What Comes After the AI Note-Taker: Aaron Klein @ Contio, Tom Fields @ Fynancial
AI note-takers promised to fix advisor meetings. Adoption is nearly universal — and yet client retention hasn't meaningfully improved, and most advisors still walk into reviews without a real game plan. So what did the industry actually solve? Aaron Klein, who spent 12 years building Riskalyze into a category before starting over, argues the note-taker wave started at the wrong end of the problem: capturing conversations is easy, turning them into decisions and follow-through is the actual job. His new company, Contio, is built as an operating system layer rather than a standalone app — meant for partners to build on top of, not to lock advisors into. That's exactly what Tom Fields did. As the first partner built on Contio's MeetingOS, his company Fynancial takes that meeting data and turns it into the always-on mobile experience advisors' clients already expect from every other app on their phone. Together, they make the case that the real unlock isn't smarter transcription — it's open data, faster meeting prep, and giving clients a channel that isn't buried in email. What You'll Learn: Why Aaron Klein calls AI note-taking "starting at the wrong end of the problem" The difference between an "operating system" and a "platform" — and why Contio deliberately chose OS How Tom Fields built Fynancial as the first partner on Contio's MeetingOS, and what that partnership actually does for advisors Why locking up client data is a losing long-term strategy, even if it's tempting short-term Why older clients default to their phone as their primary computer — and what that means for advisor tech decisions Why meeting prep should happen a week or two out, not 30 minutes before The rapid-fire debate on the most overrated and underrated AI technology in wealth management right now Key Takeaways: AI note-takers solved the wrong problem. → Recording a meeting was never the bottleneck — turning what gets said into what gets done was. An operating system beats a platform. → Contio isn't trying to maximize time in its own app. It's built so partners like Fynancial can build entire products on top of its data layer. Locking up data is a losing strategy. → Firms that don't expose clear APIs or MCP access will lose customers to those that do — full stop. Speed is a relationship advantage, not just an efficiency one. → In a trust-driven business, how fast you respond to a client is itself part of the service. Meeting prep should happen days before the meeting, not minutes before. → The easier prep gets, the more tempting it is to do it last-minute — which defeats the point. Why This Episode Matters: The AI note-taker wave made it easy to believe the meeting problem was already solved. This episode makes the opposite case: recording a meeting was always the easy part. The advisors and platforms that win from here will be the ones that treat meeting data as fuel for faster decisions and open ecosystems — not another walled garden. Aaron Klein and Tom Fields are building from opposite ends of that same idea, and the partnership between their companies is a live example of what an open, decision-first approach to meeting AI can look like in practice.