Bank of America and Merrill's wealth management businesses announced an artificial intelligence program Thursday to help advisors optimize client meetings, including preparation and follow-up, that they said could save up to four hours per meeting.
AI-Powered Meeting Journey, part of Merrill parent BofA's broader AI deployment, will help provide meeting prep materials, summaries and next steps, the company said. The integrated technology has been deployed in Merrill Wealth Management and Bank of America Private Bank.
"AI-Powered Meeting Journey represents a meaningful advancement in how the wealth management industry uses AI," said Patricio Diaz, Merrill's chief operating officer. "This latest solution empowers advisors to shift capacity toward activities that drive business growth and strengthen how we serve clients."
The technology searches and consolidates client relationship insights and recent activity into ready‑to‑use prep materials, to enable more personalized and productive client conversations, according to BofA. With client consent, it also takes notes during virtual meetings and produces a meeting summary, including decisions and tasks for next steps.
"Early users of the meeting prep and meeting summarization capabilities are already seeing significant improvements in their workflows," said Shimna Sameer, who heads products, solutions and platforms at Bank of America Private Bank. "This is time our teams are reinvesting into client engagement, with even more proactive guidance and meaningful support."
BofA said it invests $13.5 billion annually into technology, including $4 billion dedicated to new initiatives, including AI.
Day-to-day advisor workflow is changing significantly at Merrill and BofA, Inez Louzonis, Merrill's platforms and capabilities head, told reporters this week.
Citing the industry's expected advisor shortage and the great wealth transfer, she said, "we know we have rising client expectations. All this means is that we need to help our advisors; we need to help them scale their business. We need to deliver more effectively for our clients than ever before.
"And we also need to help them capture that wealth transfer. And we think that AI is a key enabler of that. It'll help our advisors capture the assets, serve our clients seamlessly, and ultimately spend more time doing the work that truly adds value," Louzonis said.
The AI removes administrative work and offers better data and insight, she noted.
"So maybe surfacing a note from the CRM from five years ago that they forgot about," Louzonis said. "How can they get access to that much simpler and easier and be able to act on that?"
Paula Hanson, who leads platforms for the private bank, explained that the technology works in the client relationship management platform, which offers advisors a suggested daily to-do list, based on information such as upcoming meetings and client milestones. It provides templates to help advisors prepare for different types of meetings and produces a client overview, recent meeting notes, and open opportunities and tasks.
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