How Financial Advisors Can Use Hazel AI for Financial Planning
AI financial planning is not most valuable because it can produce a plan faster. Its larger value may be that it changes where a financial advisor spends time.
Instead of gathering the same facts repeatedly, moving information between systems, and building every part of a plan manually, an advisor can spend more time verifying the data, challenging the assumptions, and helping the client make decisions.
That was the central idea in my recent Resilient Advisor Podcast conversation with Fernando San Martin, who helped build the Financial Planning Agent at Hazel. Hazel is an AI platform offered through Altruist and built specifically for wealth management firms.
In the episode, Fernando walks through the product from initial setup to the creation of a financial plan. We discuss CRM preparation, email and calendar connections, intelligent client profiles, source verification, firm level planning assumptions, client personas, and a sensible way to introduce the software without immediately replacing the planning system an advisor already trusts.
My conclusion is straightforward: the best way to begin is with a controlled parallel test, not an immediate technology conversion.
What Does the Hazel Financial Planning Agent Do?
The Hazel Financial Planning Agent combines information from client meetings, CRM records, notes, emails, and uploaded financial documents to help an advisor create a customized financial plan. The plan can address retirement, cash flow, investments, taxes, estate planning, insurance, and risk.
Hazel uses AI to collect, organize, and interpret client information. According to Altruist’s product announcement, financial calculations are handled by dedicated calculation programs rather than generated by the language model.
That distinction matters. An advisor should not treat a fluent AI response as proof that the underlying data or calculation is correct. The advisor still needs to know where each important fact came from, which assumptions were used, and whether the recommendation fits the client.
The real workflow change is not the removal of the advisor. It is the movement of the advisor from data entry toward supervision, verification, and judgment.
Why Your Data Foundation Matters More Than Your First Prompt
AI is only as useful as the context it receives. For an advisory firm, that context is spread across the CRM, email, calendar, meeting notes, tasks, financial documents, and custodial records.
Fernando demonstrated how Hazel can assemble those sources into an intelligent client profile. Current Hazel integration documentation describes connections with systems that include Outlook, Gmail, Wealthbox, Redtail, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Altruist, with different sync rules for each integration.
The practical implication is easy to miss: connecting an AI platform to disorganized data does not solve the underlying problem. It can make the problem move faster.
Before connecting Hazel, review the structure of the CRM. Confirm that active clients and prospects are classified correctly. Clean up duplicate records. Review household relationships. Make sure tasks and notes sit with the correct people and households.
This may be the most important implementation step in the entire process.
Should Advisors Organize Their CRM Around Households or Individuals?
One of the most useful parts of the episode was our discussion of household records versus individual contact records.
I have traditionally used Wealthbox primarily at the individual contact level. During the demonstration, it became clear that a household centered structure can give an AI planning system a broader view of the family. Goals, assets, income, tasks, documents, meetings, and family relationships become easier to interpret together.
Fernando explained that Hazel can support both approaches. My takeaway is not that every firm must rebuild its CRM around households. It is that every firm should make the choice deliberately.
Ask three questions before connecting an AI planning tool:
Does each client family have a clearly defined household record?
Are the right individuals connected to that household?
Are notes, tasks, meetings, and documents associated with the record the firm expects the AI system to use?
If the answers are unclear, fix the CRM before expecting reliable automation.
What Is an Intelligent Client Profile?
Hazel’s intelligent client profile is a continuously updated collection of information about a client or household. It can include goals, financial accounts, income, expenses, important dates, family relationships, meetings, tasks, documents, and other relevant context.
The most important feature may be provenance. When Hazel identifies a fact, the advisor can review the source behind it, such as a meeting transcript, email, uploaded document, or CRM record. The advisor can then verify, edit, or reject the information.
That verification step should remain central to the firm’s process. AI can identify a possible fact. The advisor is responsible for deciding whether it is complete, current, and appropriate to use.
This leads to a useful operating rule for advisory firms:
Do not measure an AI planning tool only by how quickly it creates an answer. Measure it by how efficiently an advisor can inspect the sources, identify missing information, correct errors, and approve the final work.
How Hazel Customizes a Financial Plan
Fernando showed how a firm can configure planning assumptions, plan design, and client personas before producing a plan.
A client persona allows the firm to define what matters for a particular type of client. A pre retiree may need a stronger focus on retirement income, health care, and Social Security. A high income executive may need more attention on equity compensation, concentration risk, and taxes. A business owner may need planning around liquidity, succession, and a future sale.
The firm can also determine which sections appear, how information is presented, and what assumptions apply. Hazel’s current financial planning documentation includes examples for starting a plan, changing personas, adding planning levers, requesting visuals, testing scenarios, tightening the presentation, and checking the source of a figure.
This creates an important opportunity for firm leaders. AI planning can help make the firm’s best thinking repeatable across advisors, but only if the firm first defines that thinking.
