The hidden cost of manual annual reviews

The annual review is one of the few moments a wealth firm is guaranteed to spend real time with a client. It is also, for many firms, among the most labour-intensive things they do, though most of that labour is invisible because it happens before the meeting.

Preparing a review means gathering valuations, pulling transaction history, confirming the risk profile, checking that suitability documentation is current, and assembling all of it into a pack. Across a book of several hundred clients, that preparation adds up to weeks of work concentrated into review season. The conversation itself, the part clients actually value, is a small fraction of the total effort.

The cost is not only time. Work that is repetitive and exacting is work people do inconsistently when they are busy. Packs vary by whoever prepared them. A disclosure is occasionally missed. None of this is negligence; it is what happens when a precise task is done by hand at volume.

Whether that preparation should be automated, simplified, or simply staffed differently is a decision each firm has to make on its own terms. The first step is just to measure it honestly, because the real cost of an annual review is rarely where firms assume it sits.

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