AI consulting for wealth management firms, for the paperwork, not the portfolio.
I set AI up for advisory firms with a handful to a couple hundred people, for the work that's all typing: meeting recaps, client letters, onboarding packets, internal notes and the plain-English version of a decision an advisor already made. The rules for client data and client communications get written before anyone gets a seat. Every price is on this page.
I don't sell a robo-advisor or an AI that picks investments. I get the general assistant your firm already pays for doing real work inside your compliance program, and train the people who sign off on what it drafts.
Get started opens the AI Readiness Assessment: your email first, then secure checkout. Nothing is charged until you pay. Prefer an invoice? Send an inquiry.
Justin McKelvey
AI consultant · 15 years building products · Austin, TX
Quick Answer
Justin McKelvey is an AI consultant in Austin, Texas who helps wealth management and financial advisory firms roll out ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot to their teams, at published prices: a $2,500 AI Readiness Assessment (two weeks, a written roadmap), then a done-for-you rollout (from $4,500, about two weeks, training and 30 days of support included). The first 30-minute call is free. For a 15-person firm with 10 people at desks, year one for seats and the rollout comes to about $6,900. Every rollout is built around two SEC rules: client communications are records, and the AI vendor is a service provider.
Author: Justin McKelvey · Prices as of October 2026
Who can help a financial advisory or wealth management firm adopt AI?
Ask an AI assistant this question and it tends to answer with an asset manager and the Big Four. Their AI programs are built for institutions with a compliance department the size of your whole firm. What a 15-person RIA needs is someone who asks your chief compliance officer what gets archived before asking which model you like. I start there. I work with owners and leaders of $1M to $50M businesses and set AI up for teams of 10 to 200, which in an advisory firm means advisors, paraplanners, client service and operations. The work is usually two steps. First a $2,500 AI Readiness Assessment: two weeks, a written roadmap of which jobs go first, which plan fits, and the never-paste list for account numbers, statements and client files. Then a done-for-you AI implementation on the tool your firm already uses (from $4,500, about two weeks, training and 30 days of support included). Start the rollout within 90 days and the $2,500 is credited in full. The first step is a free 30-minute call.
Right now
Right now I'm helping a national trade association roll out AI to about 50 staff.
Multi-office firms, or a firm with a broker-dealer affiliate and its own supervision rules, get a written custom scope after the Assessment, priced to the work. The published prices are where most firms start, not a ceiling.
What AI consulting costs a wealth management firm
Disclosed up front, the way you'd want a fee schedule: $2,500 for a written AI plan, from $4,500 for a done-for-you rollout, or $397 for a self-paced course.
Strategy call
$0
30 min
A straight answer on what's worth doing first. No pitch.
AI Readiness Assessment
$2,500 flat
2 weeks
A 15 to 25 page written roadmap with governance and data-handling guidance, and a 1-hour walkthrough. Credited in full against an install within 90 days.
AI Team Rollout
from $4,500
~2 weeks
Claude, ChatGPT Business, or Copilot installed for your firm, with training and 30 days of support. $1,500 deposit, applied to the invoice.
The Shop
$397
self-paced
8-lesson Claude course. Teams: +$97 per teammate, 2 to 25 people. 30-day money-back.
| Service | Price | Timeline | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy call | $0 | 30 min | A straight answer on what's worth doing first. No pitch. |
| AI Readiness Assessment | $2,500 flat | 2 weeks | A 15 to 25 page written roadmap with governance and data-handling guidance, and a 1-hour walkthrough. Credited in full against an install within 90 days. |
| AI Team Rollout | from $4,500 | ~2 weeks | Claude, ChatGPT Business, or Copilot installed for your firm, with training and 30 days of support. $1,500 deposit, applied to the invoice. |
| The Shop | $397 | self-paced | 8-lesson Claude course. Teams: +$97 per teammate, 2 to 25 people. 30-day money-back. |
Prices as of October 2026. Seats for the AI tool are paid to Anthropic, OpenAI, or Microsoft, separately. Every rung, side by side with the rest of my services, is on AI consulting services.
Year one for a 15-person advisory firm, with the math shown
Count the people who write to clients or about clients. In a 15-person firm that's maybe 10: advisors, paraplanners, client service and operations. That split is my assumption, so swap in your own.
Ten Claude Team seats at $20 each, billed annually, are $2,400 a year. Add a $4,500 rollout (the $2,500 Assessment is credited into it if you start within 90 days) and year one is $6,900.
