How Christian Douglass Group halved admin time using intelliflo’s AI
Customer testimonial | Christian Douglass Group
Christian Douglass Group is a small advice firm in Manchester. Financial adviser Harry Hartill talks us through how the firm uses intelliflo IQ Engagement Assistant to save time, reduce errors and stop rekeying information.
The firm prides itself on a personal approach to advice, built through referrals and word of mouth. Until recently, the process that followed client meetings was largely manual. Harry, who joined the firm in November 2024, explains, “After a meeting, you’d need to collate your notes into a Word document, then go back through and check them.” Risk questionnaires were also completed by hand, with the admin team manually entering the answers to each of the 18 questions into intelliflo office.
Putting intelliflo IQ to the test
intelliflo IQ Engagement Assistant is the first of a suite of AI tools embedded inside intelliflo office. The Engagement Assistant records and transcribes client meetings and uses that information to update the fact find and produce a meeting report and personalised suitability report. It maps to more than 250 data fields in intelliflo office and updates information without rekeying, with the adviser always in control, approving all changes and additions before they are saved in the client record.
Christian Douglass Group began trialling intelliflo IQ Engagement Assistant in March 2026. They decided to jump in at the deep end, using it for a full day of back-to-back client review meetings for a corporate pension scheme. Each client was asked for permission to record before every meeting and none declined.
Harry outlines the normal process following a day of review meetings like this. “Ordinarily, we’d have numerous fact finds to update and post-review letters to draft. Between two advisers, it took at least two weeks to do all the work.” The team was initially sceptical about how much time using IQ would save, but Harry found they were able to complete all the follow up activity within a week, including careful manual checking to make sure everything was correct. He says, “The output and the end outcomes were the same as they would have been if we’d done it the usual way, but we were able to do the work much more quickly. The whole office was surprised.”
intelliflo IQ is intuitive to use, and Harry was able to implement it without any training, although the intelliflo customer service team are on hand if anyone requires more formal onboarding. Harry was also able to show other advisers at the firm how to use the mobile app for meetings on the road and the web version in the office.
Fitting IQ around how the team works
Now the team uses intelliflo IQ across their client base for both corporate schemes and personal clients. Most clients are receptive to the idea, with roughly nine in ten agreeing straight away. The few who ask questions tend to be concerned about the security of the recording. “Some clients don’t want the meeting to be recorded, and that’s absolutely fine,” he says. “Others are happy for us to use IQ, but ask us to pause it for some parts of the conversation, which is really easy to do.”
The team don’t always use the meeting recording functionality for every meeting. “Sometimes you sit down, have a coffee, chat for five minutes and decide to write your own notes that day.” Even then, the information doesn’t have to be entered by hand. Advisers can upload photos of their handwritten notes, documents and client identification into intelliflo IQ, with the details populated automatically into intelliflo office. intelliflo’s analysis shows an overall extraction accuracy across a mixed evaluation set of advice documents, forms, PDFs, scans and meeting transcripts of 94.1%, one of the best-performing in the industry.
Harry also uses intelliflo IQ for only part of the process sometimes, writing the post-meeting letter himself, then feeding it into IQ to generate the fact find notes. He says it’s as much a way to check his own accuracy as to save time. “It has to be spot on, because I’ve written it myself. If it’s not, I know I’ve gone wrong somewhere.”
Consistency for compliance
The firm’s compliance team has welcomed the change too. Every adviser works slightly differently, so having a consistent record makes it easier to show nothing has been missed.
More time with clients
The main benefit for Harry has been the improved focus on clients. “We pride ourselves on the service we deliver. Some meetings run to three hours, with very little talk of finances but a great deal that matters to the client relationship. When you’re writing notes, you aren’t always really listening, even if you think you are. There’s a difference between listening and listening.” With the conversation recorded and transcribed by the Engagement Assistant, Harry can ensure he stays fully focused on the client throughout the meeting.
“The real win with intelliflo IQ isn’t just speed,” he says. “It’s that I’m walking into client meetings better prepared and more engaged. Less time dealing with admin means more time actually listening to what clients need.”
Harry’s advice to other firms considering IQ Engagement Assistant is straightforward. “Try it for yourself. You’ll know fairly quickly whether it suits the way you and your clients work. Used well, it gives you back the time that matters most, the time you spend with clients.”
intelliflo IQ’s suite of AI powered assistants continues to grow, with the addition of advice, quality, compliance, LOA and pre-meeting preparation assistants planned for 2026. Find out more about how intelliflo IQ could help your firm.