For independent advisory firms

Spend more time advising clients. We'll help operate and govern the AI underneath it.

We put your firm's approved way of working — your process, your philosophy, how you run a review — into the Claude or ChatGPT your people use, keep it apart from client financial data, and leave every recommendation with an advisor. AI capability for an independent firm, without building an AI department.

Try it for advisory firms Talk to us

What a relationship builds

Years of context about each client. Most of it in the wrong place at the right moment.

Advice is a relationship business. Over years your firm learns a family's goals, what worried them last time, the assumptions behind their plan, how they like things explained. Add your investment philosophy, your process and your research, and you have exactly the context that makes AI genuinely useful.

Using it well means decisions about tools, access, systems and governance. Your advisors should benefit from those decisions, not be the ones making and maintaining them.

What clients chose an independent advisor for

A personal relationship
Continuity, year after year
Trust
Independence
Judgment
Someone who knows their situation
A long-term view

Technology should strengthen these, not flatten them.

The operating layer

Your firm's way of advising, ready before the client sits down.

What the firm knows how to do

How you run an annual review
The new-client checklist
The call after a bad quarter
Your investment philosophy
What staff never answer themselves
Templates for explaining risk plainly
How the founding advisor liked things done

Zero Mission

Firm guidance · boundaries · human review

The firm's way of working, reachable by the firm's people from the AI tools they use. Client financial data stays in your CRM and planning systems, under the access you already control — and every recommendation stays with an advisor.

The meeting

Before

Prepared, not hunting

What your firm covers in this kind of review, and how, instead of rebuilt by hand the night before.
During

Present with the client

Attention on the person across the table: listening, explaining, deciding together.
After

Followed through

Your firm's steps after a meeting, in order, so nothing depends on memory — with every word to the client written and approved by the advisor.

The layer in the middle should be precise and nearly invisible. The relationship is the point of it.

Where it helps

Firm knowledge

Your investment philosophy, planning procedures, templates and internal guidance, easy for your people to use — and still the firm's when someone leaves.

Research

Help working through large amounts of research and information, with an advisor reviewing what it finds and deciding what it means.

Explaining clearly

Your firm's educational material and plain-language explanations, ready for an advisor to adapt and approve.

Meeting preparation

What the firm covers in each kind of meeting and how, not rebuilt from memory and five open tabs.

Escalation to a person

A question that needs a recommendation or a compliance call isn't answered by the assistant. It goes to the person your firm names.

Operations

Less repetitive work around onboarding, gathering information, scheduling, documentation and internal coordination.

The advice stays yours

AI helps the advisor prepare. The advisor gives the advice.

We aren't replacing advisors or letting software make financial decisions. AI helps someone prepare, find, understand, communicate and follow through. Judgment, financial expertise, fiduciary responsibility where it applies, empathy, continuity and accountability stay with the person the client trusts.

Access, handled with care

The right people, the right information, the right work.

Financial information is sensitive, and AI access should follow the same principle as every other system your firm trusts with it. We administer who can reach what — advisors, staff, contractors — keep it current as people and relationships change, and make sure leadership can see it at any time.

Your information stays where it lives.

You shouldn't have to migrate everything valuable into yet another proprietary AI system. We work across what you already run, and we'll tell you plainly which connections work today for your systems and which don't.

Claude
ChatGPT
Microsoft 365
Google Workspace
Your CRM
Portfolio and planning systems
Document stores
Email and calendars
Research platforms

Independence

Sophisticated technology should make independence easier to sustain.

Large institutions support whole teams for technology, operations, data and AI. A firm of ten, twenty-five or seventy-five people may never employ an AI operations team — that shouldn't lock it out of the capability. We provide that function across independent firms, so yours doesn't have to reinvent it, and stays the firm your clients chose.

What we don't promise. Zero Mission operates infrastructure. It doesn't by itself satisfy any securities, privacy, recordkeeping, fiduciary or regulatory requirement, and nothing an AI drafts is financial advice until an advisor makes it theirs. Your firm remains responsible for its professional and regulatory obligations. We configure the layer carefully, keep it that way, and tell you plainly where its limits are.

Try it

Try it in your own Claude or ChatGPT, now.

Copy this into a new conversation and it becomes a generic version of our assistant for your industry. It asks a few questions, then does real work with you — and tells you honestly where plain Claude or ChatGPT is already enough.

No account and nothing to install. Nothing is sent to us: if you'd like to talk, it writes a short summary you can read, edit and paste into the form below.

The generic version is free to keep. What we do is make it yours — your process, your systems, kept current — so nobody at your firm has to become the AI expert.

You are a free, generic version of Zero Mission's assistant for a independent financial advisory firm. Zero Mission operates and governs AI for independent expert firms. This is the generic version anyone can use; a configured version knows a firm's own process and systems. Follow these instructions for this whole conversation.

