A financial advisor annual review checklist your CSA can prepare with an AI agent

Where review prep time goes

Before each review someone opens four or five systems. Performance and allocation come from a reporting tool such as Orion or Black Diamond, and the plan lives in eMoney or MoneyGuidePro. A year of notes and open tasks sits in the CRM. Then someone checks RMDs and beneficiaries and when the risk profile was last refreshed, before building an agenda the advisor will actually read.

Kitces Research's 2018 survey put meeting preparation at about 5.3 hours a week for the average lead advisor, and found that an RIA lead advisor served 71 clients on average. Fidelity's 2025 Advisor Insights Study found that 59% of advisor time goes to non-client work such as administration and compliance. Prep time grows with every household the firm adds.

Most of the prep is gathering and comparing, which an agent does well. The judgment at the end, about what to recommend and what to ask, stays with the advisor. The checklist below is the packet we would build for every household, with the reasons examiners care about it.

Why the profile check matters to examiners

This guide is general operational information, not legal or tax advice. The SEC requirements it discusses apply to SEC-registered advisers, so confirm what applies to your firm with your compliance team and counsel.

The SEC's 2019 interpretation of the fiduciary standard says an adviser to a retail client should, at a minimum, make a reasonable inquiry into the client's financial situation, level of financial sophistication, investment experience and financial goals. It says updating the client's investment profile will generally be necessary, and that knowing a client has retired or had a change in marital status could trigger an obligation to make a new inquiry. The duty to monitor applies at a frequency in the client's best interest, given the scope of the relationship.

Examiners notice when this slips. A risk alert on annual compliance reviews, published on September 14, 2026, described advisers whose annual reviews recommended documenting client risk tolerances, and who then did not make the change. The SEC's FY2026 examination priorities single out recommendations to older investors and those saving for retirement. A review packet that puts the profile date next to the client's recent life events gives the advisor what the interpretation asks for, in time to act on it.

The annual review checklist

Use this as the standard packet for every household. The list assumes your firm has a written policy on how often risk profiles and IPS documents are refreshed. If that policy lives only in people's heads, write it down first, because an agent needs a rule to check against.

• Performance since the last review, net of fees, with contributions and withdrawals shown separately.
• Allocation against the target or model, with any drift outside the firm's bands.
• Plan currency: when the plan was last updated and whether any assumption no longer matches the facts.
• Risk profile and IPS dates compared with your firm's refresh policy.
• Required minimum distributions: who owes one this year and what has been taken, with QCD eligibility for charitable clients.
• Beneficiaries and transfer on death designations on every account, including accounts opened since the last review.
• Cash and liquidity: idle cash above the client's stated need, and known expenses coming up.
• Open tasks and promises from the last meeting, with their status.
• Life events mentioned in CRM notes since the last review, such as a retirement, a marriage, a divorce, a death or a move.
• Billing check: the fee schedule on file matches the advisory agreement and the household breakpoints.
• Form ADV Part 2 or Form CRS delivery, if one is due for this client.

Two checklist lines that carry real money

The RMD line is the first. Under IRS rules, the first required minimum distribution can wait until April 1 of the year after the owner reaches the starting age, and later ones are due by December 31. A missed RMD can bring a 25% excise tax on the amount not taken, reduced to 10% if it is corrected within two years. Roth IRAs have no RMDs while the original owner is alive.

Beneficiary designations are the second, and they matter most after a life event. The agent compares the beneficiaries on file at the custodian with the family members named in CRM notes and flags any mismatch, such as a former spouse still listed after a divorce. The advisor raises it with the client.

Building the what-changed memo

The memo is the part advisors read. It covers the period since the last review on one page: money in and money out, drift from the target allocation, tasks promised and their status, questions the client asked last time, and any life event mentioned in CRM notes. Each line links to the note, report or custodian record it came from.

A good memo also lists briefly what did not change. An advisor walking into a meeting wants to know that the beneficiary review was done last year and nothing has moved since. That saves a second look and keeps the meeting on the questions the client brought.

Facts need a stable source. Balances and transactions come from the reporting system and the custodian. CRM notes are less consistent, so when the agent flags a life event it quotes the note word for word rather than paraphrasing it.

What the agent prepares and what stays with the advisor

The agent gathers and compares, then flags what changed. Recommendations stay with the advisor. The table below shows how the work splits for a typical review.

Every flag should link to its source. A retirement flag links to the dated CRM note where the client mentioned it, and names the profile field that needs review, such as time horizon or income need.

Write-back is the other design choice. We start with the agent reading your systems without changing any of them. Writing tasks back to the CRM comes next, once the team trusts the flags. Changes to the plan or at the custodian come last, if at all, and a person releases each one.

What never leaves the advisor

Every recommendation stays with the advisor, including any change to the risk profile or the plan's assumptions. An agent can notice that a client's notes mention a divorce and that the beneficiary on the rollover IRA is still the former spouse. Whether and when to raise it is a judgment about a person, and it belongs to the advisor who knows them.

Client contact stays with people too. In the 2026 T3/Inside Information Software Survey, advisers rated AI servicing clients directly at 4.37 out of 10 for likely impact, near the bottom of the list, against 7.72 for back-office efficiency. Cerulli found in February 2026 that 38% of affluent investors are at least somewhat comfortable with AI, falling to 16% among those 70 and older. The agent's output goes to your team, and the advisor decides what the client sees.

Worked example: review prep for 600 households

This is an illustrative example with assumed numbers, not a client result. Take a firm with 600 households, each with one annual review, spread over 50 weeks. That is 12 reviews a week. Today a CSA or paraplanner spends 75 minutes preparing each one, so 900 minutes, or 15 staff hours a week.

Now assume 9 of the 12 are routine, with no retirement, death, divorce or large liquidity event since the last meeting. With the agent preparing the packet, the CSA spends about 20 minutes checking each one, 180 minutes in all. The 3 complex reviews still take the full 75 minutes, another 225 minutes. Total time falls to 405 minutes, about 6.8 hours, which gives back about 8.3 staff hours a week before counting the advisor's own reading time.

A firm that meets clients twice a year doubles both numbers. A firm that holds most reviews in one season sees the same total in fewer, heavier weeks. Either way, time five real reviews before you trust anyone's estimate, including this one.

Starting small with review prep

Pick the next ten reviews on the calendar. Have whoever prepares them note the minutes and tag each one routine or complex. Then run an agent on copies of last quarter's review data and compare its packets and flags with what your team prepared by hand. The comparison shows quickly whether the flags are useful or noise.

That is close to what our five-day AI Workflow Sprint covers. You get a working prototype on your redacted data and a fixed build quote with the staff hours behind it. It costs $2,500, with a full refund if we do not find 10 staff hours a week. Review prep alone may not reach that bar at a smaller firm, so the sprint also looks at meeting follow-up and account paperwork in the same week.

Common questions