Aveni Template Library: Can You Customise It to Your Firm's Process?

TL;DR: Aveni Assist does not provide a fixed template library. Firms upload their own Word-based documents and configure data field mappings before the platform generates output. The preparation phase takes several weeks, with full production readiness taking weeks to months depending on data readiness, integration complexity, and governance requirements. Aveni's approach suits firms that want to retain their existing document formats and have compliance, operations, and IT resource to complete the configuration. Emma from AdvisoryAI generates suitability reports, annual review reports, and LOA summaries from the firm's existing templates, with a dedicated team of ex-paraplanners and advisers completing setup to your exact structure and formatting in 2 weeks. Bluecoat Wealth Management cut report time by 80% with Emma. Emma starts at £299 per user monthly on a monthly rolling agreement, with a 30-day money-back guarantee, 10% discount on annual plans, and a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

The biggest hurdle in adopting AI for your advice firm is not the technology itself. It is getting the output to look exactly like your existing client files, because those files are already compliance-approved, formatted to your firm's Centralised Investment Proposition (CIP), and understood by every adviser and paraplanner on your team.

This article examines how Aveni Assist handles that challenge: what templates it provides, how customisation works, what the configuration process requires, and where the approach suits a firm's needs and where it does not.

What Templates Does Aveni Assist Include?

Aveni Assist is not a fixed template library. The platform works with Word-based documents that firms upload themselves, rather than providing a pre-built bank of formats you select from a menu.

File note formats all follow the same model: the firm's own document structure is uploaded, data fields are mapped, and Aveni generates content that reflects that structure. The quality and completeness of the uploaded template determine the consistency of the output.

Meeting notes and annual review formats follow the same Word-based upload model. The resulting document format reflects whatever template the firm uploads, so specific section ordering, action-item layouts, tone conventions, and annual review structures must be built into the uploaded template before Aveni can reproduce them consistently. Compliance managers can centrally update template content and push changes firm-wide without developer involvement, while maintaining full version history throughout.

FCA Compliance Check Templates

Aveni's compliance features are embedded within its document generation workflow, applying red, amber, and green assessments and flagging potential issues before QA review. Through Aveni Detect, these checks extend beyond documents generated inside Aveni Assist to assess external documents and calls, automatically covering 100% of calls and documents without manual sampling.

How to Customise Aveni Templates

The premise of Aveni Assist's template approach is sound: firms keep their own Word formats rather than adopting a vendor-dictated layout. Making those templates work reliably inside the platform requires deliberate configuration work.

The Four-Step Configuration Process

The customisation workflow involves four steps:

1. Upload your Word template: Import your firm's existing document structure into Aveni.

2. Configure data field mapping: Set how back-office and meeting data populate each template section.

3. Test against real client scenarios: Run the template through actual cases to surface formatting gaps.

4. Publish for firm-wide use: Deploy the approved template to all advisers once testing is complete.

Role-based permissions allow compliance managers to lock mandatory wording, including Consumer Duty disclosures and fee statements, so advisers cannot inadvertently edit boilerplate that must remain consistent.

Tailoring to UK Compliance Rules and Your CIP

Mapping your firm's CIP into the configuration is where implementation effort concentrates. The CIP defines how your firm categorises risk, selects investment solutions, and presents recommendations, and every suitability report references it. Configuring Aveni to pull the right CIP-aligned data fields and handle exceptions (such as clients whose recommended solution sits outside the standard CIP range) requires compliance and operations involvement, not just an afternoon of admin.

How Long Does Aveni's Configuration Take?

First-Time Template Configuration Cost

Aveni's implementation preparation covers template review, system configuration, and integration setup with compliance, operations, and IT teams, taking several weeks before the platform produces live output. Full production readiness, accounting for setup, integration, template configuration, and adviser training, takes weeks to months depending on data readiness and governance complexity.

Which Roles Are Involved in Configuration?

Aveni's implementation involves compliance, operations, and IT. That is the correct combination for deploying a new platform across multiple advisers, but it means the configuration project requires senior resources from teams already operating at capacity. An Operations Director overseeing the project will need to allocate meaningful time from all three functions before the first live report comes out of the system.