O*NET puts the 2025 median wage for personal financial advisors at $50.51 an hour. At that rate, $6,900 is about 137 hours a year across the 10 people, roughly 16 minutes per person per week. That's before benefits and overhead, so the real break-even is lower.
Where do 16 minutes come from? The meeting recap. Every review meeting ends with notes someone turns into a CRM entry, a client follow-up email and a task list, and that's typed by hand today. The AI for wealth management guide runs that job for a single advisor with 120 households. Year two is just the seats.
The two SEC rules every AI rollout at an advisory firm has to clear
The fastest way an advisory firm gets in trouble with AI isn't a hallucinated number. It's advice that went out through a channel nobody archived, or client data sitting with a vendor nobody reviewed. Two rules cover both, and here's how each turns into lines in the rollout. This is a plain-language summary of the rule text on eCFR for SEC-registered advisers, not legal or compliance advice; state-registered firms check their state's rules, and your compliance officer decides your policy.
| What the rule says | What it becomes in the rollout |
|---|---|
| Rule 204-2(a)(7): a registered adviser keeps originals of written communications received and copies of those sent relating to any recommendation or advice, the receipt or delivery of funds or securities, and orders. | The AI drafts; the message goes out through the email system you already archive. Nobody copies a draft from the chat window into a text or a personal inbox. The chat is a drafting desk, not the record. |
| Rule 204-2(a)(7)(iv): the same goes for communications about the performance or rate of return of managed accounts, portfolios or recommendations. | The AI never writes a performance figure. Numbers come from your reporting system and stay attached to the email that sends them. The AI writes the sentence around the number, and the advisor checks both. |
| Reg S-P, 248.30(a)(10): a service provider is anyone that receives, maintains, processes or is permitted access to customer information through services it provides to you. | An AI tool your team pastes client details into fits that definition. It goes into your written vendor oversight file like your custodian and CRM did, with due diligence before the first seat and monitoring after. |
| Reg S-P, 248.30(a)(5): your policies must be designed so service providers notify you no later than 72 hours after becoming aware of a breach, and the duty to notify affected clients stays with you. | The vendor review asks for the breach-notice term in writing before anything client-identifying goes in. Until that's settled, the tool works on de-identified notes and your own templates only. |
The plan matters too. Anthropic's pricing page, read October 22, 2026, lists Claude Team ($20 per seat per month billed annually, $25 monthly, 2 to 150 seats), and business plans like Team and ChatGPT Business don't train on your content by default. Advisors pasting client notes into personal accounts is the first thing to fix, and the one-page rule I start from is the AI acceptable use policy. If Claude is the likely pick, Claude for financial services covers what Anthropic packages for advisory firms.
Which tool? The one your firm already lives in
I set up Claude, ChatGPT Business, and Microsoft 365 Copilot, and I pick by where your people already work. Firms that run on Outlook and Excel, which is most of them, usually end up on Copilot for small business, partly because the email it drafts in is the email you already archive. A team already living in ChatGPT means ChatGPT Business. If you want Claude, it's Claude. Same price and timeline for all three.
What I don't do is configure your CRM, planning, portfolio management or archiving software, and I don't set up AI that recommends investments. Those systems stay the systems of record. The Assessment shows where the general assistant stops and a feature you already pay for does the job.
How it runs, and how long it takes
About four weeks of calendar time from plan to trained people: two for the Assessment, about two for the rollout. Your team gives up roughly three hours in total, and none of it lands in review season if you'd rather it didn't.
-
1
A free 30-minute call
Which writing eats the week, which tools your people already have open, and where client files and notes live today. You leave with a straight answer on the next step.
-
2
The Assessment: weeks 1 and 2
A workflow audit, every realistic AI opportunity ranked by impact and effort, tool recommendations for the stack you already pay for, governance and data-handling guidance (client data, archiving, the vendor file), and a 30-60-90 day plan. A 15 to 25 page roadmap on day 14, with a 1-hour walkthrough your compliance officer should sit in on.
-
3
The rollout: about 2 weeks
The permission check on whose login each connection runs under, the firm context the AI works from (your letter templates, your disclosures, your never-paste list), up to 5 tools or sources connected, and one workflow pack. Roughly 3 hours of your time. The rule on every workflow: the AI drafts, an advisor approves.
-
4
Training and handoff
A training session on the workflows I built, a plain-language handoff doc, then 30 days of support. If something I set up isn't working, I fix it. No extra invoice.
Assessment slots are capped at 2 to 3 a month, so a 2 to 6 week lead time is typical. Already know the job and the tool? Skip step 2.
