Five Quick Checks to See If You're Actually Using AI in Your Practice

Most advisors will tell you they "use AI." Fewer can point to where it actually shows up in their week.

There's a real gap between having AI tools available and building them into the habits that make up a working day. For advisors and planners, that gap matters more than it might for other professions, because the tasks AI is best at (drafting, note-taking, first passes, repetitive follow-up) are exactly the tasks that eat into the time you could be spending with clients or prospects.

Here are five quick questions to check whether AI has actually made it into your daily workflow, or whether it's still sitting on the shelf.

1. Are you typing, or are you talking?

Voice is faster than typing for almost everyone, and it's increasingly accurate for financial terminology, client names, and product references. If you're still typing out client notes, emails, or meeting recaps by hand, you're leaving speed on the table.

Dictating to an AI assistant and letting it clean up the transcript is usually faster and less draining than typing from scratch.

2. Are you writing it, or is AI writing it?

This applies to the first drafts of client emails, meeting summaries, plan narratives, and internal notes. You should still be the one directing the content and reviewing it before it goes out. But the blank page doesn't need to be yours to fight through every time.

3. Are you finishing it yourself, or having AI finish it?

Half-written emails, partially built talking points, an outline for a client review that trails off midway. These are the small pieces of unfinished work that pile up over a week. AI is well suited to finishing what you started, in your voice, once you've given it the direction.

4. Are you starting it, or is AI starting it?

The opposite problem: staring at an empty template for a financial plan or a prospect follow-up and not knowing where to begin. A rough first draft from AI, even one you'll heavily edit, is almost always faster to work from than a blank page.

5. Are you taking notes, or is AI taking notes for you?

Of all five, this is the one with the clearest ROI for advisors. Meeting notetaking tools that transcribe and summarize client conversations free you up to really be present in the meeting, instead of splitting attention between listening and writing. They also make it far easier to follow up accurately and quickly afterward.

The takeaway

If you're answering "myself" to most of these, you're not necessarily doing anything wrong, but you're probably not getting the leverage that's available to you right now.

The goal isn't to remove yourself from client work. It's to stop spending energy on the repetitive, mechanical parts of the job so you have more of it left for the parts that actually require your judgment: reading a client's situation, building trust, and giving advice that fits their specific circumstances.

Run through these five questions against your own week. You may find more of your practice could be running on AI than you realized.