A few years ago, the word smart got stapled onto everything. Smart TVs, smart fridges, a smart water bottle that lit up to remind you to drink water, a task water had handled on its own for a few billion years. Half of it changed how we live, and the other half is in a drawer.
AI agent is having that exact moment in advisor tech right now. Every vendor has one, each is somehow the best one, and telling a real agent from a chatbot in a trench coat has become its own skill.
Three stories from this week that matter for your practice.
Everyone Suddenly Has an AI Agent. One Firm Just Counted 54 of Them.
In his August technology roundup, Michael Kitces flagged what anyone with an email address has already figured out, that vendors are shipping AI agents for advisors faster than anyone can test them. To bring some order to the pileup, the consulting firm Ezra Group, run by Craig Iskowitz, built a directory that catalogs the market. It already lists 54, sorted into everything from workflow and financial planning to tax and compliance, which is a lot of robots for one industry. Iskowitz noted that every firm he talks with is being pitched agents, each vendor certain theirs is the one. Kitces added the distinction that cuts through most of the noise. A real AI agent, in his words, is "a robot that does stuff," meaning it finishes a multi-step task on its own. That sets it apart from the tools that just produce text and hand it back, like the chatbots and AI notetakers a lot of advisors already run.
Why you should care: The useful question to bring to any AI pitch just got simple. Does this thing actually do a task from start to finish, or does it write something and then hand it back to me to finish. Both can be worth paying for, and they are not the same purchase, so the price should match which one you're actually getting. When a vendor says agent, make them show you the part where it does the work without you. If you want the plain-English version of what an AI agent really is for an independent firm, I wrote one here. The flood isn't a reason to panic or to buy. It's a reason to get sharp at asking what a tool truly does before it earns a spot in your stack and a line on your budget.
The Industry Is Realizing It Needs a Shared Way to Judge These Tools.
Right on cue, WealthManagement's executive editor Diana Britton published a piece this week making the case that advisors need a common language and a standard set of questions to ask before adopting any AI agent. The idea underneath it is that the market has moved faster than the average firm's ability to evaluate what it's being sold, so advisors end up comparing tools with different yardsticks, or picking whichever demo had the smoothest talk track and the nicest dashboard. A shared list of questions fixes that, because it lets you hold every pitch to the same bar instead of getting swept up in the shiniest one that week.
Why you should care: You don't have to wait for the industry to agree on the questions, because you can have your own set ready by this afternoon and use it on the next vendor who emails you. The advisor who runs every pitch through the same handful of questions stops buying on impulse and starts buying on fit. That's most of the game as these tools multiply, and it's exactly what this week's One Thing helps you build.
Getting Found by AI Just Became a Real Enough Business to Buy and Sell.
On Sunday, PLANADVISER reported that WealthReach, an AI platform for advisors, acquired AdvisorRankings, an agency that specializes in search and AI-search optimization for financial advisors. Founded in 2010 by Brent Carnduff, AdvisorRankings will fold its advisor-specific search and website expertise into WealthReach. The deal itself is small, and the signal is the part to notice. Helping advisors get found by AI answer engines has grown from a niche idea into a category with enough money in it that the players have started buying each other, which is usually the sign a niche has grown up.
Why you should care: This confirms something the last few months of this newsletter have pointed at. When a prospect asks an AI assistant to recommend an advisor, the answer gets built from whatever the machine can read about you, and firms are paying real money to win that moment. You don't need to hire any of them to start. Being clear about exactly who you serve and publishing that somewhere a bot can read it still does more than any optimization service, and I broke down how to do it when prospects ask AI for a recommendation here. The tools can help later. The clarity has to come from you first.
ONE THING TO TRY THIS WEEK
This is the week to build the one asset that makes you immune to a slick AI demo. It's a scorecard you run every vendor through, so the decision comes down to fit instead of polish. Here's one you can put to work today.
Step 1. The next time a vendor pitches you an AI tool or agent, gather whatever they gave you, the website, the one-pager, the email, or your notes from the demo.
Step 2. Open Claude or Cowork and paste this, along with their material. "I'm a financial advisor evaluating an AI tool or agent a vendor is pitching me. I'll paste their marketing or my demo notes below, and I want a clear, honest evaluation, so do not take their claims at face value. Here is their material, [paste]. Here is my practice, [solo or small team, who you serve, and the main tools you already use]. Walk through these in plain English. One, what does it actually do, and is it a real agent that completes a task on its own or an assistant that produces text I still have to act on? Say which, and describe the real job it does in one sentence. Two, what does it need from me to work, and does it require access to client data or nonpublic personal information? Three, does it keep me approving the important steps, or can it act on its own in ways that reach a client or an account without me? Four, where does my data go, is it retained, is it used to train their models, and what vendor-oversight questions should I ask to satisfy my Reg S-P and recordkeeping duties? Five, based on the tools I already use, am I probably already paying for something that does this? Six, could I get most of this result myself with an AI tool I already have plus a good prompt or a simple workflow? Seven, point out vague claims, buzzwords with no substance, and any promise that sounds too strong. Then give me a one-paragraph verdict in language I'd use with a skeptical colleague, and the exact questions I should email the vendor before deciding. Keep everything as education, not specific investment, legal, or compliance advice, and remind me to run any real decision past my own compliance process."
Step 3. Read the verdict, then email those questions to the vendor before you agree to anything. How they answer tells you as much as the tool does. And if the honest answer to that sixth question is that you could build it yourself, here's how to set up Claude for your practice.
If turning that scorecard into a repeatable buying process, and building the simple tools you decide you can make yourself, is where you'd want a hand, that's what Amplify for Advisors is built for. New prompts and frameworks show up every Tuesday and Friday.
Sam Farrington, CFP®
Want the prompts and frameworks that turn this news into action for your practice? That's what Amplify for Advisors is for. New frameworks every Tuesday and Friday.
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