AI for financial advisors: what it can do and the SEC and FINRA rules that apply

How are financial advisors using AI?

The most common uses save admin time after client meetings.

Meeting notes and follow-ups

An AI notetaker joins the client meeting, writes a summary and lists the action items. It then drafts a follow-up email for the advisor to check and send.

CRM updates

AI can take facts from the meeting, such as a new grandchild or a planned home sale, and put them into the right CRM fields. The next meeting starts with better notes.

Onboarding and forms

AI can read a client's statements and ID documents and fill in account opening forms. Staff check each field before anything is submitted. My page on AI document processing covers this kind of work.

Meeting prep and client content

AI can sum up a client's file before a meeting. It can also draft newsletters, emails and posts. Under FINRA rules, a broker-dealer must review these the same way it reviews anything a person writes. My guide to an AI email assistant covers drafting tools.

How do insurance agents and mortgage brokers use AI?

The same tools fit nearby trades, with some changes.

• Insurance agents: AI can quote simple policies from intake forms, remind clients about renewals and draft claim follow-ups. My insurance agency CRM guide covers the systems these tools plug into.
• Mortgage brokers: AI can collect and check loan documents, chase missing pay stubs and send status updates to borrowers and agents. See my guide to mortgage CRMs for the main products.

What AI tools do financial advisors use?

Each price here is the one the vendor showed on its site in October 2026.

• Jump: An AI assistant built for advisors. Its Meet plan is $100 per advisor a month and includes an AI notetaker, meeting prep, follow-up emails and CRM sync. Onboard and Grow are $50 add-ons per advisor a month each. Jump says yearly billing saves up to 20%. Its Enterprise plan adds compliance features such as custom disclosures and a compliance dashboard.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Business: $21 a user a month on a yearly plan, or $25.20 billed monthly. Microsoft currently offers the yearly plan at $18 a month.
• Claude Team: Standard seats are $20 a user a month billed yearly, or $25 billed monthly. Anthropic says Team plans do not train its models on your content by default.

Tool	Main job	Price shown (October 2026)
Jump Meet	Meeting notes, follow-ups, CRM sync	$100 per advisor a month
Copilot Business	Drafts and summaries in Microsoft 365	$21 a user a month, yearly
Claude Team	Drafts, research and summaries	$20 a user a month, yearly

Before you sign up, check two things. First, ask whether your archiving system can capture what the tool produces. Second, ask how the vendor protects client data and whether it will notify you of a breach.

Is there an SEC rule on AI for advisers?

No AI-specific SEC rule applies to advisers as of October 2026. In July 2023, the SEC proposed a rule on conflicts of interest when firms use predictive data analytics, which includes AI. On June 12, 2025, the SEC withdrew that proposal along with others. It said it does not plan to finalize it. Any future rule in this area would start with a new proposal.

That does not mean AI is unregulated. The general rules in the sections below apply to every tool you use.

What SEC and FINRA recordkeeping rules apply to AI?

Investment advisers: Rule 204-2

SEC Rule 204-2 requires advisers to keep written communications sent and received that relate to their advice or recommendations. You must keep them for at least five years from the end of the year of the last entry. For the first two years, they must be kept in an appropriate office of the adviser.

An AI follow-up email that discusses advice is a written communication to a client. Keep it in your archive like any other email. Treat AI meeting summaries that discuss advice as records too, unless your compliance counsel tells you otherwise.

Broker-dealers: Rules 17a-3, 17a-4 and FINRA Rule 4510

FINRA says AI use may create new records. It names Exchange Act Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4 and FINRA Rule 4510 as rules firms should check their AI tools against. It also says chatbots and virtual assistants may raise new recordkeeping questions.

FINRA guidance on generative AI

FINRA published Regulatory Notice 24-09 on June 27, 2024. It says FINRA's rules are technology neutral. Its supervision rule, Rule 3110, applies to AI tools, whether you build them or buy them. Its communications rule, Rule 2210, applies whether a person or a tool writes the message.

FINRA's advertising FAQs add detail:

• AI-written content: Firms are responsible for their communications, whether a human or AI wrote them. The content must be fair and balanced, with no false or exaggerated claims.
• Chatbots: Chatbot messages may count as correspondence or retail communications, and the firm must supervise them.

FINRA's 2026 oversight report

FINRA released its 2026 Annual Regulatory Oversight Report on December 9, 2025. It added AI agents as a new focus. These are AI systems that carry out tasks on their own. The risks it lists include agents acting beyond their authority and multi-step actions that are hard to trace later. FINRA suggests firms keep logs of prompts and outputs, track which model version was used and decide where a person must review the output.