Technology cannot standardize a planning philosophy that has never been documented.
My Recommended Two Stage Test for Hazel
I would not begin by moving every client into a new planning workflow. I would start with one appropriate household and run two stages.
Stage 1: Use Hazel to Review an Existing Plan
Create the plan in the software the firm already uses. Export the full plan as a PDF and upload it to Hazel. Ask Hazel to analyze the existing work before asking it to create anything new.
A useful starting prompt is:
Review this financial plan and produce a SWOT analysis covering its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then identify the three most important risks I should discuss with the client in our next meeting. For every material conclusion, identify the source information used and list any missing data that could change the analysis.
This gives the advisor an immediate use case without changing the firm’s planning process. It also provides a way to judge whether Hazel identifies issues that are useful, accurate, and relevant.
Stage 2: Build the Hazel Plan in Parallel
After the client profile has been reviewed, create a plan in Hazel for the same household. Compare it with the existing plan.
Do not ask only which plan looks better. Compare the two systems on the questions that matter:
Were the important client facts captured correctly?
Can the advisor trace every material figure to its source?
Which assumptions differ between the plans?
Did either system identify a risk or opportunity the other missed?
Which presentation produces a better client conversation?
How much professional review was required before the work was ready for a client?
That parallel test will tell the firm more than a polished demonstration ever could.
A Five Step Hazel Implementation Plan for Advisors
1. Clean the CRM
Resolve duplicate contacts, review household relationships, confirm client classifications, and make sure notes and tasks are attached to the intended records.
2. Connect the Core Systems
Connect the CRM, email, and calendar. Review the current integration rules in Hazel’s documentation because the history, sync timing, and eligibility rules vary by system.
3. Select One Representative Household
Choose a household that is complex enough to test the system but familiar enough that the advisor can quickly recognize missing or incorrect information.
4. Verify the Client Profile
Inspect the source of important facts. Confirm account balances, income, goals, family relationships, planning dates, and outstanding tasks. Record any information Hazel could not find.
5. Run the Parallel Planning Test
Use the existing plan and the Hazel plan together. Compare accuracy, assumptions, insight, presentation, workflow, and review time before deciding what should change across the firm.
What Should Remain the Advisor’s Responsibility?
An AI planning system can reduce preparation work. It does not remove the advisor’s responsibility for the advice process.
The advisor should still determine whether the client data is complete, whether the assumptions are reasonable, whether the analysis reflects the client’s actual priorities, and whether the recommended action is appropriate. The advisor also needs to consider the firm’s compliance requirements, recordkeeping policies, cybersecurity standards, and approved use of client information.
Speed is valuable only when the work remains reviewable.
The best implementation standard is not, “How quickly did the software produce a plan?” It is, “How confidently can the advisor explain the plan, show where the information came from, and help the client make a better decision?”
The Larger Opportunity for Financial Advisors
The most interesting part of Hazel is not a single screen or feature. It is the possibility of connecting the parts of an advisor’s work that have traditionally lived in separate systems.
Meeting notes can inform the client profile. The client profile can inform the financial plan. The plan can produce decisions. Those decisions can become tasks and follow up work. New meetings and documents can update the context for the next planning conversation.
That is a more useful vision for advisor AI than simply producing faster text.
The firms that benefit most will not be the firms that automate everything first. They will be the firms that define their process, clean their data, establish review standards, and then apply automation where it improves the client experience.
Watch or listen to the full conversation above to see Fernando’s demonstration and hear our discussion of the implementation details. You can learn more about Hazel and Altruist.
You can also find previous episodes of the Resilient Advisor Podcast at ResilientAdvisor.com, with conversations focused on the business, technology, leadership, and future of financial advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Hazel Financial Planning Agent?
The Hazel Financial Planning Agent is an AI enabled planning tool for financial advisors. It uses information from connected systems and uploaded documents to help build a financial plan that an advisor can review, customize, and present. Hazel provides a current product overview here.
Does Hazel replace an advisor’s existing financial planning software?
It can be tested beside an existing planning system before any replacement decision is made. A parallel test allows the firm to compare data accuracy, assumptions, calculations, analysis, presentation, and professional review requirements.
What should an advisor do before connecting Hazel?
Clean the CRM, confirm household and contact relationships, review record classifications, and make sure tasks and notes are attached to the correct records. Then review the current rules for each connected system in Hazel’s integration documentation.
Why are intelligent client profiles important?
They bring information from meetings, CRM records, emails, notes, tasks, and documents into a more complete view of the client. The value depends on the advisor’s ability to verify sources, correct errors, and identify missing information.
What role should the advisor play when using AI financial planning software?
The advisor should remain responsible for data validation, assumptions, professional judgment, client communication, and the final advice process. AI can support the work, but it should not remove accountable human review.
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