Annual review prep takes most advisory teams about a day per client when you add up the time. You're pulling account performance, updating the financial plan, checking beneficiary designations, and reviewing compliance documentation.
For a firm running quarterly and annual reviews across 100 clients, that adds up quickly. Most of it is data assembly, not the advice that justifies the relationship fee.
What you can automate
Account performance compilation: pulling returns from the custodian, calculating performance against a benchmark, comparing to the last review period. Most custodian platforms — Orion, Black Diamond, Tamarac — can run this on a schedule. If yours is configured to do so, it should be.
Financial plan updates for known changes — a salary increase, a new child, approaching retirement. If the firm uses a pre-review questionnaire and the answers feed into the planning software automatically rather than being re-entered manually, you save hours.
Compliance documentation checks: verifying whether the IPS is current, whether suitability documentation is up to date, whether required disclosures have been delivered. Tracking and surfacing this automatically beats verifying it manually every review cycle.
Last meeting summary: surfacing the notes from the prior review automatically before the advisor opens the file. If it's in the CRM, it should be one click away, not a search through folders.
What you can't automate
The judgment call about which topics need attention for a specific client. The preparation for parts of the conversation that are unique to them. That belongs to the advisor.
If prep automation buys 45 minutes per review across 200 reviews a year, that's 150 hours returned to advice delivery rather than administrative assembly. The math is worth taking seriously.