How does Regulation S-P affect AI tools?

Regulation S-P is the SEC's privacy rule for brokers, advisers and funds. The SEC adopted major amendments on May 16, 2024. Larger firms had to comply by December 3, 2025. Smaller advisers, those with less than $1.5 billion under management, had to comply by June 3, 2026. So the rules now apply to every SEC-registered adviser.

The amendments require:

• An incident response program: Written procedures to detect, respond to and recover from unauthorized access to customer information.
• Customer notice: Notice to affected people as soon as practicable, and no later than 30 days after you learn of the incident.
• Service provider oversight: Due diligence when you pick a vendor with access to customer information, ongoing monitoring, and a duty for the vendor to tell you within 72 hours of a breach.
• Records: Copies of your policies, vendor agreements and records of each incident.

An AI notetaker that stores client meetings has access to customer information. Add it to your vendor list, check its contract for the 72-hour notice and record your due diligence.

What rules apply to insurance agents and mortgage brokers?

Insurance: the NAIC AI Model Bulletin

The NAIC adopted a Model Bulletin on insurers' use of AI on December 4, 2023. As of October 8, 2026, the NAIC map lists 29 jurisdictions that have adopted it. The same map shows that California, Colorado, New York and Texas have their own insurance AI rules or guidance. The bulletin is aimed at insurers. If you sell for carriers, ask each one what it expects from agents who use AI.

Mortgage brokers: the FTC Safeguards Rule

The FTC lists mortgage brokers as covered by its Safeguards Rule. So are financial advisors and investment advisers who do not register with the SEC. A covered firm needs a written security program, one person in charge of it, a written risk assessment, encryption and multi-factor login. It must also oversee its vendors, which includes AI tools. If a breach exposes the unencrypted data of 500 or more people, you must tell the FTC within 30 days.

What are the risks of AI for advisors?

• Overstating your AI: In March 2024, the SEC charged two advisers, Delphia and Global Predictions, over false claims about their use of AI. They paid $400,000 in penalties between them. Describe your AI use plainly and accurately in your marketing.
• Missing records: AI tools outside your archive can create records you can't produce in an exam.
• Wrong facts: AI can get a number or a rule wrong. Check every client-facing draft.
• Off-channel use: Staff may use personal AI apps. FINRA suggests giving staff approved tools so they don't.

How should an advisory firm start with AI?

1. Write a short AI policy: List the approved tools, what data may go into them and who reviews the output.
2. Check archiving first: Make sure each tool's output lands in your records system.
3. Do vendor due diligence: Treat each AI tool as a service provider under Regulation S-P or the Safeguards Rule.
4. Start with meeting notes: Pick one notetaker and test it on internal meetings first.
5. Review and measure: Check every draft for a month and track the hours saved.

When does a custom AI tool make sense for an advisory firm?

Most small firms should start with a tool built for advisors. A custom build makes sense in these cases:

• Your stack doesn't connect: Your CRM, planning software, custodian forms and archive don't share data.
• Your own process: You run an onboarding or review process no product supports.
• Data control: You want client data kept in systems you control and can show to examiners.
• Costs at scale: Per-advisor fees across many tools add up as the team grows.

A client portal is often part of that build.

What does the SEC Marketing Rule actually say about AI-generated content?

The SEC's Marketing Rule (Rule 206(4)-1) allows registered investment advisers to use testimonials, endorsements and third-party ratings in marketing, a real change from the decades-old blanket ban, but only with proper disclosure, supervision and recordkeeping. Nothing in the rule specifically names AI, so an AI-generated testimonial, an AI-cloned voice endorsement, or an AI-written growth chart aimed at a mass audience falls under the rule's catch-all provision, which prohibits anything otherwise materially misleading. In January 2026, SEC staff clarified that certain disciplinary history does not automatically disqualify someone from giving a compensated testimonial, provided the specific eligibility, disclosure and compliance conditions are met, a reminder that the disclosure obligations are real and actively enforced, not theoretical.

Treat any AI-assisted marketing content the same way you would treat a testimonial: disclose what it is, keep records of what went out and when, and have compliance sign off before it reaches a client.

How would Blur Studio approach AI for an advisory firm?

I would start with your compliance manual and your archiving setup, then look at where advisor time goes after each meeting. I builds AI workflows that connect your CRM, documents and email, with every output saved where your archive can reach it. A person reviews anything a client will see. The code and the accounts stay in your firm's name, and I looks after the system once it is live.