AI Consulting · Financial Services
AI Consulting for Financial Services
Compliance-aware AI work for RIAs, wealth managers, CPA firms, and insurance brokers who can't afford a sloppy deployment.
AI consulting for financial services
AI consulting for financial services is hands-on help for RIAs, wealth-management firms, mid-size CPA practices, and insurance brokerages who need AI that respects SEC marketing rules, FINRA archiving, fiduciary duty, and Circular 230. It focuses on time-back-to-clients work like meeting prep, proposal drafting, marketing review, and tax-prep assist, with partner-in-the-loop review on anything that touches client money or advice.
Use cases that pay off first
The AI plays we see deliver in financial services first, ordered by how fast they earn back the spend.
Client meeting prep that pulls from your CRM
A $180M-AUM RIA was spending 45 minutes per client review building meeting agendas by hand. Open Redtail, scroll the notes from the last six meetings, check the held-away assets in Black Diamond, glance at the planning software, write up a summary. Multiply that by 12 reviews a week and the senior advisor was burning a full day. We built a prep brief generator that pulls structured data from Redtail, the performance reporting platform, and the CRM activity feed, then drafts a one-page agenda in the firm's standard format. Advisor reads it, edits, prints. The brief is archived to the firm's books-and-records system per 17a-4(b)(4) before it ever reaches the meeting room.
Meeting prep cut from 45 minutes to 8 minutes per client
Proposal drafts that match the firm's IPS language
A wealth firm with 4 advisors was losing prospects because proposals took 5 to 7 business days to land. Junior staff would copy the last similar proposal, swap names, redo the asset allocation chart, route to compliance, then to the lead advisor. We trained an internal drafting tool on 60 prior approved proposals and the firm's investment policy statement template. Now the lead advisor fills out a 12-field intake at the end of a discovery call and a draft proposal exists by morning, in the firm's voice, with the right disclosures, ready for compliance review. Compliance still reviews every send, and the SEC marketing rule guardrails are baked into the prompt so testimonials, predictions, and unfair comparisons get flagged automatically.
Proposal turnaround dropped from 6 days to 28 hours
Marketing copy review against the SEC marketing rule
A growing RIA was running every blog post, LinkedIn update, and prospect email past the CCO before publishing. The CCO was the bottleneck. We built a pre-review tool trained on SEC Rule 206(4)-1, the firm's testimonial policy, and a library of past flagged language. It reads draft copy and returns a list of specific issues with the rule citation: implied performance claims that need disclaimers, third-party endorsements missing the required disclosures, hypothetical performance presented without the prospectus carve-outs. The CCO still signs off on every piece. But she's reviewing pre-cleaned copy with a flag list, not reading from scratch. Cleared queue, kept the audit trail.
CCO review time per item dropped 70 percent, queue cleared
Common failure modes
The recurring ways AI projects stall in financial services. Worth flagging up front.
Generic AI giving advice that crosses the fiduciary line
A small RIA piloted a public-facing chatbot trained on the firm's website content. Within two weeks, a prospect asked whether they should roll over a 401(k) into a Roth IRA. The bot answered with a recommendation. That's a problem. Specific advice to a specific person about their specific account is investment advice under the Advisers Act, and the firm just gave it through an unsupervised tool. The fix isn't a smarter prompt. It's a hard rule: any client-facing AI surface stops at general education and routes specific situations to a human advisor every single time. Build the off-ramp into the system, not into the prompt.
Skipping the 17a-4 archiving requirement
A broker-dealer affiliate ran an internal AI assistant that drafted client emails for advisors. Advisors edited and sent. Six months later, FINRA requested books and records for an exam. The drafts were gone. The firm only archived sent mail through the email server, not the AI tool's drafts or the prompts that produced them. SEC Rule 17a-4 and the corresponding FINRA rules expect retention of all communications with the public, and AI-generated client communications count. Build archiving into the architecture from day one. WORM-compliant storage, time-stamped, indexed, retrievable. Bolt it on after launch and you're rebuilding under exam pressure.
CPA firms using AI for tax positions without partner review
A mid-size CPA firm rolled out an AI tool that pulled prior-year returns, scanned current-year docs, and drafted Form 1040 narratives plus a list of suggested positions. A staff accountant on a tight April deadline reviewed the suggestions, signed off as preparer, and filed. The AI suggested an aggressive home office position the partner would have caught. Circular 230 and IRC Section 6694 preparer penalty rules don't care that AI made the call. The signing preparer owns it. Any AI work touching tax positions needs partner-in-the-loop on every return, with the partner reviewing the AI's reasoning, not just the bottom line. Treat it as a smart paralegal, not a junior CPA.
Cost reality
What an AI engagement actually costs at each tier, and the failure mode that shows up when scope outruns budget.
