A week before an annual review, someone in the office rebuilds the client's year. What did they tell us in June? Did the pension statement ever arrive? Was that retirement date a decision, or were they thinking out loud?
In many practices that someone is the advisor, or the associate advisor who keeps knocking on the advisor's door. This is where AI helps first. It drafts the meeting brief and the document request, and every line links to the note or email behind it. Planning, investment and suitability decisions stay with the advisor.
An annual review brief, illustrated
Because each line points to its source, the advisor can check the brief in a few minutes. If the AI makes something up, say a promise the client never made, the missing source gives it away.
Why compliance should like this
Clients mention changes in passing. A new retirement date, a health scare, money for a child. Any of those can change know-your-client information, and in a busy year they sit in call notes until someone happens to reread them. A brief that flags them as possible KYC updates puts them in front of the advisor before the meeting. The advisor decides whether the KYC changes and whether the accounts are still suitable. The AI's only job is making sure the comment doesn't get lost.
The brief also keeps roles clean. The client service associate requests documents, the associate advisor prepares and the advisor advises. A draft that blurs those lines, such as a follow-up telling the client their retirement date "looks fine", creates a compliance problem and sends the question straight back to the advisor.
Who sets your AI rules
That depends on where you're registered. If you're an Approved Person at a dealer regulated by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO), your dealer's compliance team sets the rules for AI, and you'll need its approval before client information goes anywhere near a trial. At a registered portfolio manager firm, the chief compliance officer sets them.
Regulators are asking. The CIRO Compliance Report for 2026: Helping Dealers with Compliance, published February 17, 2026, says CIRO's examinations will ask dealers about their AI use and review the controls that make sure it works as designed. It also says a dealer should consider whether using AI in its regulatory functions is a material business change that needs advance notice to CIRO.
The Canadian Securities Administrators covered the wider picture in CSA Staff Notice and Consultation 11-348, Applicability of Canadian Securities Laws and the Use of Artificial Intelligence Systems in Capital Markets, published December 5, 2024. It reminds registered firms that existing securities law applies to AI, including the duty to keep records that show compliance and to test AI systems before and after adopting them. Neither document deals with AI meeting notes directly, so ask compliance how AI-drafted notes and briefs fit your record-keeping before you start.
Compliance and whoever handles privacy will also want to settle the product and plan, who has access, how long data is kept and what clients are told. Our free client confidentiality checklist lists those questions in one place.
A first trial
Choose one meeting type, such as annual reviews for couples near retirement. Run it first on invented client files with the traps built in: a forgotten document, a KYC change buried in a call note. Once compliance approves real files, compare a handful of reviews prepared this way with similar ones prepared the old way. Time the gathering, the checking and the fixes to the follow-up. Then count how often the associate or client service associate still had to ask the advisor what to do next. That count tells you whether the advisor actually got time back.
Every brief and email gets a human read before it reaches a client or changes a record. That holds for the whole trial.
At any vendor demo, ask to see your invented file, the brief it produces, and the source behind each line. That applies to whoever you hire, including us. Sidekick configures Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot for this and coaches the people who use it day to day. Solo (CAD 1,800, once) is setup and coaching for one person, often the advisor or the associate who prepares reviews. Fractional AI Leadership puts Sidekick in charge of AI adoption across your team for a monthly fee starting at CAD 6,000, with a 90-day commitment. It fits when advisors, associates and client service staff all change how they prepare.
Our page for financial services firms has more on our work in the sector, and the free AI Opportunity Map helps if you're unsure where to start. If you'd rather talk, bring one meeting type and the question that keeps landing on the advisor. Leave client details out.
Sources checked October 16, 2026. CIRO report published February 17, 2026. CSA Staff Notice and Consultation 11-348 published December 5, 2024.