Most advisers using mallowstreet AI save hours weekly

Most advisers using mallowstreet's SOFI AI platform are saving time each week, according to a user survey, with 85% of respondents reporting weekly time savings.

The survey covered 93 advisers, paraplanners and support staff at advice practices using the system, with 91 answering the time-saving question. Most of those who said the platform saved time estimated the gain at between three and 10 hours a week.

Much of that time is being saved on post-meeting administration, including handover notes and review letter drafting. The findings suggest advice firms are redirecting those hours into client meetings, larger client books and staff development.

One example is Quayside Wealth Management, a five-adviser firm with GBP £200 million under management. The practice has put 988 meetings through the platform, including 176 in a single month.

Alex Kell, who runs the firm, said the software had reduced pressure to expand headcount while maintaining service levels. "If I didn't have SOFI, we would have had to hire more staff, I would have needed to increase advisers too, and I would have had to let go of some of my clients, which is ultimately the best part of my job," said Kell.

At larger firms, the time savings are also being used for internal development. Pinnacle, which has 51 advisers, 120 support staff and GBP £2.3 billion under management, has used the system for about two years.

Managing Director Sam Fitzgibbon said the platform had given the firm more scope to review adviser performance and support less experienced staff. "The ability for us to gain insight into where and how our advisers could develop is really, really valuable, particularly for those in their early career. So, we've used it a lot for that, to actually sit and coach and mentor advisers on how they can just be even better at what they do," said Fitzgibbon.

Chatsworth Wealth Management, another user, said it had cut the time taken to provide written follow-up to clients after meetings. The firm, which advises on more than GBP £400 million across five advisers, now sends a written summary within half an hour of a meeting ending rather than several days later.

Managing Director Vikash Kanani said the issue came down to how advisers spend their working day. "No one studies, does continuous professional development, goes through the pains of becoming a financial adviser to then spend all their time writing things up and doing administration. We want to spend that time with clients," said Kanani.

Client contact

The findings also sit alongside wider research by mallowstreet into how advice firms generate new business. In a separate survey of 46 UK advice practices, firms that mainly met clients in person were more likely than mainly online firms to describe their new business pipeline as strong and growing.

Among practices that meet clients mainly face to face, 57% said their pipeline was strong and growing, compared with 43% of mainly online practices. Almost half of in-person firms, or 48%, said new client acquisition was their main source of new business, against 22% of online firms, which were more likely to grow by expanding existing accounts.

That matters because face-to-face work often creates more administration after meetings. For firms whose growth depends on client contact, the burden of follow-up paperwork can become a direct constraint on capacity.

SOFI was launched in 2024 for regulated financial advice and is designed to turn recorded client meetings into structured summaries, suitability reports and client letters, with adviser review and sign-off required before use. The product is now used across more than 900 advice firms, covering 2,533 adviser licences and 4,044 seats, and analyses more than 30,000 meetings a month, according to mallowstreet.

Overall satisfaction among surveyed users was 8.3 out of 10. Stuart Breyer, Chief Executive Officer of mallowstreet, said the issue for many firms was not the meeting itself but the administrative work that followed it.

"The industry is being asked to serve more people at lower cost. That is a productivity question before it is anything else. We built SOFI around a simple problem. The expensive part of advice is not the meeting; it is the hours that follow it. What our clients tell us is that when you take that load out, what you get back is capacity. A practice can carry more clients, or spend longer with the ones it has, or put the time into developing its advisers. Those are all choices, and the firms making them deliberately are getting the most out of it," said Breyer.