# Athena is now part of your advice team Josh Ratnarajah · 2026-11-03T21:30:00.000Z ![Paradino graphic reading “Athena is now part of your advice team” with the tagline “AI Automation for Financial Advisers”.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/f58ax8th/production/befbfb4223dde2761d7dfb55fdf98ad586a3aab1-1920x1080.png?w=2000&auto=format) **Athena, Paradino's AI agent, can now pick up the next piece of advice work, and do it the way your practice would.** Advice has never been a single task. A review meeting becomes a file note. The file note raises questions about the client's circumstances. The circumstances shape the modelling, the modelling shapes the research, and all of it finds its way into the Statement of Advice. Over the past year, Paradino has made each of those pieces faster. A file note in minutes. An SoA that drafts in the background while the adviser moves on. But the slowest part of advice production was never inside a single document. It sits between them. ## The work between the work Every step in the advice process ends with a handoff. Someone has to notice the file note is done. Someone has to remember the profile needs checking. Someone has to decide the modelling can start, and then find the time to start it. Each of those moments is small. Together they decide how long a client waits for advice. A file can sit untouched for days, not because anyone is slow, but because the next step is waiting for a person to pick it up. On a busy week, that person is usually the adviser. On a busier week, it's nobody. We wrote earlier this year about [the after-hours tax](https://paradino.ai/blog/the-after-hours-tax): the cost of advice builds through handoffs, not drafting. This release goes after the handoffs directly. ## Athena can now take a task Tasks in Paradino can now be given to Athena, our AI agent for financial advisers. Athena works like another member of the team. Assign it the work the way you would a paraplanner. Athena picks it up, does it in the client's Workspace, and hands the result to the person responsible for reviewing it. The change sounds simple. The effect is not. Work no longer waits for someone to have a free hour. A task assigned at 4pm can be ready for review the next morning. A queue that used to need chasing now moves on its own, and the people around it spend their time on the part that needs them: the review. ## Workflows that carry the whole review Tasks become far more powerful when they're connected. A practice can now build a workflow that runs across the advice process. A review meeting, its summary, a check of the client's profile, modelling, product research and a drafted SoA, with each step starting as soon as the one before it is accepted. The AI agent does the preparation. People make the calls. For an annual review, the gap between meeting and advice stops being a series of reminders and becomes a sequence that runs itself. The adviser's attention goes to each decision when it's ready, not to remembering what comes next. Multiply that across a client book and the result is not a faster document. It's a different capacity for the practice. ## Every step still has an owner An AI agent in advice only works if it is accountable. Every piece of work Athena completes lands with a named person. Nothing moves forward until someone has reviewed it and accepted it. If a step needs information Athena doesn't have, it asks, instead of guessing. The practice decides which steps Athena handles and which stay with people. Some will hand over the whole sequence. Others will start with one step and widen from there. Either way, the adviser remains responsible for the advice. Athena makes sure the adviser is never the reason it's waiting. ## Skills: your practice, written down once There's a reason most practices hesitate to hand work to an AI agent. Getting work done is one thing. Getting it done _the way we do it_ is another. Every practice carries knowledge that lives in people's heads: how you run an annual review, which strategies you will and won't recommend, how your documents read, the wording compliance expects to see. It's the reason a new team member takes months to get up to speed, and the reason quality can drift when the practice grows. Skills let a practice write that knowledge down once, and have Athena apply it every time it's relevant. A procedure. An advice policy. A house writing style. Required disclosure wording. Each becomes something Athena brings to the work automatically, whether it's drafting a meeting summary, preparing an SoA or answering a question in the Workspace. The impact is consistency without supervision. A summary written for a new adviser's client reads like one written for the principal's. A policy agreed once is applied across every client, not just the ones its author happens to review. For licensees, the same idea scales across practices. Standards set once can reach every member practice, with each practice choosing how and when it adopts them. ## Where it compounds Tasks and skills are each useful on their own. Together, they change what a practice can take on. Workflows give Athena more of the work. Skills make sure that work is done to your standard. The more of the process Athena carries, the more it matters that it carries it your way, and the more confidently a practice can let it. That's the combination that lets a practice grow without diluting what makes its advice its own. ## What it means for a practice - **Shorter time from meeting to advice.** The steps in between stop waiting for someone to pick them up. - **More clients without more hours.** Preparation runs in the background, so adviser time goes to decisions and conversations. - **Consistent quality as you grow.** The practice's way of working is applied to every file, by every adviser. - **Knowledge that stays.** What your senior people know becomes part of how the practice works, not something that leaves with them. - **Review effort where it counts.** People review work that's ready, instead of assembling it. ## A new member of the team Paradino started by making advice documents faster to produce without sacrificing accuracy. The next step was always the process around them. Athena is now part of your advice team. It takes the next task, carries the work from one step to the next, and does it the way your practice does. Your team keeps every decision. What disappears is the waiting. --- ### FAQ **Does an AI agent finalise advice without an adviser?** No. Every piece of work Athena completes goes to a named person for review, and nothing moves forward until they accept it. **Do we have to automate the whole advice process?** No. A practice chooses which steps Athena handles. Many will start with a single task and expand once they've seen the results. **What kind of practice knowledge can a skill hold?** Skills can capture how your practice does things: procedures, advice policies, writing style and required wording. Athena applies them whenever the work calls for it. **Can licensees share skills with their practices?** Yes. Licensees can make their standards available to member practices, and each practice controls how it adopts them.