The Financial Advisor's Weekly AI Cheat Sheet — Week of April 19, 2026
By Sam Farrington, CFP®
Creator of Amplify for Advisors
OpenAI is building financial planning into ChatGPT. Perplexity is reading your clients' bank statements. BofA put AI in 18,000 advisors' hands. And estate planning AI just raised $65 million.
At this point, the weeks without major AI news for advisors are the ones worth writing about.
Let's get into it.
OpenAI Keeps Hiring People Who Know How to Build Financial Planning Apps. That's Not an Accident.
OpenAI acquired Hiro, a personal finance AI startup founded by Ethan Bloch, who previously built Digit (the automated savings app Oportun bought for $211 million in 2021). The Hiro app shuts down April 20. The entire team joins OpenAI. That's not a product launch. That's a talent acquisition. This is the company's second personal finance hire in six months. OpenAI isn't adding a financial planning feature. It's hiring the people who know how to build one, inside a product hundreds of millions of people are already using daily.
Why you should care: The client who walks in next year has already asked ChatGPT about their retirement. That's a more informed, more engaged client. The behavioral work AI genuinely cannot do is still yours: staying in their corner when things get hard, talking them out of bad decisions, keeping a plan intact when short-term noise makes it feel urgent to act. That's what the more informed client is actually paying for.
Perplexity Connected to Your Clients' Bank Accounts. For Free.
Perplexity expanded its Plaid integration this week, letting any user link checking, savings, credit cards, and loans for real-time AI analysis of their complete financial picture. Their AI can track spending by category, calculate net worth across all accounts, model debt payoffs, and answer questions using actual account data. No subscription required for the core features. This builds on Portfolio, their March launch that connected brokerage accounts. According to eMarketer, 77% of Gen Z and 72% of millennials are already using AI for financial decisions. File this under "things your clients are doing before they show up to your next meeting."
Why you should care: Two major AI platforms built personal finance tools this week, and the clients using them will walk into your office better informed than ever. Better informed clients are easier to advise, not harder.
BofA's CFO Name-Dropped an AI Tool on a Record Earnings Call. 18,000 Advisors Already Have It.
Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank completed the full rollout of AI-Powered Meeting Journey to their entire advisor workforce this week. The tool handles meeting prep by pulling together client insights before the call, AI note-taking during virtual meetings with client consent, and automated follow-up task generation. BofA spends roughly $4 billion a year on new AI initiatives. CFO Alastair Borthwick named Meeting Journey on a Q1 2026 earnings call where the bank reported $8.6 billion in net income. When the CFO brings up a specific product on a record-quarter earnings call, that's a different kind of product review.
Why you should care: Your clients aren't comparing your tech stack to Merrill's, but faster prep, better notes, and tighter follow-up frees time for the work they actually hire you for. That's the version of this worth paying attention to.
AI Estate Planning Just Got $65M and Access to 50,000 Advisors. That's Not a Pilot Program.
Wealth.com closed a $65 million Series B this week, backed by Schwab, Google Ventures, and Citi Ventures, with Dynasty Financial Partners joining as a new investor. Their AI engine, Ester Intelligence, processed over 100,000 estate documents in 2025 and delivered 664% year-over-year growth in AI-powered workflows. Not a typo. The company now has approval from the three largest broker-dealers in the U.S., putting Ester in front of more than 50,000 advisors. The platform reads estate documents, tax returns, and balance sheets as an integrated system.
Why you should care: Estate and tax planning complexity is where advisors earn their fees, and tools like Ester handle the analysis side faster. That frees you for the judgment calls and the conversations clients need most.
ONE THING TO TRY THIS WEEK
Open Perplexity and connect a financial account through Plaid. It takes under three minutes. See what questions it can answer about your own finances, and what it can't. That's the same experience your clients are having before they meet with you.
Sam Farrington, CFP®
Want the prompts and frameworks that turn this news into action for your practice? That's what Amplify for Advisors is for. New frameworks every Tuesday and Friday.
Sam Farrington, CFP® · Creator of Amplify for Advisors
Explore more at amplifyforadvisors.ai
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