The advisor's AI playbook

Cheat sheets, decision guides, and recipes for the AI tools FAs actually use. Organized by stage of maturity — start at Stage 1, add as you're ready.

Stage 1 — Get started

Pick your daily AI driver. Learn safe-handling.

Claude (Anthropic)

Best for nuanced writing, long-context analysis, and compliance-sensitive drafts where voice matters.

ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Best for data analysis with Code Interpreter, custom workflow automation via Custom GPTs, and image + text in one chat.

Copilot for M365 (Microsoft)

Lives inside Excel, Word, Outlook, and Teams — no copy-paste shuffle. The clear winner if your firm is already on Microsoft 365.

Gemini (Google)

The clear pick if your firm runs on Google Workspace — Gemini lives natively in Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. Also strong for very-long-document analysis and Deep Research with citations.

Perplexity

Built for real-time research with citations. The go-to when you need to answer a current-market or regulatory question AND ship the source links with the answer.

Stage 2 — Get faster

Plug AI into your specific advisor workflows.

Jump

The AI assistant built for financial advisors — meeting scribe, follow-up emails, and CRM sync without leaving your workflow. The Stage 2 default if you can only adopt one vertical AI tool.

Zocks

Advisor-built AI scribe with a no-recording stance — live speaker attribution without storing audio. The most compliance-conservative option in the Stage 2 layer.

Pulse360

AI meeting prep + post-meeting workflow built for advisors who use Riskalyze, Holistiplan, and PreciseFP — deeper financial-planning tool integration than the generalist scribes.

AI document analysis for advanced planning — reads tax returns, wills, trusts, and insurance policies in seconds and surfaces actionable insights you can monetize. The Stage 2 default for advisory-revenue work beyond core portfolio management.

Catchlight

AI prospect intelligence built specifically for advisors — turns raw inbound leads into ranked, enriched, ready-to-contact opportunities. The Stage 2 default for organic-growth firms.

Otter.ai

The generalist AI meeting transcription tool most FAs try before they discover the advisor-specific options. Useful as a starter scribe but lacks the CRM depth and compliance posture of Jump or Zocks.

Stage 3 — Get differentiated

Build async client comms + content presence.

Loom (Atlassian)

Async screen-recording with AI-generated transcripts and summaries. Replaces 30-minute Zooms with 3-minute videos for portfolio walkthroughs, statement explanations, and client check-ins.

Canva (Magic Studio)

AI-powered visual content at advisor scale — client review decks, social posts, newsletters, and one-pagers without a designer. Magic Studio bundles design, copy, and image AI into one branded workflow.

NotebookLM

Upload long documents and get a 10-minute AI-narrated podcast that walks you through them. The Stage 3 default for advisors who digest 10-Ks, research reports, and regulations between meetings.

Descript

Edit video and audio by editing the transcript. Studio Sound makes any laptop-mic recording sound professional. The Stage 3 default for advisors building a podcast, YouTube presence, or polished client video.

Gamma

AI-from-prompt presentations and documents that don't look like AI made them. The Stage 3 default for advisors who want a polished pitch deck or strategy doc without opening PowerPoint.

HeyGen

AI avatar video generation with 175+ language translation and lip-sync. The highest-leverage Stage 3 tool for multilingual prospect markets — also the highest-risk tool in the playbook if used to fake your own statements.

Synthesia

Enterprise-leaning AI avatar video — the Stage 3 default for L&D, internal training, and compliance-onboarding video at scale. Same deepfake-risk framing as HeyGen; lean toward Synthesia for structured training, HeyGen for creator/marketing velocity.

ElevenLabs

Category-leading AI voice cloning + text-to-speech. The Stage 3 default when voice IS the product — podcasts, audiobooks, voiceovers — and the highest-fidelity option if you accept the deepfake-risk framing.

Stage 4 — Get systemic

Connect your tools. Compound gains.

Zapier

The connector layer for your AI stack. 8,000+ apps, 30,000+ actions, and an MCP server that lets Claude / ChatGPT / Cursor control all of them. The Stage 4 default for connecting tools you already pay for.

Reclaim.ai

AI calendar that auto-schedules focus time, tasks, and habits around your client meetings. The Stage 4 default for advisors whose calendar fills up faster than they can defend deep work.

n8n

Open-source workflow automation that's 10-20x cheaper than Zapier for complex multi-step flows. The Stage 4 alternative for technical advisors (or firms with one technical person) who run high-volume automations.