Can financial advisors use AI to write content?
Yes. The rules govern what you publish, not what typed it.
A blog post on your firm’s site is judged the same way whether you wrote it, your agency wrote it, or software drafted it. Either way, you are responsible for it. That is the whole answer.
The rulebook is the SEC’s Marketing Rule, which covers how registered investment advisers advertise, and the recordkeeping beside it. It asks what a communication says and who receives it, never who held the pen.
Draft · Third-quarter market commentary
Rates did most of the work this quarter, and most of the arguing. Bonds pay something again for the risk of holding them, which changes the shape of a conservative allocation more than any single equity call did.
None of which is a reason to move. It is a reason to know why you are not moving.
Excellent · nothing to fix
Overall 92 · publishable bar 80
Three things stay true whoever does the typing.
You still own it
The firm answers for what goes out under its name. No vendor and no tool takes that on for you.
You still keep records
A copy of what you published, the dates, and the version someone approved. Taken on the day, not rebuilt later.
Someone still reads it
A person at your firm reads it before it is live. Not optional, so the useful thing is to make it quick and hard to skip.
Say who, by name.
Responsibility does not transfer, which reads as obvious until you try to name the person. The obligation sits with the firm, so in practice with whoever your written procedures say reviews marketing. At a solo shop that is you, wearing the other hat. At a firm with a compliance officer it is the CCO, and a draft that took four minutes does not arrive pre-approved.
What software changes is not who is responsible. It is how easy the step becomes to skip. A draft that looks finished invites a skim, and a skim is not a review.
You have to keep a copy, and the website is not one.
The keeping is what firms get wrong far more often than the writing. You keep a copy of what you put out, and the dates around it. The part that catches people is the clock. It does not start the day you wrote the post. It starts at the end of the fiscal year in which you last put it in front of anyone, so a post sitting on your site is one you are still circulating.
What the record is
- The words exactly as they went live.
- The date they went live.
- Where they appeared.
- Who approved that version.
Four lines. A minute on the day you publish, and not recoverable later.
What firms keep instead
- “It is on the website.” A live page is an editable object. Someone updates the figures next year, and what you needed was how it first read.
- The CMS revision history. It belongs to the platform. It leaves when you switch platforms, when the host prunes revisions, or when a plugin rewrites the page.
- A screenshot. A picture of a rendering. If your disclaimer is injected by the theme, the picture may not contain it.
- The post, but not the approval. On any question about how a piece was drafted, that is the record which answers it.
One copy, taken at publication, filed somewhere that belongs to you. It goes wrong because nobody does it on the day, and a page edited four times since cannot be un-edited.
The third one is the only one software can take work off.
The first two are yours and stay yours. The third is a reading job, which is where Verand comes in and the only place it does. It drafts the post, checks it against the rules your firm is subject to, marks the lines that would be a problem, and hands it to a person at your firm. It cannot publish by itself, and no plan changes that.
Against what you actually do
The sentences about your firm are the only ones nothing outside this building can check.
Every number to a source
And a date. A figure right in March may not be right now.
Read the claims sideways
Cut anything promising an outcome, implying a floor under a loss, or calling a result typical.
Disclaimer on the live page
Confirm it appears as the page will publish, not only in the draft.
Approve, keep, publish
In that order, by name and date, because afterwards it stops happening.
Four ways a draft goes wrong, and where to look.
Numbers that were true once
Limits change in January, brackets change, rates change weekly. A draft states last year’s figure with this year’s confidence, and a stale number reads exactly like a current one.
Performance language that wandered in
Models have read a great deal of fund marketing, and many blogs your rulebook does not reach. So phrases arrive that nobody chose, usually in a post showing no performance at all.
Our approach has delivered consistent returns through every cycle since we opened.
Flagged for you. Nobody typed that sentence on purpose.
Claims about your own firm
How you are compensated, how long you have done this, how many households you serve, which letters follow your name. Software cannot verify any of it and states it anyway, because it is the sort of sentence that belongs there.
A voice that is nobody’s
Left alone, the middle register wins. Nothing in it is wrong, and after a year you have a blog that could belong to any firm in your city. Not a compliance problem, which is why it survives review.
The first three are why a person reads the draft. The fourth is why it is worth telling the software what your firm thinks, once, in your words.
One limit, said plainly.
This page is about advisers registered with, or required to register with, the SEC. State-registered advisers and exempt reporting advisers sit outside that rulebook; most states have written something that rhymes with it rather than a copy. If you are a registered representative at a broker-dealer, you answer to a different rulebook again, and Verand does not check content against that one.
The four that come up every time.
Do I have to say a post was drafted with AI?
The rulebook asks whether what you published is accurate and not misleading. It does not ask for a byline naming the software. Plenty of firms disclose anyway, preferring a client hear it from them. Treat it as a policy decision for your firm and your counsel.
Does my CCO or compliance consultant still review it?
Yes, on exactly the terms your written procedures already set. Software drafting the first version does not amend them. What changes is the queue: the reviewer gets a draft with the questionable lines marked and the sources attached.
What exactly do I keep, and for how long?
A copy of the advertisement as it went out, plus the dates. Five years, the first two reachable from your own office, running from the end of the fiscal year in which you last circulated it. Keep the approval beside the copy.
Could Verand publish for me while I am away?
No, and no plan, setting or connector changes it. Every draft stops at a person at your firm. The connector cannot publish, cannot clear a compliance block and cannot delete content. If nobody reads it, it does not go live.
Two questions this page leaves to their own pages.
AI content for financial advisors, RIAs and CFPs
What a draft is checked against before anyone can publish it.
/financial-advisors The testIs a firm blog post an advertisement?
The test, run against the pages a real firm site already has.
/financial-advisors/what-counts-as-advertising The checklistWhat your disclaimer has to say
What the block has to contain, and why there is only ever one of them.
/financial-advisors/disclaimer-requirementsSources: the SEC’s Marketing Rule for investment advisers, and the recordkeeping rule for advertisements beside it. AI-researched and operator-reviewed. Your counsel confirms how it applies to your firm. Not legal advice. 17 CFR 275.206(4)-1 · Investment Adviser Marketing, 86 FR 13024 · 17 CFR 275.204-2(a)(11), (e)(3)(i)
The answer is yes. The reading is still yours.
Seven days, every feature unlocked, one click to cancel. Your first article is drafted during setup, and it stops where this page says it should.
Every draft stops at a person at your firm. There is no setting that changes it.