Customer Story
Wealth Manager
Briefing Builder combines firm knowledge with live market data to produce client-ready updates in minutes—compliant, consistent, on brand.
Location
London, UK
Industry
Finance
65%
faster turnaround of client briefings.
Real-time market intelligence, less manual work, and faster client service with Cogniforce
Client confidentiality. Published with the client’s permission and privacy requirements. We don’t publish brand names, and non-essential identifiers may be generalized. The outcomes and workflow described are real and were reviewed with the client before publication. Additional evidence is available under NDA.
Executive summary
A mid-sized British wealth manager modernized how its advisers answer client questions, prepare reviews, and track positions across currencies. By deploying Cogniforce AI Workspace—which unifies the firm’s knowledge with real-time equity and FX data—and a lightweight tool we built called Briefing Builder, the firm achieved:
~65% faster turnaround for client briefings, ad-hoc updates, and review packs.
~45% reduction in manual work hours across adviser support, investment operations, and marketing.
Crucially, the firm kept strict controls over data handling and tone of voice, with every automated step logged for compliance.
Where they started
The firm manages discretionary and advisory portfolios for high-net-worth clients. The investment view is strong—clear house opinions, thoughtful model portfolios, disciplined rebalancing—but keeping up with client communications had become the bottleneck.
Advisers spent late afternoons assembling “quick updates” when a client texted about a stock drop or FX swing.
Quarterly reviews were stitched together from research PDFs, CRM notes, and screenshots from the market terminal.
Marketing guarded the brand voice, so every deck passed through a queue for edits.
Ops tracked facts and figures across spreadsheets because systems didn’t talk to each other cleanly.
No one wanted a black-box chatbot; they wanted governed, auditable help that could read the firm like an insider and reference prices like a terminal.
Why Cogniforce
Three things resonated with the COO and Head of Compliance during selection:
A single Workspace for the firm’s brain. Policies, research notes, house views, model factsheets, commentary from the CIO, RFP answers—everything lives in AI Workspace with versioning and access control.
Live market context. Connectors bring real-time equities and FX into the Workspace, with entitlements respected and usage logged. The AI understands both the firm’s knowledge and what the market is doing right now.
Colleagues you can trust. Role-based AI Colleagues (Adviser Support, Research, Marketing) work inside strict guardrails: approved phrasing, disclaimers, and escalation rules.
What we implemented
We ran a three-week rollout, starting with knowledge ingestion (house views, sector notes, model portfolio rules, fee schedules, brand guidelines) and low-risk automations. Inbox and CRM integrations allowed Colleagues to draft replies and attach context; nothing was sent without explicit approval in the early phase.
On day ten we introduced Briefing Builder, a small but high-impact tool that sits on top of the Workspace:
Briefing Builder creates a client-ready, branded PDF or email in minutes. It merges a client’s current holdings, real-time prices and FX, performance since last touchpoint, and the firm’s latest house commentary—then adds the right disclaimers automatically. Advisers can add a personal note before sending, and the whole package is logged to the CRM.
Technically, it’s a template-driven generator: one click to choose a client, one click to pick a template (“Market Update,” “Quarterly Review,” “Event-Driven Note”), and one final click to approve. Under the hood it pulls holdings and cash from the portfolio system, quotes and FX from the market feed, and language from the Workspace’s knowledge.
Because it’s built on the same guardrails as the rest of the platform, Briefing Builder inherits tone, forbidden topics, risk warnings, and approval routing without extra work.
Day-to-day after launch
Advisers still talk to clients; the difference is what happens in the background.
When a client asks, “What does the BoE move mean for my USD exposure?”, Adviser Support Colleague drafts a short note that references the firm’s FX view, shows the client’s currency breakdown at live rates, and suggests two concise actions aligned to policy. The adviser reviews, tweaks a line or two, and sends. The note lands in the CRM with links to sources and the exact data snapshot that supported it.
For quarterly reviews, Briefing Builder assembles the deck before lunch: holdings, sector/region splits, performance against the target mix, cash drag, plus two charts the CIO likes to use. Marketing doesn’t re-write paragraphs anymore; the copy already matches the brand lexicon.
Ops benefits too. When a corporate action hits, Research Colleague posts a summary mapped to the firm’s stance, then opens tasks to the right teams. Everyone sees the same explanation, once.
Measurement and method
We agreed on a pragmatic approach that Compliance signed off:
Turnaround time: the elapsed time from an adviser’s request (“need a client update on ABC plc and USD exposure”) to a client-ready draft, measured over six weeks pre-launch and eight weeks post-launch.
Manual work hours: time tracked by adviser support and marketing for assembling reports, copying prices, checking disclaimers, and formatting decks.
Quality: weekly sampling for factual accuracy, tone, policy alignment, and proper disclaimers. Any edits were fed back to tighten prompts and templates.
Results after two months
The numbers settled quickly. Turnaround time dropped by about 65% for the most common tasks. Simple updates moved from “end of day” to “before the client’s next meeting.” Quarterly packs, once a multiday relay, now take hours.
On labor, we saw a ~45% reduction in manual hours across adviser support and marketing for eligible tasks. The CIO’s office reported fewer repeat explanations, because the Workspace keeps one authoritative phrasing for each view and updates it in one place.
Soft benefits showed up in the second month: advisers were more proactive with check-ins, since a three-minute Briefing Builder run made it painless to send something thoughtful and specific.
See how this maps to your stack
15-minute walkthrough of the exact playbooks, guardrails, and Colleagues—tailored to your tools and policies.
Book a tailored demo →
Data protection and compliance
Nothing here works without trust. The Workspace runs with role-based permissions and least-privilege access. Market data usage respects the firm’s entitlements; snapshots are hashed and logged with the source and timestamp. Drafts carry the correct risk warnings and regulatory text by default, and anything sensitive (client identifiers, account numbers) is redacted from model training and external calls.
Every action is auditable: who generated a briefing, which data were used, who approved it, and when it went to the client.
What changed for the team
Advisers describe the feeling as “headroom.” They still set the agenda and handle nuance, but the busywork—prices, FX conversions, chart formatting, disclaimers, house-view quotes—happens instantly and correctly. Support staff spend more time enriching CRM notes and less time alt-tabbing between systems.
Marketing moved from gatekeeper to coach. They refined the brand lexicon in the Workspace, added a few “always/never say” rules, and now trust the output without line-editing every paragraph.
Lessons we’ll carry forward
Templates beat free-form. Giving advisers smart templates (three good ones, not thirty) was more effective than a blank page with an assistant.
House views are living content. The CIO’s team now treats the Workspace as a publication surface; when they update a stance, Briefing Builder inherits it everywhere.
Compliance wants receipts. We invested early in immutable logs and snapshotting of market data. That turned sign-off from a hurdle into a strength.
What’s next
Two extensions are underway. First, a Prospect Pack template that turns a model portfolio and a few inputs into a MiFID-friendly pitch deck. Second, a Currency Scenario Explorer—a small pane inside Briefing Builder that shows how ±5% moves in major crosses would have affected a client in the last quarter, using the same live FX feed and the firm’s risk language.
If you run operations or compliance at a financial firm and want faster, more consistent client communications—grounded in your house views and live market context—book a demo. We’ll walk you through the exact setup used here and deliver a short pilot that matches your data entitlements and brand.