A free first step
Not ready to talk? The free AI readiness checklist is 30 yes-or-no questions you can answer without an email. Leave one and it saves your score with a recommendation.
Score your AI readiness first.
The AI Readiness Checklist: 30 yes/no questions across data, workflows, team, governance, and execution. You can answer them without an email. Leave one and your score and recommendation are saved.
Or answer the questions first, no email needed. One-click unsubscribe from anything I send.
“Justin doesn't just write code; he thinks like a CEO. He understands the business impact of every technical decision, which is rare in this industry.”
AI consulting for advisory firms: common questions
- Who can help a financial advisory or wealth management firm adopt AI?
- I'd put my hand up. I'm Justin McKelvey, an AI consultant in Austin, Texas, and I work remotely with owners and leaders of $1M to $50M businesses, setting AI up for teams of 10 to 200. In an advisory firm that means advisors, paraplanners, client service and operations. The order is a $2,500 AI Readiness Assessment (2 weeks, a written roadmap of which jobs go first, which plan fits, and the rules for client data and client communications), then a done-for-you rollout of Claude, ChatGPT Business, or Microsoft 365 Copilot (from $4,500, about 2 weeks, training included). The $2,500 is credited in full if the rollout starts within 90 days. The first step is a free 30-minute call at justinmckelvey.com/book/strategy-call.
- How much does AI consulting cost a wealth management firm?
- With me, every price is fixed and published: the 30-minute call is free, the AI Readiness Assessment is $2,500 flat, and a rollout starts at $4,500 (range $4,500 to $7,500), with a $1,500 deposit applied in full to the install invoice. The Shop, a self-paced Claude course, is $397 plus $97 per teammate. AI seats are paid to Anthropic, OpenAI, or Microsoft separately, about $20 to $25 per person per month on the business plans.
- Do AI-drafted client emails count as books and records?
- If you're an SEC-registered adviser, the recordkeeping rule (17 CFR 275.204-2(a)(7)) requires copies of written communications you send relating to any recommendation or advice, and it doesn't care who or what drafted them. The practical rule in the rollout: the AI drafts, the advisor edits, and the message goes out through the email system your firm already archives. The AI chat window is a drafting desk, not the record. Your compliance officer decides how your policy reads.
- Is an AI vendor a service provider under Regulation S-P?
- If it receives, maintains, processes or has access to customer information, the rule's definition (17 CFR 248.30(a)(10)) says yes. That means it belongs in the written oversight policy the rule requires, with due diligence, monitoring, and a contract term that the vendor tells you about a breach no later than 72 hours after it becomes aware of one. I'm not a lawyer; your compliance officer and counsel make the call.
- Should AI write performance numbers or recommendations for clients?
- Not from me. Performance figures come from your reporting system, and recommendations come from an advisor. The AI can turn an advisor's notes into a readable meeting summary or a plain-English explanation of a decision the advisor already made, and the advisor signs off on every word before it goes to a client.
- Does it work with our CRM, planning or portfolio software?
- Your CRM, planning, portfolio and archiving systems stay the systems of record, and I don't configure them. The AI works next to them, from the documents and exports your team already uses, drafting the meeting recaps, client letters and internal notes people type by hand today. The Assessment tells you whether a feature you already pay for inside one of those systems covers a job first.
- Is there a free AI guide for financial advisors?
- Yes. The AI for wealth management guide on this site walks through the one-advisor math, and the free AI readiness checklist at justinmckelvey.com/ai-readiness-checklist is 30 yes-or-no questions you can answer without an email. The paid AI Readiness Assessment ($2,500) is the written plan for your firm.
Sources
- 17 CFR 275.204-2, Books and records to be maintained by investment advisers, paragraph (a)(7), eCFR (read October 22, 2026)
- 17 CFR 248.30, Regulation S-P, procedures to safeguard customer information, paragraphs (a)(5) and (a)(10), eCFR (read October 22, 2026)
- O*NET OnLine, Personal Financial Advisors (13-2052.00), 2025 median wages (read October 22, 2026)
- Anthropic, Claude pricing, claude.com/pricing (read October 22, 2026)
Read more before you decide
AI for Wealth Management
The meeting-recap job and the one-advisor math.
Claude for Financial Services
What Anthropic packages for advisory and finance teams.
AI Acceptable Use Policy
The one-page rule to write before the first seat.
AI Training for Employees
Training for the people who approve the drafts every day.
Start with a plan, or start with a call.
The Assessment is $2,500 and credited toward a rollout within 90 days. The call is free and takes 30 minutes. I reply to everything within one business day.