Anthropic’s launch of Claude for Financial Advisors was one of the defining announcements at Future Proof last week. Shirl Penney, founder of Dynasty Financial Partners, described it as one of the biggest moments he had seen in his career in the independent space. By Tuesday morning, it was a recurring topic of conversation at Huntington Beach.
Across the sessions, the announcement sparked a practical question: What has to change inside a firm for AI to improve both the business and the client experience? For me, the answer begins with three ideas that surfaced throughout the week.
1. A job worth doing
The most useful AI conversations on the boardwalk were about application, not adoption. Mazi Bahadori, COO and CCO at Altruist, offered a framing that coincided with my own perspective: think about an AI model like it’s talent.
When you’re hiring a specialist, you define the job first, before deciding who should fill it.
The industry has spent the past two years under enormous pressure to experiment and adopt. That urgency is understandable, but it’s reversed the order of operations. Now, a firm selects a model, launches a pilot, and then starts asking what problems it solves.
We need to swap the sequence: Start with a task that is expensive, repetitive, or poorly served. Identify what makes it difficult. Determine what information the work depends on. Only then decide if AI can materially improve the outcome.
The growth side of the Future Proof agenda was strong. Michael Kitces and team presented useful research on what drives organic growth, exploring everything from billion-dollar growth strategies to talent and succession.
But I keep thinking about the other side of the equation: what happens when the growth actually arrives. If 100 new clients wanted to join your firm next Tuesday, how many could you bring on without disrupting service to the clients you have now?
As firms consolidate and become larger, few want the operating model to remain linear, with more AUM requiring a corresponding increment of headcount. That’s where technology, and increasingly AI, has the potential to change the economics while preserving how advisors serve clients.
We should measure success in capacity created, not tasks automated. Automating a task may save several minutes. Creating capacity gives an advisor room to deepen existing relationships, offer more comprehensive advice, and take on new clients.
The old scale equation was largely about assets and headcount. The emerging one is about how much growth and complexity each advisor, and the operating model around that advisor, can absorb. It is also about freeing advisors to do what they do best: interact with clients.
3. A single version of the household
Removing manual work takes more than specialized tools. Bill Crager’s session, “The Wealth Industry’s Coordination Crisis and Why More Technology Isn’t the Answer,” described the challenge. A firm can have serviceable portfolio, CRM, planning, and custodial systems and still rely on people to make the overall process work.
Consider a household that’s listed differently in the CRM and portfolio platforms (different accounts or missing family members). An AI tool can retrieve both sets of records, but access does not establish which accounts belong together, which figures are current, or which source should govern. Until those questions are resolved, someone needs to manually reconcile the facts before acting.
As AI takes on more autonomy, firms need a consistent household view, reliable data, and boundaries around which actions require human judgment. Models will evolve, but the need for trusted context will remain.
A more intelligent way to work
Claude for Financial Advisors raised expectations for what AI could do across the advisor’s technology stack. The conversations at Future Proof helped clarify what fulfilling those expectations will require, regardless of the AI model.
As Advisor360° CEO Milind Mehere shared at the F2 Strategy roundtable at Future Proof, this is our chance to reimagine the work of advice. That starts with what clients need, not what tasks we can speed up. That means intelligence working quietly across the practice: understanding the household, anticipating what needs attention, and coordinating routine work, while advisors stay focused on the judgment and relationships that matter most.
The opportunity is a different division of labor, with intelligence taking on more routine preparation and coordination while advisors retain control of decisions. That is the opportunity I left Future Proof thinking about. A more intelligent way to work should ultimately mean a better experience for clients and a firm that can grow without compromising it.
