Suitability reports are where advice firms lose the most time to writing. NextWealth's research for Fidelity found advisers spend about a fifth of their week preparing client reports and plans, and nearly three quarters said less admin would improve their working day. AI has moved fast into that gap: in Fidelity's 2026 survey, 40% of advisers were using or implementing AI for suitability assessment and reporting, up from 11% a year earlier. The question for most firms is no longer whether to use it, but whether to buy a specialist tool or build something of their own.
Our short answer: most firms should buy. There are now several capable UK tools built for exactly this job, and they plug into the back offices most firms already use. Building only makes sense in three specific situations, which we cover at the end. We build AI document systems for a living, so we have every reason to say otherwise, which is why we have tried to be precise about where the line sits.
What these tools actually do
The specialist tools follow the same basic flow. They record or take notes from the client meeting, pull the facts into the fact-find, then draft the suitability report in the firm's own template, citing the recommendation, the reasons, the risks and the alternatives considered. Some add a compliance check that reviews the file before it goes out. The adviser or paraplanner reviews and signs off. The time saving comes from never starting from a blank page and never retyping what the client already said.
Vendors quote large savings. Saturn says four hours of paraplanner time becomes 20 minutes of review, and AdvisoryAI puts a manual report at four to six hours. These are vendor figures, and we have not found an independent benchmark for time per report, so treat them as the best case and test them on your own files during a trial.
The main options compared
| Tool | What it covers | Price | Data claims | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aveni Assist | Meeting notes, fact-find updates, suitability reports; Aveni Detect for QA | On request | ISO 27001; data not used to train models; runs on AWS | Intelliflo, Xplan |
| AdvisoryAI | Meeting notes (Evie), suitability and review reports (Emma), compliance checks (Colin) | About £270 to £299 per user a month + VAT for reports | Says client data is held in the UK; Cyber Essentials; ISO 27001 in progress | Intelliflo, Curo, Xplan, Plannr |
| Saturn | Data capture, meeting notes, suitability letters, annual reviews, file checks | On request | Not trained on client data; UK/EU servers per its privacy policy | Two-way back-office integrations |
| PlannerPal | Meeting capture, suitability and advice letters with citations, CRM updates | On request | Says it is UK-hosted and encrypted | Intelliflo, Curo, Plannr, Xplan |
| intelliflo IQ | Built into intelliflo office: meeting summaries, branded suitability reports, report QA | On request | Not stated on its product pages | intelliflo office |
| Automwrite | Suitability reports from meetings and documents in the firm's template | £249 a month (letter writing plan) | Not stated on its pricing page | Not stated |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | General drafting and meeting summaries inside Microsoft 365 | From £13.80 per user a month | Microsoft 365 terms | No advice-specific templates or back-office write-back |
A few things stand out. The market is maturing quickly: Saturn raised a $15m Series A in October 2025 and says it serves 600 firms, Aveni raised £11m in 2024 with Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide among its backers, and PlannerPal raised $6m this month. Intelliflo has built its own assistant into intelliflo office and also lists several of these tools in its marketplace, so firms on Intelliflo can choose either route. Plannr, a popular adviser CRM, does not draft reports itself; it relies on partners such as AdvisoryAI.
Read the data claims carefully. Every vendor says it does not train its models on your client data, but where the data is processed varies. Some say UK only, some UK and EU, and some do not say. We found AdvisoryAI's own pages describing both UK-only storage and "UK and EEA data residency zones". None of this is a reason to rule a vendor out. It is a reason to get the answer in writing, in the contract, before any client file is uploaded.
Generic Copilot is the cheapest option and can summarise a meeting well. It cannot, on its own, produce a report in your firm's structure from your fact-find and write the answers back to your back office. Getting it to do that is a build project in its own right.
How to choose a tool
Start with your back office. A tool that writes directly into Intelliflo, Curo or Xplan saves far more time than one that produces a good document you then retype into the client record. Then run a two-week trial on real past cases, with client consent and your DPO's sign-off, and measure three things: the time from meeting to a report you would send, how many factual corrections each draft needed, and whether the reasoning in the report matches what was actually discussed. Finally, ask for the data processing agreement, the sub-processor list and the processing location before you sign, not after.
Whatever you choose, the adviser stays responsible for the advice. The FCA's survey of more than 4,100 advice firms, published in April 2026, found that 52% of large firms and 14% of small ones expect to use AI in the advice process. Firms that do it well treat the AI draft as a paraplanner's first pass: useful, fast, and always checked.
When building your own makes sense
There are three situations where a custom build is the better answer.
First, your reports do not fit the templates. Firms with specialist advice, such as pension transfers, later-life lending or complex trusts, often have report structures and evidence requirements that off-the-shelf tools handle poorly. A custom pipeline can follow your own structure and cite the exact source document for every statement.
Second, you need control over where data goes that no vendor will give you. If your policy, your network or your clients require processing in a specific UK location, with your own logging and retention, you can run the models inside your own cloud account in the UK. We explain how in our guide to private LLMs for UK businesses.
Third, the numbers work over three years. Per-seat pricing adds up across a large adviser and paraplanner team. A pipeline you own has a build cost and then a running cost per document, which can be cheaper at volume. It also has to be maintained, so do the comparison honestly, including your own time.
If none of these apply, buy. If one does, the sensible next step is a small proof of concept on a sample of anonymised past files, measured against your current process, before committing to a full build. We set out what that looks like for advice firms on our financial advisers page, and the fixed-price version is our IDP Proof of Concept.
Sources
Adviser time and AI adoption: Fidelity IFA DNA 2025 (NextWealth); Money Marketing on Fidelity IFA DNA 2026; FCA: Understanding the financial advice market. Vendor details from each vendor's own website on 18 October 2026: Aveni, AdvisoryAI pricing, Saturn, PlannerPal, intelliflo IQ, Automwrite pricing, Microsoft 365 Copilot business pricing. Funding: Saturn Series A, Aveni Series A, PlannerPal on Tech Funding News.