Starter ($15K to $25K)
$15K-$25K
Includes:One specific workflow, built end to end with compliance baked in. Examples: meeting prep brief generator pulling from Redtail or Wealthbox, marketing copy pre-review tool against SEC Rule 206(4)-1, client communication drafting with archive hooks into your existing books-and-records system. You get the working tool, API keys in your firm's name, written documentation for the CCO's annual review, a Loom walkthrough for staff, and a 30-day touch-up window. This is where most single-office RIAs and small CPA firms should start.
Failure mode:Trying to wedge a multi-system integration into a starter budget. If the work needs custodian feeds from Schwab plus Redtail plus a planning tool, you're already in mid-tier territory. Pretending otherwise produces a brittle prototype the CCO won't approve.
Mid ($25K to $75K)
$25K-$75K
Includes:Multi-step workflow with one or two system integrations and a compliance review surface. Examples: proposal drafting pulling from CRM plus IPS templates plus the investment platform, with WORM archiving and CCO sign-off built into the workflow. CPA tax-prep assist that ingests prior-year returns and current-year docs, surfaces positions for partner review, and drops draft narratives into your tax software. Insurance underwriting brief generator that reads loss runs, exposures, and carrier appetite into a quoting summary. Includes a written compliance memo for your CCO or general counsel and a documented control narrative.
Failure mode:Buying an integration with a system the vendor's API doesn't actually expose. Some custodians (looking at Pershing on certain feeds) and some PMS systems require a sponsoring partnership the vendor doesn't have. Confirm the data path is real before signing.
Strategic ($75K to $200K)
$75K-$200K
Includes:Multi-office firms, multi-system architecture, or builds where compliance posture is a durable competitive advantage. Examples: a multi-office RIA with custodian feeds from Schwab and Fidelity, a Salesforce Financial Services Cloud build, and a firmwide proposal and review pipeline with role-based access for advisors, paraplanners, and the CCO. A regional CPA firm with 4 partners standardizing tax-prep assist across 6 staff accountants with partner-review gates and a written control framework. An insurance brokerage with 12 producers building an underwriting and renewal-prep system tied to AMS data. Includes architectural documentation, a 12-month roadmap, and quarterly check-ins.
Failure mode:Treating this tier as a transformation project. Even at $200K, the work ships in 90-day phases with a usable thing at the end of each. If your CFO is hearing about milestones in quarter 3 and nothing has gone to production, the engagement is failing in real time.
Our process
How an AI consulting engagement unfolds for financial services clients.
Discovery
Two structured calls and a documents request. Who's the buyer, who's the user, what regulator do you answer to (SEC, FINRA, state insurance department, state board of accountancy), what's your CRM and PMS stack, what does your compliance officer care about. Output is a one-page brief and a go or no-go recommendation. If your situation is wrong for me (banks, broker-dealer recordkeeping rebuilds, anything criminal), you hear that here.
Scope Lock
Fixed-fee proposal with explicit deliverables, the regulatory framework we're working inside (17a-4, Marketing Rule, Circular 230, etc.), the systems we're touching, and what the CCO or partner-in-charge needs to see at handoff. We sign a mutual NDA before any client data moves and a Statement of Work before any code does. No discovery extensions. If new scope appears, we change-order it.
Design and Architecture
Architecture diagram, data-flow diagram, and a written control narrative. For RIA work, this is what your CCO will reference at the next exam. For CPA work, this is what supports your firm's quality control system. Includes the LLM provider choice, the data residency posture, the archiving path, and the human-in-the-loop checkpoints. You sign off before we build.
Build
Iterative builds in 1-week sprints with a working demo at the end of each. Compliance review checkpoints baked into the schedule, not bolted on. For client-facing surfaces, we run a structured red-team session before launch where I deliberately try to make the system give bad advice. Findings go into the system before any real user touches it.
Handoff
Written documentation for the CCO or partner-in-charge: control narrative, change-management process, escalation paths, vendor list, and the renewal cycle for your annual compliance review. Loom walkthroughs for each user role. API keys transferred into your firm's name. 30-day touch-up window included. After that, you're free to keep me on retainer or run it yourself with the docs in hand.
Frequently asked questions
Will this comply with the SEC Marketing Rule?
How do you handle FINRA Rule 17a-4 archiving?
Does this work with Redtail, Wealthbox, or Salesforce Financial Services Cloud?
Where does fiduciary duty fit in?
What about Circular 230 for CPA firms?
Can custodian data from Schwab, Fidelity, or Pershing flow through the AI?
Can AI talk to clients directly without an advisor in the loop?
What does my compliance officer need to see?
How is training data handled? Is client info safe?
What kinds of insurance brokerage work make sense for this?
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Ready to scope your build?
The fastest way to know whether your financial services project is in our wheelhouse is a 30-minute scoping call.