Why Suitable Starts From the Client File, Not the Meeting Recording

Almost every AI tool for advisers starts with the meeting: record it, transcribe it, generate the notes. Suitable starts somewhere less glamorous — the client file. That was a deliberate architectural bet, it made the product materially harder to build, and it's the decision I'd defend hardest.

Here's the reasoning, and what it cost.

The file is what your compliance rests on

When a file gets reviewed — internally, by a compliance consultant, or by the FCA — nobody asks to sit in on the meeting again. They read the file. The fact-find, the risk profile, the documented rationale, the letter that went out. The suitability obligations advisers carry sit in COBS 9.2, and the record-keeping expectations in SYSC 9. I'm deliberately not summarising what those sections say, because paraphrased regulation is how firms drift into being subtly wrong. Read them directly.

The meeting is where advice happens. The file is where it's evidenced.

And a transcript, however accurate, is only a record of what was said in the room. It has no way of knowing whether what was said is true. Clients misremember. If a client tells you their ISA is with a provider it left two years ago, recording-first notes will carry that error forward with complete confidence. Software that has actually read the file can notice the conflict and put it in front of you.

What the bet cost us

Transcription is a commodity. You can buy excellent speech-to-text off the shelf, which is why recording-first products get to an impressive demo in weeks.

Client files are not a commodity. Fact-finds arrive as scans. Provider statements format the same information forty different ways. Half the useful facts live in tables that PDFs mangle. We spent months on extraction alone, and then more months on the part that never looks impressive in a demo: recording where every extracted data point came from.

It was slower to build and less flashy to show, and I felt that trade every week we were behind where a recording-first product would have been. I'd still make the same call, because the flashy version produces notes nobody can stand behind when the questions start.

What it buys you: provenance and a gate

Provenance. Every claim in a draft agenda, meeting note or advice letter traces back to a source — a place in a document, a confirmation you gave, or an edit logged with who made it and when. When someone asks where a risk score came from, the answer is on the record rather than in somebody's memory.

A gate. Nothing Suitable produces reaches a client until an adviser has reviewed and approved it. Drafts are drafts. You stay responsible for the advice; no software changes that, and you should be wary of any vendor implying theirs does.

In practice, before a draft leaves the system:

• Every factual claim traces to a source
• Anything the file can't support is flagged as a gap rather than smoothed over
• An adviser has reviewed and approved the draft
• That approval is itself on the audit log

Recordings still have a place

This isn't an argument against recording meetings, and Suitable generates meeting notes too. The difference is what gets treated as ground truth. Notes are cross-checked against the file, and where the two disagree, the disagreement is raised with you instead of being typeset into a letter.

The client is the authority on their own life, of course, and meetings are where you learn what's changed. But "the client mentioned it in the meeting" only becomes evidence once it's in the file, sourced and confirmed. Building file-first means everything the system drafts is anchored to the same place your regulator will look.

The bet in one line: your compliance lives in the client file, so that's where the software should start.

If "where did this number come from?" is a question you'd like to answer in seconds rather than an afternoon, that's what we built — see Suitable at getsuitable.co.uk and book a demo.