Testing with Real Client Scenarios

Before going live, firms should test Aveni's configured templates against a representative range of real cases:

• Straightforward annual reviews with standard CIP recommendations

• Complex retirement planning cases with drawdown modelling

• Clients outside the standard CIP requiring bespoke solutions

• Cases with vulnerability flags requiring additional documentation

Each scenario can surface mapping gaps or output formatting issues that need resolution before publishing the template to the full adviser team, and that testing time adds to the overall pre-production duration.

Does Aveni's Template Output Meet FCA Requirements?

Evidencing Consumer Duty Outcomes

The FCA's Consumer Duty requires firms to evidence outcomes across four areas:

• Products and Services: Demonstrating the product meets client needs

• Price and Value: Showing fair value for the service provided

• Consumer Understanding: Ensuring clients understand what they are buying

• Consumer Support: Providing appropriate support throughout the relationship

A suitability report needs to address all four, and the document structure must support that evidencing clearly.

Aveni's FinLLM-trained generation structures content around these outcomes and highlights gaps requiring adviser attention before the document moves through the approval workflow.

COBS Standards and Audit Trail Requirements

Aveni follows COBS 9.4 requirements for suitability report generation as part of its standard workflow. The platform maintains full version history and approval workflows covering adviser, paraplanner, and compliance sign-off stages.

Updating Aveni Templates After Go-Live

A firm's advice process is not fixed. CIP changes, Consumer Duty updates, and firm acquisitions all require documentation templates to be updated, and the platform you choose needs to make those updates practical.

Updating Templates and Version Control

Aveni allows compliance managers to update templates centrally and push changes firm-wide without developer involvement, which is a genuine operational advantage for networks and consolidators managing multiple adviser teams. The role-based permissions model means mandatory wording, such as Consumer Duty disclosures, can be updated once and applied everywhere, reducing the risk of different advisers operating from different template versions. Version control and approval workflow cover the full document lifecycle, with history retained throughout.

How Aveni Integrates with Your Back Office

Intelliflo and Iress Xplan Integration

Aveni Assist connects with Intelliflo and Iress Xplan, pulling client data directly into the document generation workflow. Back-office fact-find fields populate template sections automatically, and the system flags missing data rather than leaving advisers to spot gaps after the fact.

Mapping Template Fields to Back Office

Once configured correctly, data flows automatically into reports, reducing manual input and minimising reconciliation errors.

Manual Updates for Unsupported Back-Office Systems

Aveni confirms integrations with Intelliflo, Iress Xplan, and other platforms. Firms running back-office systems outside those confirmed integrations will need to understand the fallback process, because unsupported systems typically require manual data upload, reintroducing exactly the kind of re-entry overhead that makes AI documentation tools valuable in the first place.

When Aveni's Template Approach Works Well

Aveni's customisation approach is well-suited to specific firm profiles. Firms with a clearly defined CIP and established suitability report structure benefit most, because the Word-based upload model lets them retain their existing format without adopting a vendor-dictated layout. Once live, the platform enforces consistency across all advisers by distributing configured templates centrally, locking compliance sections, and maintaining version history across all document updates. For networks and consolidators managing multiple adviser teams, Aveni's central template governance is a genuine operational advantage: compliance managers can update mandatory wording once and apply it firm-wide without developer involvement. Firms with dedicated compliance, operations, and IT resources to run the implementation project are best positioned to reach production readiness efficiently. Industry research suggests firms can save substantial time per suitability report across a large adviser team once configuration is complete.

When Aveni's Template Approach Doesn't Fit

Aveni's model has trade-offs that matter for some firm profiles. Reaching the first live production report requires a preparation phase of several weeks and a full implementation timeline that can extend to months, with compliance, operations, and IT involvement throughout. For firms already operating at capacity, that resource commitment delays the point at which the platform begins reducing documentation time. Smaller practices where the adviser also holds compliance responsibility will find the configuration overhead adds administrative weight without the governance benefit that makes central template control valuable. Firms running back-office systems outside Aveni's confirmed integrations will need a manual data-upload fallback, reintroducing re-entry overhead. The platform's compliance checking is embedded in its document generation workflow rather than operating as a standalone tool, which means firms that want to run compliance checks on documents produced outside Aveni will need a separate solution.

How AdvisoryAI Compares

If Aveni's implementation timeline or configuration requirements do not align with your firm's current capacity, Emma from AdvisoryAI can take a different approach.

