In an industry where language carries both legal weight and emotional resonance, finding and consistently expressing your brand voice has never been more important. Professional communicators and wealth management teams of all sizes face a unique challenge: clients want clarity, warmth and trustworthiness, while the digital ecosystem demands efficiency, frequency and hyper-relevant, search-friendly content. The introduction of generative AI, which is a great way to streamline content creation, hasn’t changed those expectations — it’s amplified them.
But here’s the good news: AI, when used responsibly and thoughtfully, can help advisory and financial services firms better understand, articulate and operationalize their authentic voice. It’s not about replacing human communication. Done right, it’s about supporting and enhancing it.
This idea clicked for me recently during a conversation with my friend and industry thought leader John O’Connell, Founder and CEO of The Oasis Group. John shared that his firm had recently purchased Claude Enterprise licenses for everyone. What impressed me even more: They are using Claude as their first draft proofreader.
It takes the first drafts developed by John’s team, compares them to The Oasis Group’s voice, and provides a confidence level, by section, that discerns whether the section sounds like their writing style. Then the team members can edit their sections before submitting it for final internal review. This ensures that the first copy the Managing Directors review is aligned to the firm’s brand, saving them hours of additional review and back-and-forth editing.
As professional commentators, my team and I have long worked to establish a unified brand voice and style guidelines, including precise messaging and message architectures, for our RIA, financial services and wealthtech clients. So, I was intrigued.
What John described wasn’t just efficiency. It was clarity. It was culture-building. It was a practical example of how AI can help a firm stay true to who they are, even as they scale. Hearing how The Oasis Group approached brand voice using modern tools inspired me to revisit how Impact Communications was evolving and managing our own.
Wading Into The Process
After more than 30 years of writing, refining and evolving our communications style, my company’s brand voice felt second nature to me. After all, I’d created and polished it over the years. But could we articulate it clearly enough that an AI system — or even a new employee — could model it? That question led us to an experiment using a new process that one of our new teammates quarterbacked: Use a brand voice generator tool to create a brand voice guide that would, in turn, help us train our own custom GPT.
What came back wasn’t a new voice; it was an astonishing, accurate mirror.
As a starting point, we fed the brand voice generator years of transcripts, articles, blog posts and client-facing materials. What came back wasn’t a new voice; it was an astonishing, accurate mirror. The AI surfaced recognizable patterns — the blend of warm authority, story-forward communication, clear structure and our signature “helpful educator” tone that many in the industry associate with us.
What the tool generated became the foundation for our new “Impact Brand Voice Guide,” a document that will help us maintain even better consistency across our thought leadership, news releases, social media, educational content and client engagements.
My colleague and I are now working to refine the custom GPT and will eventually share it with our entire team. Once we’ve tested and perfected this for our own communications, we’ll utilize a similar process for communications we’re collaborating on with our financial services and wealthtech clients.
The Future Of Modern Trust-Based Communication
Of course, AI tools don’t typically get everything right. AI models are only as strong as the inputs they’re given. They lack the intuition, ethics and emotional intelligence needed when communicating with clients, especially in a trust-based business. The technology offers a starting point — but the refining, shaping and context-setting requires a human hand.
The most successful use of AI in financial communications comes from balancing automation with the human touch. That principle holds true whether you’re editing a newsletter, developing a website, writing a letter to a client or defining your brand’s identity.
You can use these same tools to uncover and strengthen your own voice:
1. Start by analyzing your existing content. Identify what feels true and what feels generic.
2. Feed your strongest examples into a brand-voice model and look for the patterns it reflects back to you.
3. Then, turn those insights into a usable brand voice that your team and other AI tools can reference.
4. Always apply human oversight, especially with compliance-sensitive content.
Your voice is one of your most valuable business assets. AI can help you protect, scale and strengthen it, but only you can define it.
The future of modern trust-based communication isn’t human or AI — it’s human-guided AI. When used responsibly, these tools can help us show up more consistently, confidently and authentically. Your voice is one of your most valuable business assets. AI can help you protect, scale and strengthen it, but only you can define it.
Those who master the use of generative AI with a thoughtful process and discerning “humans in the loop” will have a competitive advantage, allowing them to lead with clarity, ethics and authenticity. Ultimately, I think we’ll begin to see more proof that AI works best when properly guided to amplify what makes us uniquely human.
Marie Swift is Founder and CEO of marketing and public relations firm Impact Communications.
