What is the biggest challenge for most financial advisors? According to Simplicity InsurMark’s 2025 Advisor Benchmark Survey, meeting increasing client demands tops the list. Enter artificial intelligence (AI), which enables advisors to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on client-facing activities. Want to make the most of AI in your advisory practice? Here are some easy and impactful ways to start using AI in your advisory firm.

Key Takeaways:

  • The best way advisors can get started with AI is to pinpoint a problem they want to solve.
  • Using AI to take notes allows advisors to engage in active listening, while accurately documenting client meetings.
  • AI can help advisors win the speed to lead game.
  • AI can streamline lead nurturing and personalization—plus it has a staggering impact on conversion rates.
  • Advisors should think of AI as free digital labor for all of the researching, writing and editing support it provides.
  • AI should be used to augment the advisor’s role, not as a replacement for the one-on-one human touch clients really want.

How advisors can get started with AI: Find a problem you want to solve

As we noted in our recent blog, Industry Insights: The Impact of AI on Advisory Firms, advisors who don’t invest in AI technology, “will get left in the dust.” That’s according to Simplicity InsurMark Virtual CMO Jack Martin. 

A regular attendee of industry conferences and go-to resource for our advisor-partners, Martin heartily agrees that AI is topic du jour for financial advisors. We asked Martin what he recommends to advisors who want to start using AI—or expand the usage of it—in their advisory practices. 

Says Martin, “My best advice is to find a problem you want to solve. For example, do you have client meetings? Are you keeping good notes? Are you doing good follow up? Would you like to save time doing that? If that’s the problem, then the solution is there are two or three great product vendors that have an AI application in that space.” 

Common problems advisors have that AI can help solve

Most advisors agree there isn’t enough time in the day, and too much time is spent on non-client-facing tasks—but that’s where AI can really shine. As discussed in our previous Industry Insights AI blog, AI makes it incredibly easier to manage complicated challenges, like analyzing large volumes of data, streamlining financial planning and minimizing compliance and risk management woes.

In Martin’s personal experience, AI provides solutions to problems advisors face daily. Ultimately, “The advisor cares more about doing what he got in the business to do, which is helping his or her clients. AI and technology free up the advisor to spend more time on client facing activities,” he says. Some key problems AI can solve for advisors include:

Absorbing and processing everything discussed in client meetings

One of Martin’s favorite AI tools is one that handles note taking during meetings. “That’s important for financial advisors from a documentation perspective and from an active listening perspective. For me, it’s made my life so much easier knowing that I don’t have to write things down. Ultimately, I am a much better listener and spend more time thinking about what’s going on in the meeting as opposed to worrying about capturing everything in my notes,” Martin says.

Responding to leads before they lose interest

In his role as Virtual CMO, Martin preaches a lot to advisors about speed to lead and how the degradation of the value of a lead really falls off the cliff in a matter of hours. Martin recommends AI-infused lead management tools like Snappy Kraken to stay on top of the leads advisors pay dearly to receive.

As he explains, “In real time, the lead comes into your inbox from your lead provider, Snappy’s AI pulls it out of your inbox, throws it into your marketing campaign and pushes an email out automatically. That process takes minutes at most. And all of that’s AI driven and running in the background. It doesn’t require you to prompt it. It’s an agent that’s been tasked with doing that for you.”

Nurturing leads and increasing conversion rates

Like most advisors, you probably feel like you aren’t getting enough leads, when the reality is you’re not converting enough leads into clients. Martin recommends deploying an AI business development tool to help. He’s found the improvement in conversion rates using this process is pretty staggering. AI does this by enriching data about the lead, then segments and personalizes nurture campaigns targeting the lead. 

According to Martin, “AI pulls information from third-party sources, like the person’s address, types of investible assets and personal interests, like golf, cooking, etc. It adds that information to the record, then seamlessly pulls the lead into a nurture campaign relevant to the lead. For example, if it’s a tax-oriented lead, it goes into a tax campaign. Then in real time, AI sends out a personalized email with that person’s name and some nugget of information it’s learned about the lead.”

Find time to research, write and edit client communications

Martin encourages advisors to think of AI as free digital labor. “It’s like the best assistant you could ever have. For example, it’s helpful to learn how to use prompts to ask ChatGPT how to write better emails, so you can scale personalization to more people. And it’s also a great research assistant and proof reader. I use it to help come up with inspiration and ideas for presentations, and it really saves a lot of time,” Martin says.

Word of caution: AI should augment—not replace—the advisor’s role

Martin has also seen some of the downsides of AI. For one, it isn’t always accurate and will spit out “hallucinations,” which are information it presents as facts that are far from the truth. Says Martin, “You can’t just copy and paste everything it spits out. You’ve got to read it, verify it, edit it and clean it up to make sure it’s right.”

The same holds true for the advisor-client relationship. Nobody understands your clients better than you. AI can analyze meeting notes and automate personalized marketing campaigns but clients still want that human, one-on-one relationship with their advisors. They want to feel heard and above all, they want to work with someone who is invested in solving THEIR problems.

Conclusion

AI offers financial advisors a clear path to working smarter, not harder. By addressing everyday challenges—from responding to leads quickly to increasing conversion rates to streamlining client communications—AI tools can free up valuable time and enhance the client experience. Start by identifying one problem you’d like to solve, explore the AI solutions that fit, then move on to the next. When used thoughtfully, AI can become a powerful partner in growing your practice while keeping your focus where it belongs—on your clients.

Looking for a trusted partner to help grow your business? Simplicity InsurMark would love to hear from you! We help ambitious advisors build more sustainable and successful 21st century businesses. To learn more, contact us at (800) 752-0207or visit our contact page to schedule a discovery call today.

As an ADO – Advisor Development Organization™, Simplicity InsurMark provides solutions to meet the ever-evolving needs of financial professionals with a mission to protect and enhance the financial security of every home in America.