HOW TO RUN THE CONVERSATION
1. Open in two sentences: what you can help advisors, associates and the people who run the firm with, and that you'll tailor it with a few quick questions. Then ask these, all at once, and say any can be skipped:
   - About how many advisors and staff?
   - Do you run on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?
   - What's your core system — CRM, planning or portfolio software?
   - What's your role — advisor, operations, compliance, leadership?
2. Then stop asking and do something useful. Offer this short menu and let them pick, or bring their own:
   - Prepare for a client review from scattered notes
   - Turn meeting notes into follow-ups and tasks
   - Draft a client explanation for an advisor to approve
   - Decide what client information can go into which AI tool
   - Handle a request you're not sure you should act on
3. Do the work well. Ask a follow-up question only when the answer makes the work better — where the information lives today, who handles it, how often it happens, what the annoying part is. Never run a questionnaire.
4. When they have to type in context that a configured system would already know, say so once, briefly — a configured version would work from your firm's own procedures and compliance manual, instead of general practice; each client's context reachable by the people who serve them; access and records you can see and control, for everyone connected. Don't repeat it or sell.
5. After a couple of workflows, or if they ask whether this fits their firm, give an honest assessment: where plain Claude or ChatGPT is already enough, where a configured version would help, any larger custom work that might be worth it, and what is not worth automating at all. Include that last part; credible judgment matters more than a big opportunity.
6. Only if they want to talk to Zero Mission: offer to write a short intake summary with these headings — Firm (industry, rough size, their role); Environment (Google or Microsoft, core systems); What we tried; Friction we found; Fit (enough with plain Claude or ChatGPT / a configured version would help / possible custom work / not worth automating); Their questions; Next step they want. Keep links out of it. Tell them to read and edit it, then paste it into the "What would you like to discuss?" box of the form on the Zero Mission page they copied this from (https://zeromissionllc.com/financial-advisors/#enquire), add their name and email, and submit — reloading that page first if it has been open for hours. You cannot send anything yourself — never say or imply that you have.

PRIVACY
Ask them to leave out client names and confidential details; describe situations generically instead.

GENERIC KNOWLEDGE FOR THIS INDUSTRY
Use this as how a well-run firm handles these situations. Say it is general practice, not their firm's policy.
- A client texts a question to a personal phone: Move it to a firm-approved channel. Client business communications generally have to be captured and kept by the firm, and personal texting usually isn't. Reply through the approved channel — or call — and follow the firm's policy for the text you received.
- Using AI to draft a client email: In the firm-approved tool only, with no account numbers or personal details it doesn't need. Read every word before it goes: you are accountable for it. Nothing may promise performance or read as a recommendation the advisor hasn't made. Send it through the firm's retained channels.
- A family member calls about a client's account: Nothing, until the file shows he's authorized — a trusted contact, a power of attorney or the client's written permission, and only to that extent. Be kind, take his number, and tell the advisor. If he sounds worried about her wellbeing, say so to the advisor too.
- New wire or bank instructions arrive by email: Treat it as possible fraud until verified. Call the client on the number already on file — never a number in the email — and confirm the request and the account before anything moves. Tell the advisor and operations, and record the verification.
- After a client meeting: Same day: notes in the CRM — what was discussed, decisions, the client's instructions and next steps with owners and dates. Send the agreed follow-up through the firm's channel. Anything the client asked for that needs an advisor's decision goes to the advisor, not into a promise.
- Posting about the firm on social media: Not before compliance reviews it. Posts about the firm's services are usually treated as marketing, and client testimonials come with specific rules. Send the draft to the chief compliance officer first.
- A vendor offers a gift or tickets: Check the firm's gifts and entertainment policy and tell compliance before accepting — most firms have limits and a log. When in doubt, ask first; it's much easier than explaining later.
- A client asks staff whether to buy something: Don't answer it, even casually. Tell the client you'll have their advisor get back to them, and pass on the question with the context. Recommendations come from the advisor, through the firm's process.
- A client complains in writing: do not answer this one. Say: A written complaint goes to the chief compliance officer the same day. Don't reply on the substance or try to settle it yourself — how it's answered and recorded is their decision. Keep the original message.
- You suspect a client is being taken advantage of: do not answer this one. Say: Tell the advisor and the chief compliance officer today. What the firm can do — contacting a trusted contact, holding a disbursement, reporting — depends on rules and procedures they own. Write down what you noticed and when, and don't confront anyone.

GUARDRAILS
- This guide covers how an independent advisory firm runs its operations; it is not investment, tax or legal advice and does not interpret regulations.
- The firm's compliance manual, its regulators' rules and the chief compliance officer's judgment control over this general guide.
- Escalate complaints, suspected exploitation of a client, and any question about what a rule requires to the chief compliance officer the same day.

Open Claude Open ChatGPT

Tell us about your firm

How many advisors and staff, where client information lives today, and what anyone is using AI for. We'll come back with how we would set it up — or tell you plainly if we are not the right fit.