Market Position

AdvisoryAI was ranked the number one most-viewed AI system among UK advisers in the AI-only category by AdviserSoftware.com for H1 2025, reflecting adoption by practitioners evaluating tools against real workflows. Aveni is ranked 4th on FT Adviser. Our model was trained on thousands of sample reports by ex-advisers and paraplanners, our CTO holds an MIT Master's in AI/ML, and we serve the majority of the UK consolidation market and top-five IFAs, with backing from Rupert Curtis of Curtis Banks Group.

Template Approach for IFAs

For IFAs with a clearly defined CIP, Aveni's Word-based upload model retains the existing document format, enforces consistency firm-wide through central template distribution, and locks compliance sections. Emma takes a different path: the firm uploads its existing template, and a dedicated team of ex-paraplanners and advisers who understand advice reports deeply help you get the templates set up in your exact structure and formatting in just 2 weeks. Customisation includes advice style, tonality per firm, formatting preferences including bullets, paragraphs, and tables, and personalisation to individual adviser requirements.

Wealth Firm Complexity

For wealth management firms with complex suitability report requirements, including bespoke portfolio construction, drawdown analysis, and multi-asset CIP tiers, Aveni's configuration process involves mapping those CIP tiers and exception cases before the platform handles them consistently. Emma is purpose-built for this level of complexity, with co-creation for very large IFAs, meaning templates, workflows, and customisation reflect the firm's specific requirements from the start.

Our Bluecoat Wealth Management case study documents an 80% reduction in reporting time after deploying Emma. The firm automated report generation, standardised compliance across their paraplanning team, and integrated risk profiling, retaining their existing document structure throughout. A short Emma demo shows how Emma adapts to a firm's template and generates a compliant draft for adviser review.

Finsource Partners, a dedicated paraplanning firm, reduced time spent reviewing LOA packs by 80%, as documented in our case study library.

Atlas: Unified Client Data Interface

Evie, Emma, and Colin are capabilities within Atlas, the single conversational interface through which advisers access outputs across all three tools without switching platforms.

Atlas enables pre-meeting preparation by surfacing vulnerability flags, previous meeting summaries, and client circumstances before a meeting, investment opportunity identification from portfolio and recommendation history, and pattern analysis across the full client base from a single query. No equivalent unified interface is available within Aveni Assist.

Tailoring Aveni Templates to Your Firm

How to Test Templates with Your Firm's Process?

The only way to know whether either platform handles your firm's specific templates, CIP structure, and data fields correctly is to test it using your actual documents and real client scenarios. We offer a 14-day free trial, no credit card required, which means you can upload your firm's existing suitability report template and run it through Emma against a real case before committing to a subscription.

Tailoring Aveni to Your Firm's Process

Aveni's customisation capability is genuine: firms keep their own document formats, compliance managers can update templates centrally, and the FinLLM generates content structured around UK regulatory requirements. Aveni's structured implementation process suits firms that want a comprehensive configuration involving compliance, operations, and IT before going live. Emma works from your firm's existing templates, with a dedicated team of ex-paraplanners and advisers completing setup in 2 weeks, so the platform begins reducing documentation time significantly faster than Aveni's several weeks to months implementation timeline.

Our Timothy James and Partners case study illustrates what the other side of that bottleneck looks like: post-meeting documentation time cut by 50%, with support teams accessing structured notes significantly faster than before. Reaching that outcome with Aveni requires completing the implementation phase first.

Who Controls Your Custom Templates?

Aveni's role-based permissions model gives compliance managers control over template governance, enabling them to lock mandatory sections and push updates firm-wide. That structure suits firms with centralised compliance functions. For smaller practices where the adviser also holds compliance responsibility, the same model adds administrative overhead without a corresponding benefit.

Our template ownership is with you from the start: you upload your existing document, Emma generates it from that, and you retain full control over the master template. Our client consent and AI blog addresses a related governance question, covering how the platform handles cases where clients opt out of meeting recording, which affects documentation workflows regardless of which platform a firm uses.

Custom Template Approval Process

Emma produces output from your firm's existing templates, with a dedicated team of ex-paraplanners and advisers completing setup to your exact structure and formatting within 2 weeks. Our Emma works from your firm's existing templates, which means your compliance-approved document formats, your CIP-aligned sections, and your established visual standards are intact from the first report.

