This AI Tool Coaches Advisors on the Human Side of Advice

"Focal AI takes action in [advisors'] systems and tools," John Connell, co-founder and CEO of Focal, tells ThinkAdvisor in an interview. "[After a meeting] it shows them how they can be more empathetic with their clients to boost trust by automatically making sure the advisors are tuning in to emotional cues or decision points."

Focal agentic AI executes tasks and tells advisors how they performed in multiple categories, including active listening and decision ownership.

Connell shares that he was inspired, in part, to form Focal after shadowing a Merrill Lynch advisor while in college.

"I learned about the massive pain points advisors had about admin work before, during and after client meetings," he says.

In the interview with Connell, who started out at Microsoft and later spent time in venture capital, he notes that Focal recently integrated technology from Shaping Wealth. That helps to align behavioral coaching with client meetings to save time and increase revenue.

Here are highlights of our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: What's the difference between generative AI and your agentic AI meeting assistant?

JOHN CONNELL: With generative AI, you type into the box, and it gives you an answer. Focal AI embeds research-generated AI agents into the advisor's workflow. We're generating everything from a client-advisor meeting agenda to the summary output of the conversation to the notes, tasks and emails after the conversation.

And we're able to help firms pipe data into their CRM and to deliver on performance coaching.

THINKADVISOR: What are the chief benefits of those advantages to an advisor?

CONNELL: Our personalized feedback helps the advisor ask better questions, prospect better and be better at converting AUM — all ultimately deepening the client experience.

THINKADVISOR: Please elaborate on how Focal AI helps once the meeting is over.

CONNELL: It identifies tasks and delivers performance coaching so the advisor knows what went well, what could have gone better and how they can do the most effective job of converting AUM or when they prospect the next time around.

Technically, this is called intelligent robotic process automation: We're pulling out facts, like how much salary the client earns. We're mapping that to the tools advisors use to then autonomously input that data into the right fields within those tools.

THINKADVISOR: How does your technology help during the advisor-client conversation?

CONNELL: Client conversations aren't just about the finances. They're about: Did the advisor acknowledge the client's anxiety before hopping to a solution? Did they ask the right follow-up questions at the right moments? Did they pick up on opportunities for converting more AUM? Did they let the client arrive at a decision on their own terms — or did they push too hard?

With our coaching, we're automatically delivering that personalized feedback, including whether the advisor practiced active listening before presenting a recommendation, asked clarifying questions — or made assumptions — whether they supported the client in owning the decision rather than the client being told what to do.

Focal AI generates the meeting preparation upfront. And advisors don't have to take notes because they're offloading that work to AI.

THINKADVISOR: So does your technology actually tell the advisor what to do?

CONNELL: It doesn't tell them; it proposes and gives suggestions based upon what the advisor said. For instance, if the advisor says to the client, "Tell me a bit about yourself and what brings you in today," the feedback that Focal AI will give is that there was no explicit purpose statement or agenda for the meeting.

A suggestion might be that the advisor may want to start with a brief overview of what the meeting is going to be covering.

THINKADVISOR: Can advisors make more money by using Focal AI?

CONNELL: Absolutely. We're seeing advisors save 15 hours a week, which is converting to 30% more client capacity. That translates into more AUM, which means more revenue.

THINKADVISOR: What else of importance does Focal AI provide?

CONNELL: The feedback includes how you can be more empathetic with clients by making sure you're tuning in to emotional cues or decision points to effectively boost trust or encourage fuller disclosure within a conversation in the questioning and follow-up piece.

This is about asking more clarifying questions and cutting to the chase. It's about how clear you are when you open and close the meeting.

THINKADVISOR: How can Focal AI help with empathy since it can't sense that the advisor isn't being empathic?

CONNELL: We're working with Shaping Wealth, which has research reports and videos of what's working and what isn't. We're using the findings to power personalized feedback for specific scenarios that advisors face.

So they're getting direct feedback on exactly what they did or said and how they could consider reframing that conversation or improve it.

THINKADVISOR: How else does Focal AI use behavioral coaching in client conversations?

CONNELL: Once a conversation wraps up, the advisor is able to see the summary, tasks, sentiment analysis and coaching, and how well they're performing in the categories of active listening, questions-and-follow up, structured hosting and decision ownership.

The advisor can see specific examples of what they did well and what needs to be improved.

So we give you critical feedback.

THINKADVISOR: How does AI have the judgment to be a critic?

CONNELL: When advisors have a conversation around retirement or estate planning, for example, the technology finds what's good for those types of conversations. It can then share personalized feedback on what they could have done better in that moment.

So AI will evaluate based on the context of what science-based research has shown as successful in order to have more empathetic, deeper conversations.

THINKADVISOR: How far does Focal AI go with its constructive criticism?

CONNELL: What it won't do is tell you that you did something bad. It will suggest alternative ways of framing or expressing something or really hitting certain points.

It also picks up on missed opportunities.

Because Focal AI has the advisor's past conversations and CRM history, it's able to aggregate all that information and ensure that it's ingested and shared with the advisor for summaries, tasks and on the coaching side.

THINKADVISOR: Is agentic AI a step toward replacing financial advisors?

CONNELL: The fear of AI replacing advisors in wealth management is misplaced. The relationship between a person and their financial advisor is deeply human.

Our purpose is to empower that relationship. People want to talk to someone who understands them.