Inside an advisor-specific AI tool

00:00 There's a lot of folks that talk about AI. A much smaller subset that do it and then a smaller subset that do it well. This is not the Terminator scenario. 

00:07 It's the Iron Man suit that helps advisers do more with less. 

00:12 Hello and welcome to WPTV. My name is David Kitai, senior editor at Wealth Professional. Following our Wealth Professional Award show in June, we've 

00:20 been profiling some select excellence awardees across different categories, showcasing the service offerings and hard work that earned them their spot at 

00:28 the award ceremony. Today, we're joined by John Connell, the founder and CEO of Focal AI. His firm was named an 

00:36 excellence awardee for wealth tech service provider of the year. John, welcome to WPV. 

00:42 Thanks for having me, David. Excited for the conversation here. 

00:45 As are we. So let's start by giving our viewers a little bit of a grounding. Te tell me a bit about Focal AI and what you provide for advisers. 

00:54 Absolutely. Focal AI is the Agentic AI platform purpose-built for financial advisers. So, we automate the entire 

01:03 client meeting life cycle from think AI meeting preparation, note-taking, CRM updates, uh we will personalize 

01:10 follow-up emails, financial planning workflows, and data entry across an advisor's tech stack. And really, what 

01:17 makes us different is that we don't just summarize meetings. We're also taking action with purpose-built AI agents that 

01:25 eliminate the admin work that consumes an advisor or an assistant’s day. So, they can basically spend more time building client relationships and growing the business. 

01:34 Thank you for the overview and you know going into the award, why do you think you were named an excellence awardee? 

01:41 Yeah, it's an honor to have been named on this end. Uh we are today delivering measurable results for advisers uh 

01:47 across firms like Manulife, Financial Horizons, IPC, many others. Advisers are saving 10 15 hours a week. we here uh 

01:56 today we're building the intelligence layer that connects an advisor's entire tech stack helping them work faster across the tools that they already use 

02:05 instead of trying to replace them. Uh and we're also the first platform to combine workflow automation with science-backed behavioral coaching. So 

02:13 we're improving both advisor efficiency as well as advisor performance improving areas like prospecting aum conversion 

02:23 identifying missed opportunities for example and ultimately the uh the credit though really belongs to our customers 

02:30 you know they took a chance on us and over the last couple years we've been able to prove that the impact is quite real. Mhm. So, John, you know, 

02:39 there have been a lot of AI platforms and other tools. Maybe they'll put an AI label on it that say, "We're going to save you time, Mr. or Mrs. Adviser." 

02:46 Talk to me about what your platform can actually do to save advisers time that some of these other platforms can't. 

02:53 Great question. Yeah, there's a lot of folks that talk about AI. A much smaller subset that do it and then a smaller subset that do it well. Uh, most AI 

03:02 tools today will stop at producing a meeting summary. What Focal AI does is it takes the next step and then actually 

03:09 completes the work. So, after a client meeting, our AI will update the CRM. It will draft personalized follow-up 

03:16 emails. It will fill hundreds of planning and KYC fields. It will prepare the next meeting. It will automate data 

03:24 entry um across different tools if you use Conquest, Salesforce, Equosoft, Maximizer, you name it. Um, that's 

03:31 really the difference between conversational AI and agentic AI. One will tell you what happened. The other is actionable. It gets work done. Uh, 

03:40 for many advisers, what used to require well over an hour of post-meeting admin can now be reduced to just a few 

03:48 minutes. And over the course of a week, as you can probably imagine, that adds up quite quickly. We see, you know, entire days return to uh client-facing 

03:56 work, which is uh really exciting to hear from our clients. 

04:00 This leads into a bit of a macro question around AI because we've seen a lot of firms, you know, exploring AI, 

04:08 transforming with AI, and some of them are doing it to great success while others are finding a lot of frustration and difficulty. Why do you think we're 

04:15 seeing that kind of split in AI adoption? 