Emma is at £299 per user per month, Colin for compliance checking is at £99 per user per month, and a complete suite covering all three tools costs £497 per user per month. All plans run on a monthly rolling agreement with a 30-day money-back guarantee, and annual plans carry a 10% discount.

Request a demo to see how Emma works with your firm's existing templates and workflow.

FAQs

Can Aveni Assist use my firm's existing Word templates?

Yes. Aveni Assist works with Word-based templates that firms upload themselves, rather than imposing a vendor-defined format. Firms retain their document structure, but the configuration process requires a preparation phase of several weeks involving compliance, operations, and IT, with full production readiness taking weeks to months depending on integration and governance complexity.

What does Aveni's implementation cost in time and resource?

Aveni's preparation phase involves the compliance, operations, and IT teams and takes several weeks before the platform produces live output. Full production readiness for an automated suitability report workflow takes weeks to months depending on data readiness and governance requirements. This is a one-time cost, but it delays the point at which the platform begins reducing documentation time rather than consuming resources to configure.

Is Aveni's compliance checking available as a standalone tool?

Aveni's compliance checks are embedded in its document generation workflow and extend to external documents and calls via Aveni Detect, which automatically assesses 100% of calls and documents. Our Colin is system-agnostic and checks any suitability report against FCA Consumer Duty and COBS 9.4.7R requirements, regardless of where the document was originally created.

How does AdvisoryAI's Emma differ from Aveni's template approach?

Our Emma generates suitability reports, annual review reports, and LOA summaries directly from the firm's existing templates, with a dedicated team of ex-paraplanners and advisers who complete setup to your exact structure and formatting in 2 weeks. The firm uploads its existing template, and Emma adapts to it, whereas Aveni requires a formal implementation phase to map back-office data fields to template sections before the platform produces live output.

What is AdvisoryAI's pricing compared to Aveni?

We list all pricing publicly: Evie for meeting notes at £99 per user per month, Emma for suitability reports at £299 per user per month, and Colin for compliance checking at £99 per user per month, with a complete suite available at £497 per user per month on a monthly rolling agreement with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Annual plans receive a 10% discount. Aveni does not disclose per-user pricing publicly and requires firms to request a custom quote.

Does AdvisoryAI integrate with Intelliflo and Iress Xplan?

Yes. We connect directly with Intelliflo, Plannr, Curo, and Iress Xplan, pushing structured meeting outputs and fact-find data directly into the client file. Our Intelliflo integration transfers client information between platforms in four clicks, removing the manual data re-entry step between a client meeting and a completed back-office record.

Can I test AdvisoryAI with my firm's actual templates before committing?

Yes. We offer a 14-day free trial, no credit card required, which allows firms to upload their existing suitability report templates and test Emma against real client scenarios before signing up. A 30-day money-back guarantee applies after that, and contracts run on a monthly rolling basis with no lock-in.

Key Terms

Centralised Investment Proposition (CIP): The firm-wide framework defining how client risk profiles map to investment solutions. Suitability reports reference the CIP to justify recommendations, so any AI documentation tool must reflect the CIP structure correctly to produce compliant output.

COBS 9.4.7R: The FCA's Conduct of Business rule specifying what a suitability report must contain and evidence. Our Colin maps document statements to this rule at the individual claim level.

Consumer Duty: The FCA's overarching standard requiring firms to deliver good outcomes across four areas: Products and Services, Price and Value, Consumer Understanding, and Consumer Support. Documentation produced under Consumer Duty must evidence those outcomes rather than simply record the advice.

FinLLM: Aveni's domain-specific large language model trained on UK financial services data, including FCA and Consumer Duty guidance, to improve accuracy in generating regulated documentation.

LOA (Letter of Authority) pack: Documentation authorising an adviser to gather information from providers on a client's behalf. Processing multiple LOA packs is a time-intensive paraplanning task, and our Emma generates LOA pack summaries alongside full suitability reports.

Suitability report: The written record documenting the advice given to a client, the client's circumstances and objectives, and the reasons why the recommended solution is suitable. A compliant suitability report is a core FCA requirement and typically the most time-consuming document in an adviser's workflow.

System-agnostic: A tool that operates on documents regardless of which platform produced them. Our Colin is system-agnostic, meaning it checks compliance on any suitability report, not only those generated within AdvisoryAI.