As we move into Q1 of 2026, the focus for most advisers begins to shift almost automatically towards tax-year end. And as we get closer, the pressure builds from top to bottom across advice firms - advisers, paraplanners, and admin teams alike. That pressure doesn’t really let up until we reach the 6th of April.
Client demand spikes. Meetings compress. Follow-ups multiply. Documentation expectations increase at exactly the moment capacity is most stretched. For many firms, the priority becomes simply getting through it.
However, done correctly, this pressure also creates one of the biggest opportunities in the advice calendar.
That’s precisely why now is one of the best moments to think seriously about how AI can support your business. Not necessarily a sweeping transformation, but as a practical way to reduce friction, protect advice quality, and give back capacity when it matters most.
Tax-year end presents a paradox between the opportunities and the challenges.
On one hand, it’s when advisers can do some of their best work.
Ultimately, because the value of the advice is so visible, tax-year-end planning often helps cement long-term relationships, driving retention, referrals, and generate new business.
On the other hand, it’s also when delivery becomes hardest:
Layered on top of this is a clear shift in expectations around how advice is delivered and evidenced.
Consumer Duty hasn’t changed what advisers do, but it has raised the bar for clarity, personalisation, and demonstrating suitability. It’s fair to say that the expectation from the regulator will no doubt continue to increase over time.
Fundamentally, Advisers don’t struggle with knowing what to do at tax-year end. They struggle with having the time and operational capacity to do it well, for enough clients, without burning out teams or cutting corners.
That’s the real problem AI can help address.
So where does this pressure actually come from?
To help contextualise how AI can support your business, I’ve outlined a simple five-step, tax-year-end-specific advice workflow below.
None of these steps are inherently problematic, but they do take time. Pressure builds when all five are running in parallel across dozens of clients during a busy period.
The result isn’t poor intent or poor judgement - it’s friction, duplication, lost capacity, and a greater risk of advice being delivered in a way that’s rushed, inconsistent, or harder to evidence.
Used well, AI supports the advice process at each stage of a typical tax-year-end workflow. Marloo has been built specifically around that reality, supporting advisers across every step without disrupting professional judgement.
Working within a single client record, Ask Marloo can help surface:
It’s about making it easier to surface relevant client context from existing information, so outreach and conversations are more focused and better prepared.
Marloo can support the production of high-quality, structured meeting notes in a fraction of the time, tailored to the type of tax planning discussed.
Our meeting templates can be shaped around specific tax-year-end themes - allowances, contributions, thresholds, planning options and written in a format that a paraplanner or administrator can pick up and act on immediately.
Marloo is working from the full conversation, word for word. In contrast, advisers are often writing notes later, based on their post-meeting understanding of what was discussed. When that happens, nuance can be lost.
That’s where friction creeps in, questions need to be asked and time is lost going back and forth.
With our notes, the full context of the meeting is captured upfront. And if a paraplanner or admin does need clarity, they don’t need to interrupt the adviser, they can simply query the meeting directly using Ask Marloo, asking questions about what was discussed and why.
The result is faster handover, less rework, and smoother progression from meeting to advice.
Once information has been captured, Marloo can support the creation of:
Marloo produces a first draft that reflects how you already deliver advice. It’s shaped to match your structure, tone, and preferences, based on your existing approach - not a generic, one-size-fits-all template.
Generic templates can strip advice of its context and nuance. Over time, that risks devaluing advice by making it formulaic, even when the underlying recommendations are sound. By reflecting your own advice style, Marloo helps ensure documentation remains personal, relevant, and aligned with how you actually work with clients.
Once advice has been documented, the focus shifts to follow-up and implementation making sure actions are completed and nothing is missed during a busy period.
Marloo is being designed to generate and manage tasks directly from the advice process itself. That means:
The intention is to remove the need for parallel task systems and manual tracking, replacing them with a single, advice-led source of truth.
At tax-year end, this matters. When volumes increase, small follow-ups are easy to lose sight of. By keeping tasks anchored to the underlying advice and client context, the aim is to ensure advice moves cleanly from conversation through to implementation.
The real benefit of using AI this way isn’t just about getting through the next few weeks.
Over time, that compounds. Each tax year builds on the last, rather than starting from scratch under pressure. Advice becomes clearer, more consistent, and easier to deliver - even when demand spikes.
We are not just looking to help ease the pressure for you this tax year, but setting you up to deliver better outcomes, year after year.