04:19 Yeah, that's a fantastic question and you probably saw the recent BCG report too. Something like 60% of enterprises are actually failing at implementing AI. 

04:27 And I think that's the key, right? The biggest difference it isn't necessarily the uh the technology itself, it's the implementation strategy. It's how you go 

04:35 about deploying AI. Uh the firms seeing the best results have executive sponsorship. They have clear governance. 

04:43 They have a long-term AI strategy. 

04:45 They're actually deploying AI as a firmwide capability instead of asking every adviser to figure it out individually. uh the firms that will 

04:53 struggle are the ones that end up with dozens of disconnected tools uh inconsistent adoption right there's no 

05:01 process internally for things like when or should you be syncing your summaries to a CRM uh and then there's no 

05:08 measurable business impact um the reality with AI is that it compounds quite quickly uh in terms of the ROI 

05:16 so every workflow that you automate right it creates more capacity uh the firms that are starting already or are 

05:23 now starting to build that momentum and that's really competitive advantage that becomes increasingly difficult to catch 

05:30 if you're not already thinking about deploying AI um because the reality is that to be able to do well. You 

05:38 need data and you need to be operating at scale um to really see the value from automating these workflows um you offloading whether it's the onboarding 

05:47 the KYC the prospecting the sort of long tale of things that that folks do day in and day out. Um, and you have to have 

05:54 that data layer in place. Data is the oil that powers the machine as Andrew Ing says to ultimately unlock the, you 

06:01 know, 80% plus value that is in the agentic realm versus the 10 to 20%, right, that a point solution tool can 

06:09 come in and unlock for you out of the gate. Um, so it it does take a a very focused address by the folks at the top 

06:18 to ensure that the firm is really driving in the right direction. You hit on something with the word focused and maybe even can use the word specialized 

06:26 where a lot of general purpose AI promises to do everything for everybody. 

06:31 Um, and I guess my question is how much does that promise maybe set up firm leaders and business leaders for 

06:39 struggles with their AI whereas a more specialized tool can actually offer them something that is meaningful, actionable and really works to their workflows. 

06:48 Yeah. No, I think there's actually two pieces here to color in on. One is what a firm can do to see success and then some of the failure objectives there 

06:56 that unfortunately realize if you don't do it well. The other is how you're thinking about you know purpose-built AI 

07:02 versus general AI. Um right um from the first piece around success right if you 

07:09 understand what measurable problem that you're trying to solve that is absolutely key you have to be able to identify what are the high value 

07:17 workflows how do you make sure data is accessible defining success metrics up front redesigning advisor workflows around AI instead of just simply 

07:26 layering AI on top of an existing process um one of the the big mistakes that we've seen a couple of enterprises make is actually assuming that they 

07:35 should build everything internally. Um and unless an AI um you know team is internal with intelligent robotic process automation and it's a core 

07:44 competency of the business uh firms are often times better served partnering in those scenarios um with companies that 

07:52 have already solved these types of problems um so that they can then integrate you know directly into existing environments. Um failure in 

07:59 those scenarios usually comes down to a couple of things. One is that agentic AI is is a very different beast, right? If you're adopting generic AI that was not 

08:08 built for financial advice. Um that's sort of one big pit. The other is allowing unmanaged AI usage without 

08:15 governance. Um so the goal with AI really should be deploying it safely and uh consistently. Now when you look at 

08:23 you know the different options in market, right? your management team evaluating how should we be deploying AI and you're seeing the the ChatGPTs the 

08:31 clouds the Copilots um as the safe bet right incredible technology platforms um a lot of respect for the folks over that direction I know a good 

08:40 portion of the co-pilot team from uh past life and um they are building general purpose engines right these are 

08:46 not advisor operating systems so financial advisers uh today they're working within highly specialized 

08:54 workflows um that includes CRM, financial planning software, they've got compliance requirements, right? Uh KYC 

09:02 is a process, onboarding is a process, retirement documents, how do you manage, you know, form filling on different custodian portals. Um and then some 

09:11 firms have, you know, processes that are pretty unique to how they just get things done internally. uh generic AI will not understand those workflows or 

09:20 integrate with those tools that help you get those workflows done. Uh with purpose-built AI though that effectively combines the power of a lot of these 

09:28 modern foundation models with deep industry context along with integrations, compliance architecture and in our case the specialized 

09:37 behavioral coaching. Um, and that's really what transforms AI from something like a chatbot or, you know, general purpose into something that 

09:46 advisers can actually build their business around because it understands the context, the nuance, right, of the client advisor relationship, whether 

09:53 that's the terminology it picks up or setting you up for the agentic future. 

