Why financial services firms need to automate now

Friday afternoon. Your best adviser is spending 2 hours retyping policy terms into a client report. By hand. In 2026.

Nobody finds it strange anymore. "It's just how we do things."

Until you do the maths.

Now add to that:

• Comparing quotes from four lenders by hand
• Follow-up calls that haven't happened in months
• Commission overviews in Excel, kept up to date by someone who retires next year
• A CRM where half the data lives and the rest sits in Outlook

Sound familiar? Then you'll read the rest with different eyes.

AI agents: not one chatbot, but a whole team

I build AI systems for SMEs. Not one chatbot, but teams of specialised AI agents that work together.

Last week I had six agents running at once. One brief → they split up the work → check each other's output → deliver a finished result. On a Mac Mini in Nijmegen.

If this is already possible, what are you still doing by hand that you don't have to?

Three things I keep running into at financial services firms

1. “We don't know exactly how our own process runs.”

Ask a 30-person firm how client intake works. Three people, three answers. Not because they're bad at it, it's just never been written down.

An AI can automate your intake. But only if you can describe what it actually is. That exercise costs an afternoon with your team and a whiteboard.

2. “Our data is everywhere and nowhere.”

Anva. CCS. Dias. Excel. Outlook. Nobody has the full picture.

You don't need a multi-million migration. But you do need to decide, once: where does our client information live? That's not an IT project. That's a management decision.

3. “The EU AI Act? Surely that's for big companies?”

No. ChatGPT for client communication? A CRM with smart suggestions? Then it applies to you. Credit assessment and financial advice fall into the “high-risk” category.

Start now and it's manageable. Put it off and you'll be playing catch-up. Read also: EU AI Act: what does it mean for SMEs?

The firms that are moving

The firms that are moving don't start with technology. They ask: where is our time leaking away?

One firm discovered that advisers were losing 40% of their week to admin. They automated the quoting process. One pilot. Six weeks.

What you can do on Monday morning

Ask your team: “Where do we spend the most time on things a computer could do faster?”

Write it down. Pick the easiest one. Pilot it for a month. Measure it.

Want to think through the first step together? Book a no-obligation call.