How Advisers Can Improve AI Prompts

Artificial intelligence chatbots are no longer brand-new to financial professionals. When ISS Market Intelligence surveyed 466 financial advisers in June 2025 for its “Advisor Pulse” series, 48% said they already used AI tools. In the same survey, the most common uses advisers had for AI were summarizing information (58%), generating written content (55%) and general research and brainstorming (55%)—all cases using generative AI.

If advisers want to see their bots deliver effective results, experts say they need to know how to “speak” to their AI and use best practices to write successful prompts.

Whether an individual adviser is posing questions into a chatbot, or an entire advisory firm is developing proprietary tools, what they get in return will depend on what they pose to artificial intelligence, not the other way around.

Thinking Through Prompts

Many advisers are aware that generative AI can help craft messages and summarize information. Brenton Harrison, a Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards ambassador and founder of New Money New Problems, a virtual financial advisory firm, says he uses AI at his firm for generating marketing materials, recording meetings and note-taking.

When it comes to creating marketing materials, Harrison says he tells AI “to give me an outline or a starting point for either a … digital booklet or a social media post or even a guide that I might distribute,” but he adds that it is important for him to “go back through and rewrite it in my own words.”

Danielle Labotka, a behavioral scientist at Morningstar, agrees that advisers can benefit from prompting generative AI to create ideas for marketing materials and educational resources, which could otherwise be time-intensive tasks.

When it comes to AI prompts, Labotka told PLANADVISER in an email that advisers need to focus on how to best phrase questions to get the right output. Prompts often begin by telling the AI to answer as a particular persona—such as “Be a financial planner” or “Act as a seasoned financial adviser”—to shape the tone and content of the output.

“Prompts should include things like the role you want the AI to play, your goals for whatever you’re asking of it, and the intended audience for the output,” Labotka wrote. “Prompts should also include detailed instructions on any steps you want the AI to take and how it should format the output.”

Four Steps to Revise Prompts

• Clearly State the Objective: According to Sutton, advisers should start a conversation by telling the AI what they need accomplished.
  
  “Clearly communicate your goal or the specific task you need assistance with. This sets the stage for a focused and productive interaction,” Sutton told PLANADVISER in an email.

• Let AI Ask Clarifying Questions: Sutton also recommends the reverse, to have AI ask questions to spell out the adviser’s needs. Those questions can remind a user to include relevant details and context to make a better prompt.

• Provide Institutional Knowledge: In response to AI’s questions, advisers should answer using their own expertise and institutional knowledge. Again, more background information will likely make the prompt more accurate and effective.

• Review, Edit AI-Generated Prompts: Once AI rewrites the prompt, review it to make sure it meets expectations. Make further edits as needed to reflect initial objectives and it includes the correct industry context.

Long or Short?

Prompts are instructions or messages that set up a task for generative AI chatbots to complete. Context, tone and length can vary, depending on the adviser’s specific needs.

According to Capital Group’s AI prompt library for financial advisers, effective prompts incorporate specific goal-oriented tasks along with spaces for advisers to include relevant client information.

An adviser preparing for a client meeting could potentially write the following prompt:

• “Act as a financial planner preparing for a new client meeting. Suggest questions to ask and topics to explore based on the information you have about this client. Make these ones that I haven’t thought about yet. I’m including two things below: basic client info and a list of questions I’m already planning on asking.”

The next prompt could be used to create new client onboarding standard operating procedures:

• “Act as a seasoned financial adviser and operations consultant. Write a detailed, step-by-step standard operating procedure (SOP) for onboarding a new financial planning client. Include all major stages: pre-meeting preparation, document collection, risk assessment, first meeting, follow-up tasks, CRM data entry and compliance checks. Format with section headers and checklists.”

The following prompt can be used to draft a client-facing newsletter:

• Be a financial planner. Draft a newsletter that will go out to clients recap [TIME PERIOD]. In it, include: Macro data [SPECIFY AS NEEDED]. Markets data and biggest headlines driving market moves: [SPECIFY AS NEEDED]. Significant legislation and regulatory updates that impact plans and portfolios. Mimic the style, tone, voice and format of previous newsletters I’ve sent. Also ensure you follow our compliance policy.”

Other advisers may find a more concise and shorter prompt to be more effective.  Vickie Wicks, a financial adviser and principal at Edward Jones, uses the following:

• “Summarize this retirement plan review and highlight the top three risks found.”
• “Draft a client-ready explanation of this retirement income scenario using plain language and no jargon.”
• “Create a checklist of questions I can ask a plan sponsor with these participation and deferral rates.”

“These prompts work because they mirror how experienced financial advisers think. They ask AI to organize, synthesize and clarify — not to decide,” Wicks said.

More important than the length, prompts must ask for exactly what the adviser needs to accomplish, and any prompt may take several rounds of revision to get the best results.