09:58 Thank you. A comprehensive overview and really quite a fascinating contrast between the specialized and the general. 

10:05 You mentioned though compliance requirements and this is a deeply regulated industry. So, so how do you stay compliant and how do you ensure 

10:13 that your advisers who are using your platform stay compliant while they remain on the cutting edge in technology? 

10:18 Definitely a great question. Compliance is absolutely foundational for us. We treat compliance as a design principle. 

10:26 It's not an afterthought for the business. Uh today Focal is SOC 2 Type 2 certified. We are built on Microsoft 

10:33 Azure supporting Canadian data residency. Um then we use stateless AI models that don't retain or train on 

10:41 client information. Uh and importantly, focal AI uses visible meeting bots and an audible announcement that supports 

10:47 implied consent under PIPA. uh whereas botless providers put advisors at risk of legal exposure, potential fines up to 

10:55 100k CAD because of the risk of transcribing personally identifiable information without getting explicit consent of client. Always get that 

11:03 explicit consent, right? Um so we also on our side keep advisers in control through human in the loop workflows. Uh 

11:11 so AI assists professionals rather than replaces their judgment. Right? there's always a review process before data um you know gets tagged in specific places. 

11:21 Um in regulated industries uh what we've seen and this I think um counts beyond just financial services um innovation 

11:29 really only succeeds if clients and firms trust the platform. Uh so that's why security and compliance for us anyway are foundational to just 

11:37 everything that we do as a business. to maybe put the question incredibly explicitly too much maybe getting right down to brass tacks. Why should 

11:46 advisers consider adding an AI tool like yours? 

11:50 Yeah, ultimately it comes down to keeping up with the Joneses, running the race, being competitive, right? 

11:57 Economics of advice are changing. So advisers today, they spend a surprising amount of time during their week on admin instead of meeting with clients. 

12:07 And if AI can give you that time back, it's really hard to hear, you know, your peers say, I'm saving 5 hours, 10 hours, 

12:14 15 hours a week and uh ignoring it, right? Um what we're seeing is that the firms that are adopting AI today, they 

12:22 are creating more capacity. They are delivering better client experiences, right? You can go deeper with your client if you're not trying to 

12:29 meticulously take notes on the side. Uh they're growing without needing to add proportional headcount. um right if you 

12:36 can now serve 130 versus 100 clients um that's a pretty big uplift for a business and we've seen that happen 

12:44 numerous times now uh I also think that AI is incredibly empowering for firms of every size right if you are an independent adviser um you can now 

12:52 operate with the sophistication and the efficiency of a much larger organization um you can even get your edge on the behavioral coaching piece right I mean 

13:01 if the last competitive moat really is the human advice advisor and the brand that they present, the trust factor with their clients. Um, you want 

13:09 to make sure that you are laser focused, you're able to go as deep as possible with those clients and really ultimately outperform your peers on that 

13:16 relationship basis, right? And at scale, if you're an enterprise firm today, you know, one of these large wealth organizations, um, you now have the option to unlock the power of aic AI. 

