What changes
Clients already ask general AI assistants questions they used to bring to a professional. The New Model firm gives them a better place to ask: its own assistant, tools and client portal, built on its own knowledge and carrying its own name. The firm builds or commissions these and owns them, including the content, the client data and the decisions about what the tools can and can’t say.
What this looks like varies by profession. An adviser might offer a household finance hub and a retirement planner. An accountant might offer a tax checker that shows a client’s likely future tax and a checklist of actions to reduce it. A solicitor might offer a legal health check that flags a missing will or an out-of-date lasting power of attorney. Each one gives clients value between meetings and brings the right questions back to a professional.
Why it matters now
If clients get their everyday answers from tools that belong to someone else, the relationship gradually moves there too. Owning the digital front end keeps it with the firm. It also turns the knowledge in your team’s heads into something that works at any hour and for any number of clients, which is what makes the pricing changes in Move 5 possible.
Ownership carries responsibility. Client-facing tools must stay within what your regulator allows, be clear with clients about what they are, and pass the conversation to a professional whenever a question needs advice.
Checklist
- Choose one client problem to solve first. Pick a frequent question from your Move 1 client calls that currently lands in someone’s inbox several times a week.
- Decide whether to build, commission or white-label. Whichever route you take, insist on your own name, your own content and your ownership of the client data.
- Write the boundaries before the tool. Set out what it may answer, what it must refer to a professional, and how conversations are logged and reviewed.
- Pilot with 20 clients for six weeks. Review every conversation in the first fortnight, fix what went wrong and only then widen access.
Case study: Your Family Financial Hub
Your Family Financial Hub (YFFH) is a white-label hub that an adviser firm gives to each client household. Documents are read into records, and each record keeps the sentence it came from, so anyone can check an entry against its source. The family sees what’s in place and what’s missing, such as no will, no lasting power of attorney or no pension beneficiary, and can share chosen categories with its solicitor or accountant. The firm sees which households need it next, and nothing is confirmed until the firm confirms it. Each firm has its own address, sign-in page, logo and assistant name. It’s a working example of this move, and of how one client hub can bring advisers, accountants and solicitors around the same family. YFFH is built by Independent Check, which runs 8MDs.
Illustrative example
A solicitors’ firm with a busy private client team receives about 600 routine questions a month by email and phone, such as what documents to bring and how probate works. At around 10 minutes each, that’s 6,000 minutes, or 100 hours a month. The firm launches its own assistant, built on its own guides and checked by a partner, which answers half of these questions and books a call for anything that needs advice. The team gets back about 50 hours a month, and clients get an answer at any hour.
Common mistakes
- Renting a generic chatbot with your logo on it. If it doesn’t use your knowledge and you don’t own the data, it isn’t really your offering.
- Launching to everyone at once. A small pilot finds the awkward questions before your whole client base does.
- Forgetting the route to a person. Every tool needs a clear, quick way to reach a professional, because that’s where the relationship is kept.
Coaching your clients
Digital tools are a natural way to coach clients through their own changes. A hub or checker can show a client a gap before it becomes a problem, and prompt a conversation about how AI is affecting their work, business or family plans. Use the tool to open those conversations, then have them in person.