How to prepare annual review packs in a financial advice firm

An annual review pack is everything the adviser needs before the review meeting: the client's updated circumstances, fresh valuations for every plan, what was recommended last year and what has changed since. Prepare it by working back from the date the review is due: list who is due, invite them, update their details, collect the valuations, assemble the pack. An AI worker can do the listing, inviting, chasing and assembling. The review itself, and the judgement of whether last year's advice is still suitable, belong to the adviser.

What triggers a review, and what the rules expect

The trigger is the client agreement. Where COBS 9A applies and a firm provides a periodic suitability assessment, the FCA's rules require it to review the suitability of its recommendations at least once a year. Under the same chapter, a firm with an ongoing relationship must have, and be able to demonstrate, procedures for keeping adequate and up-to-date information about the client. When the FCA reviewed ongoing advice services in 2025, the good practice it found included effective systems and adequate resources to make sure reviews were scheduled and offered as agreed, and record-keeping that could evidence delivery.

In March 2026 the FCA consulted on replacing the annual review with reviews timed to each client's needs, and had not published final rules when this was written in October 2026.

How to prepare the pack faster, step by step

1. Build the list of who is due. From the review dates in your back office system, list each client whose review falls in the next two or three months, with the service they pay for and what that service promises. Today this is a report a client administrator runs between everything else.

2. Invite the client and keep the record. Send the invitation with the adviser's free times, and follow it up. Log every attempt against the client record. For a client who never replies, that log is the firm's evidence that the review was offered.

3. Ask what has changed. Send the client last year's details and ask them to confirm or correct them: employment, income and outgoings, health, family, plans to retire or to spend. A form that shows last year's answers gets returned. A blank fact-find does not.

4. Collect current valuations. For each plan and portfolio, the value, contributions and withdrawals in the year, funds held and charges taken. Some come from platform reports. Others have to be requested from the provider under a letter of authority and take longest, so ask as soon as the meeting is booked.

5. Assemble the pack. One document in the same order every time: what the client told you has changed, each plan then and now, last year's recommendations and whether each action was completed, and a plain list of what is missing. The adviser reads it before the meeting, not during.

6. After the meeting. File note, follow-up letter, any new recommendation and its report, and next year's date in the diary.

Which steps an AI worker can take on

An AI worker can take on much of the preparation before the meeting and draft what follows it, with the administrator checking what goes out before the meeting and the adviser approving what follows it. Run as AI staff, the worker has a written role, a manager in the firm and limits on what it may do. It can build the due list each month for the administrator, send the invitation in wording the firm has approved, offer times from the adviser's diary, follow up at the intervals you set and log each attempt, as the diary and scheduling role describes. It can fill the update form with last year's answers from the client record for the administrator to check and release, then remind the client in approved wording and mark what has changed without commenting on it. It can prepare the valuation requests for the administrator to release, chase overdue replies in approved wording and key what arrives with its source. It can lay out the pack in your template, with the gaps listed at the top. After the meeting it can turn the adviser's notes into a draft file note and a draft letter for the adviser to correct and approve, which is the meeting follow-up and notes role.

What the adviser and administrator keep

• The suitability assessment. The duty to make sure a recommendation is suitable sits with the firm, and the judgement is the adviser's. The pack states facts, not whether a plan is still right for the client.

• Anything about one client's circumstances. Invitations and reminders that carry nothing particular to the client go in wording approved in advance. The pre-filled form and the valuation requests do not: a person checks each one. A reply that mentions a redundancy, a diagnosis or a death goes to the adviser, unanswered. So does any question about what the client should do.

• Clients who decline or stay silent. What to do about a client who pays for a review and does not take it is the firm's decision, not a reminder's job.

• Every phone call, approval of every letter and report before a client sees it, and of every file note before it is filed.

What to have ready before you start

Start with one measure: of the reviews due this quarter, how many had a complete pack a week before the meeting. Then put these in place:

• A review date on every client record.

• The pack template, agreed between advisers.

• The approved wording for the invitation and the reminders, and the layout of the update form.

• Your rule for how many attempts are made, over how long, before a silent client goes to the adviser.

The financial advisers and wealth managers page covers the paperwork either side of the review, from letters of authority to fact-finds and suitability reports. The case for doing this without another administrator is in how to scale a financial advice firm without hiring more staff.

An advice firm could give an AI worker the review list, the invitations and the pack, and keep the meeting and the advice with its advisers. A pack finished the night before leaves little time to check it. Talk to our AI agent.