13:28 And that's where the real ROI exists beyond generative AI is when you can start going after specific workflows 

13:36 across the tools that you already use and start offloading the specific tasks, right? The data that has to get entered 

13:42 or rekeyed across different systems or you know the think uh manual clicks that that you know these assistants 

13:50 paraplanners, CSPs, CSRs you know are basically manual operating across these different tools. you raised a 

13:57 really interesting thought for me and this is around you know we've seen the industry shift more and more up the 

14:05 economic chain. Basically the answer to the economic issues or the margin compression in this industry has been to serve a smaller cohort of 

14:13 wealthier clients. Does the time savings and economies that come from the use of AI tools like this reopen the sort of 

14:21 the mass affluent and mass market segments for advisers again? Is this going to be could this necessitate or precipitate a shift back towards maybe wider access to financial advisors? 

14:33 The democratization of access to financial advisory and just advice broadly speaking I think is one of the 

14:40 beautiful things that comes from where it is that AI is evolving right now and for me personally that was massive motivation to kick Focal into high gear. 

14:50 you know, if if you look at how people invest on the consumer side today, there's a lot of poor decision-m that's happening. There's a lot of great, you 

14:58 know, scenarios that land for folks as well. Um, but the reality is not enough people have access to the perspective of 

15:06 those um with the knowledge to help them make better decisions. So I think AI for you know the classic consumer is 

15:15 absolutely going to be you sort of a pass through um success story where advisers are now you know more informed 

15:23 around the different topics that they can engage on with their clients but then the you know clients you know because advisers can now serve you know 

15:31 20 30% more clients. um that brings in an entirely new cohort of folks who previously just were less aware or 

15:40 making less informed decisions and that can you know end up in retirement 5 years earlier than maybe you would have otherwise or you know set your family up 

15:48 in a way that you have long-term sustainable capital ready and available for the next generation. um it it ultimately is a benefit to society at 

15:57 large um when the consumers have more access to those you know financial advisers that can deliver that quality advice. So I do think that there's 

16:06 spillover effect here um and it will be a generational unpacked uh that this technology makes on the industry. 

16:14 We talked about generational and I I like that word given the promises of of AI, but you also mentioned ROI. Um, and 

16:21 I'm curious about, you know, especially in the near-term adoption of a platform like yours, what are the kind of ROI 

16:29 expectations that advisers and firms should set when they start using a tool like Focal AI? 

16:35 We think about ROI in in three ways. Uh, first is time. So we're hearing that 

16:42 advisor save 10 15 hours every week and that's just with the core focal AI platform out of the box. This doesn't 

16:48 account for the additional time savings when we work with enterprises to deploy agentic automations for other internal workflows saving even more time. Um the 

16:57 second is around capacity. Uh so that is reclaiming time which allows firms to serve more clients without hiring 

17:06 additional staff. Uh third is the growth factor. So um think better preparation, more consistent follow-up u behavioral 

17:15 coaching helps advisers have higher quality conversations that can improve client engagement and business outcomes. 

17:22 Right? So ultimately the uh the biggest return isn't just the hours saved. 

17:28 It's really what do advisers choose to do with those hours? 

17:32 And a final question, you know, when advisers think of focal, what do you hope they think of? What do you hope the word association is in adviser’s minds now going forward? 

17:43 I hope they think of focal as the platform that gave them their time back and helped them become a better adviser, 

17:50 right? Fulfillment, realization, transcendence. Uh we often hear customers say that they can't imagine running their practice without it. That 

17:59 it's, you know, for me anyway, incredibly rewarding to hear that. And at the end of the day, we don't believe AI replaces relationships, right? it 

18:07 ultimately strengthens them. So, um this is not the Terminator scenario, it's the Iron Man suit that helps advisers do more with less. And if we can eliminate 

18:16 some of the admin burden so that those advisers can spend more time listening, more time advising and really connecting 

18:23 deeply with their clients, um that's when I know that we've done our job. 

18:29 John, I think that's a beautiful note to end on. Um and so with that, I can just say thank you so much for taking the time and for sharing your insights with us today. 

18:37 Thank you for having me, David. It's an honor to have been selected as one of the excellence awardees for the service provider of the year here with WP and um looking forward to the next one. 

18:48 So are we. Uh and thank you to all of our viewers for WPTV. I've been David Kitai. Have a great rest of your day.