A Beginner’s Guide to Integrating AI Into Your Financial Practice

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming part of everyday life, both at home and in many workplaces. But CFP® professionals who haven’t yet incorporated AI into their financial planning practice may wonder where to begin and where AI could add value. CFP Board brought together a panel of experts to discuss their experiences in a one-hour webinar, “AI In Practice: Getting Started With Low-Risk, High-Value Use Cases,” moderated by 2026 Board Chair Terri Kallsen, CFP®.

Start With Routine Tasks and Build Momentum

If you are looking to experiment with AI, start with routine administrative work and identify tasks that take time but don’t involve being with clients. Meeting preparation, note taking and post-meeting follow-up are areas where AI can provide immediate value by freeing up more time to spend with clients. “Some of the most low-risk, high-value use cases I hear about, the most intuitive, would be anything around removing the administrative tasks or routine tasks around the client meeting,” says Megan St. John, CFP®, CFA®, Managing Director, EJ Labs, Edward Jones.

St. John notes that you don’t have to immediately overhaul the way you work. Instead focus on starting small, perhaps using AI for one task for a month. “It’s really more about making the habit and changing your ways of working,” she says. As you get comfortable with AI tools, you are likely to find additional ways to use AI in your practice.

Brenton Harrison, CFP®, who founded New Money New Problems, offered a use case for how he puts AI to work in his three-person firm. Many of his clients have federal student loans that require annual income recertification. With a client’s consent, Harrison can use an AI tool to capture discussion notes, summarize key action items, identify the recertification deadline, and create future reminders and follow-up tasks. AI can automate much of that administrative work, helping ensure timely outreach and planning conversations. Harrison notes that most of his clients aren’t concerned about the use of AI, but they do care about the outcome. “They care whether you actually have the meeting,” says Harrison. “And AI helps make sure it happens.”

Think of AI as a Thought Partner

Beyond routine tasks, the panelists encouraged the more than 1,400 webinar registrants to think of AI as a collaborative partner. That can be particularly useful for small firms, like Harrison’s. He describes AI as "another lens” through which to consider planning questions. Harrison says he can use AI in a compliant way to get another perspective on a complex case or to help sharpen points he wants to articulate to a client.

Using AI to support planning can also help deepen client relationships. St. John shared examples of advisors using AI to help a client approaching retirement home in on local volunteer opportunities and to support a client navigating a dementia diagnosis.

AI also offers advisors the opportunity to provide “deep personalization at scale,” says David Itzkovits, CFA®, Co-Founder, Optimal AdvisorAI. AI can help advisors provide personalized service to more clients by automating routine work and uncovering planning opportunities.

As more firms adopt AI, “the question becomes, how well do you use AI versus your competition?” says Itzkovits. One way to use AI more effectively is to provide more context about who you are and what you are trying to achieve. “The quality of the context that you give it has a major impact on the quality of the response,” he says. He also recommends ending AI prompts with “Before answering, do you have any questions for me?” In essence, help AI help you.

Bring Your Expertise to the Table

The use of artificial intelligence can help advisors focus on the human intelligence needed when working with clients. While AI is generating notes, St. John says, advisors can be “fully immersed in the conversation, the dialogue, discovery, building the relationship and spending more time with clients.”

Technology cannot replace professional judgment. “The empathy, the judgment, the knowing that client so well to tailor strategies to their own financial fulfillment … that is uniquely human,” St. John says. “AI certainly amplifies the human intelligence.”

Using AI doesn’t mean working on autopilot. Harrison notes that CFP® professionals have a fiduciary responsibility to understand their clients’ circumstances and can’t simply take AI answers and pass them along to clients.

The client should get your voice. “That’s the reason that they’re working with you,” Harrison says.

Advisors also need to recognize that AI can make mistakes and provide incorrect information, often referred to as hallucinations. Itzkovits stresses that advisors need to review any outcomes and should review source information before sharing AI-generated work. Ultimately, the advisor remains accountable for the advice provided.

St. John notes that it is critical to get consent from clients before using AI tools during client meetings. Advisors also need to prioritize the security of client data when using any AI tools in their practice, and advisors should use compliance-approved AI tools. CFP Board’s Generative AI Ethics Guide helps CFP® professionals navigate AI while adhering to the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct.

Looking Forward

AI fluency will increasingly separate firms that thrive from those that fall behind. With AI tools evolving rapidly, Itzkovits encourages advisors to find “a trusted partner that can take you up the AI adoption curve more quickly.” Learning how to strategically integrate AI into your financial planning practice can help you and your firm stay a step ahead.

However, the focal point of any financial planning discussion is the client. In wrapping up the webinar, Kallsen notes, “AI’s greatest value isn’t simply helping us work faster. It’s giving us more time to do what CFP® professionals do best. And that’s all about trusted relationships and deeper client experiences.”