Reviewer onboarding checklist for advice team

A new reviewer in an advice team must not sign off any agent-drafted recommendation until they have learned the team's red lines, shadowed a certified colleague, completed reviewer training, and passed a marked practicum on real suitability drafts. This checklist lists every step in order, with who confirms it, so the firm can show each reviewer was ready.

What does an advice reviewer actually check?

In an advice team, the agent prepares and drafts. It summarises the fact-find, pulls valuations, compares the portfolio to its target, and drafts a suitability report or a review letter. All of that is depth 1 or 2. The recommendation itself belongs to the adviser, and so does the decision to send. Whether an agent may ever give advice on its own is answered in can an AI agent give financial advice; in a governed workspace the answer is that it drafts and a person decides.

The reviewer's job is to catch the draft that reads well but is wrong for this client. Three failures matter most. The draft relies on an old fact-find when the client's circumstances have changed. It describes risk in terms that do not match the client's signed attitude to risk or capacity for loss. Or it misses signs that the client may be vulnerable, such as recent bereavement or confusion in a call note. The checklist trains for all three.

How should the checklist be run?

The head of advice or a senior adviser owns it. Work through the items in order and record a date and initials against each. Approval rights to send agent-drafted advice switch on only after item 16. Store the completed list with the reviewer's competence file, alongside whatever the firm already keeps for advisers.

The teaching method for the middle stages is in how to train the advice team to review AI agent decisions. Where the team sits in the firm's wider training order is covered in the guide to training teams for AI agents.

The checklist

Before the reviewer starts 1. Read-only access to the workspace; no right to send client documents. 2. The agent's capabilities and depths shared: review pack (1), suitability draft (2), rebalancing proposal (2). 3. Red lines given in writing and signed: no recommendation sent unread; no draft sent where the fact-find is more than a year old without a check; no money moved on an emailed instruction. 4. Buddy named: a certified reviewer from the same team.

Week 1: watch 5. Shadow the buddy through ten held drafts. 6. See one draft rejected because the client's circumstances had changed. 7. See one draft escalated for a possible vulnerability.

Weeks 1 to 5: learn 8. Shared foundation complete, test passed. 9. Reviewer modules complete. 10. Written exam passed.

Weeks 6 and 7: practise 11. Two weeks deciding real held drafts, each confirmed by the buddy before sending. 12. Practicum cases include an outdated fact-find, a mismatch with the signed risk profile and a vulnerability sign. 13. Incident drill completed.

Sign-off 14. Practicum record reviewed: no missed red line. 15. Assessor sign-off recorded. 16. Approval rights granted for agent-drafted advice on the reviewer's own clients. 17. Renewal date set, aligned with the reviewer's annual competence review.

Worked example

An illustrative advice firm brings Sample Reviewer H, an experienced paraplanner, into a team of eight advisers. Items 1 to 4 are done before she starts. In week 1, her buddy rejects a draft for a client who had mentioned retirement plans moving forward by three years; the draft still showed the old timeline. Sample Reviewer H notes it under item 6.

She completes the foundation and modules by week 4, passes the exam in week 5, and works through 60 held drafts in weeks 6 and 7. She catches a draft that described a cautious client's new holding as "moderate risk", outside the signed profile, and escalates a call note mentioning a recent hospital stay. The drill, run in the format of how to run an AI agent incident drill for the advice team, simulates an agent certificate lapsing during a busy review week. She is signed off at the end of week 7.

What makes advice reviewer onboarding different?

Accountability. In most teams a reviewer approves a transaction; here the reviewer approves advice, and the adviser's name is on it. That is why item 3's red lines are signed rather than just shared, and why renewal is tied to the competence review the firm already runs. Teams that handle credit or risk have their own versions: see the reviewer onboarding checklist for the credit team and the reviewer onboarding checklist for the risk team.