. Assume each adviser holds 150 review meetings a year and writes 40 suitability reports.
2. Assume an AI draft saves 30 minutes per file note and 2 hours per report, after the adviser's own checks.
3. Time saved is 150 × 0.5 = 75 hours plus 40 × 2 = 80 hours, so 155 hours per adviser a year.
4. At an assumed £35 an hour for paraplanner time, that is £5,425 per adviser, or £32,550 for a firm with six advisers.

Model usage is small. OpenAI lists gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize, which labels speakers, at $0.006 a minute, so 150 one-hour meetings cost 150 × 60 × $0.006 = $54 to transcribe. Drafting each note from an assumed 15,000-token transcript with a 2,000-token output costs about $0.05 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 ($2 and $10 per million tokens), or $7.50 for 150 notes.

Annual review preparation and document chasing are pure admin, and Consumer Duty records come out of the same data.

Annual review packs

Before each review, the build pulls the latest valuations, contributions and withdrawals, changes since the last meeting and the objectives in the last file note. It drafts an agenda and a review pack for the adviser to edit. Whether the existing advice still suits the client is the adviser's decision.

Client and provider chasers

The build sends requests for payslips, P60s, pension statements, ID and signed forms, chases at set intervals and files each document to the client record when it arrives. A second chaser does the same for letters of authority and provider information requests. Clients flagged as being in vulnerable circumstances go to a person instead of an automatic chaser.

Consumer Duty records

The Consumer Duty rules came into force on 31 July 2023 for products open to sale and on 31 July 2024 for closed products. Its four outcomes are products and services, price and value, consumer understanding and consumer support. For a firm that charges an ongoing advice fee, the simplest evidence that the service happened is a log of every review held. The build keeps that log, adds every chaser sent and every complaint, flags clients overdue for a review and produces a monthly report for the compliance officer. The FCA says "evidence should be proportionate to the firm's scale and complexity".

Keep a record of what the AI produced and who approved it, because the FCA lists that as good practice. Its October 2026 review says good firms "kept records of consumer prompts, outputs, model versions, applied filters and escalation decisions". Store the original transcript, the AI draft and the adviser's approved version against the client record.

For data protection, the ICO's "Guidance on AI and data protection" covers impact assessments, lawfulness and transparency, and the ICO says it is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act. Use a paid AI tier whose terms keep client data out of model training, and record that check.

What to keep human

• The recommendation and the signed suitability report
• Any decision that existing advice still suits the client
• Judgments about vulnerability
• Complaints and their outcomes
• Anything that moves client money
• The final check of every file note before it reaches the CRM

Yarigai is a done-for-you AI agency in London. It builds AI agents, document reading and filing, inbox triage, internal tools that replace spreadsheets and finance dashboards inside a client's own accounts and tools. The advice firm owns the code, the data and the accounts from day one.

A project starts with a free 30-minute scope call on Google Meet, and the firm keeps the notes whether it hires Yarigai or not. A blueprint of about a week, credited to the build, sets out a written plan, a clickable prototype, the monthly running cost, a fixed price and the payback maths. The build takes 2 to 6 weeks with a demo of working software every week, and a single workflow, such as meeting notes, can go live in about two weeks.

A person approves anything that sends money, emails a customer or deletes data. AI and hosting bills are paid by the firm at cost. Yarigai's guarantee is one sentence: "If the build isn't profitable for you, we won't build it."

Yarigai has no published financial advice case study. Its AI agents and operations work are described on the services pages.