Contio unveils its MeetingOS to 'fix' broken meetings for advisors

Advisors spend a lot of time in client meetings, and for good reason: Meetings are where the vast majority of an advisor's interactions with clients (and prospects) take place, and they represent perhaps the best chance for the advisor to build trust and rapport with the client. In short, they're the times when the advisor really gets to demonstrate their value, and deepen the human-to-human relationship. In fact, according to the most recent Kitces Research on Advisor Productivity, one of the biggest differences between highly productive advisors (defined as those generating $1 million or more of revenue per year) and the rest is the amount of time they spend in client meetings: Higher-earning advisors spent 24% of their time in client meetings on average, while others spent 17% (equivalent to a difference of 2.8 hours, or an additional 1-2 client meetings per 40-hour week).

So no advisor necessarily wants to spend less time in meetings, and ultimately there's only so much more time that can be spent in client meetings before it's just exhausting as well. However, many advisors, when asked, would likely say that rather than having more or fewer client meetings, they could stand to hold better meetings. With most advisors only meeting with their clients one or two times per year, there's often so much to get to that it's hard to cover it all even in a two-hour meeting – and if the discussion ends up veering off-topic, or the client has questions or new issues that they bring in, the meeting can easily run beyond two hours (and past the point where it's possible to really absorb new information or make clear decisions). And for ongoing clients, most advisors try to anchor to their review meetings to 'only' a one-hour (not two-hour) time slot in the first place.

The reason for this struggle to get it all done in the time allocated to a typical review meeting isn't necessarily because of a lack of planning or preparation on the advisor's part. Many advisors spend a long time doing meeting preparation (on average, almost 30 minutes for every 1 hour of meetings, according to our own Kitces Research on Advisor Productivity) going through the client's file and crafting an agenda covering a host of meeting items: e.g., recapping old talking points, addressing open action items, refreshing the client's financial plan, and providing an update on their investment performance, while also trying to leave time for updates or questions from the client. If anything, advisors try to pack too much into their agendas, leaving little time for organic conversations that often can help the advisor get to the bottom of what the client really wants to talk about.

That's why it's notable to see the launch this month of MeetingOS, a software tool from the startup Contio (founded by Riskalyze/Nitrogen founder Aaron Klein) that, unlike AI notetaking tools that center their value proposition around eliminating preparation and follow-up tasks before and after the meeting, focuses on improving the meeting itself (via AI).

At a high level, MeetingOS does three things. First, it creates client meeting agendas: The high-level meeting topics are set via templates created by the advisor, but the specific talking points are pulled from the advisor's CRM and other tools (harnessing the strong capability of AI to synthesize CRM and prior meeting notes). For example, if a past meeting note mentioned that the client was taking an international vacation, MeetingOS might add "How was the vacation to Europe?" under the Client Updates section. Second, MeetingOS serves as a kind of behind-the-scenes meeting manager, feeding the advisor talking points and key information in real time based on what's said during the conversation (it calls this the advisor's "superhuman memory", to give an idea of the effect it's meant to convey). And third, MeetingOS generates meeting notes and follow-up action items, similar to what's done by most standard AI meeting note tools.

But while the functionality of MeetingOS is generally impressive, there's an open question about whether it really solves the pain points that advisors have around meetings. While it's certainly a good thing to have a meeting agenda (and Contio's agenda creator truly is impressive in how it can populate a meeting agenda template with talking points and research notes from the client's file in a fraction of the time it would take an advisor to do themselves), the process of creating an agenda isn't necessarily a big pain point for advisors – it's selecting what to cover (or not) in the agenda itself, namely not trying to pack too much information into a limited meeting time slot.

Furthermore, in watching MeetingOS's demo (which it must be said is refreshingly thorough in how it lays out the product and its key features), the feeling one gets is of information overload: Onscreen during the meeting is not only a fully populated agenda, but also lists of "private" talking points viewable only by the advisor (particularly helpful in the context of Zoom/virtual meetings where there's a screen that only the advisor can see), plus a running list of meeting themes and action items going down the other side of the screen. It's hard to imagine trying to actually follow all of this on one screen while also staying present in the conversation in a Zoom window (to say nothing about an in-person meeting). After all, the human brain is still not really capable of multi-tasking, especially when it's a real-time effort to read (a screen) and talk or listen (to a client) simultaneously.

 _{Screenshot from Contio's MeetingOS 'Guided Tour'}

Still, it's fair to recognize that client meetings require the advisor to strike a difficult balance: Advisors want to be open and receptive to whatever it is that the client wants to talk about, but at the same time there are often specific conversations that need to be had and decisions to be made. Client meetings are about building relationships, but they're also about getting things done while all of the parties are in the same room. For advisors, that often requires careful calibration of their service model, so that things that are essential for in-person discussion can happen during the meeting, and there are other processes for handling the things that can be done asynchronously. But MeetingOS seems to instead go all-in on compiling everything that could possibly be discussed in the meeting, rather than sorting and prioritizing the things that are best discussed in the meeting. Though in theory that is a balance from MeetingOS that could shift as the software inevitably iterates its features after it gets wider use from early-adopter advisors.

Ultimately, it will be interesting to see where Contio and MeetingOS go from here. Because on the one hand, it's nice to have a trove of client information at your fingertips to answer any question you (or they) might have in the moment. But on the other hand, every minute that the advisor is looking at the screen to pull up a specific data point, or read a conversation prompt, is a moment where they aren't fully present in the conversation itself – which is arguably much more of the purpose of having the meeting in the first place. (And as many advisors might reluctantly admit, it really isn't the end of the world to say "I don't know" or "I'll follow up with you" in a client meeting – advisors, just like their clients, are human too.) While advisors might have a number of pain points in how they experience client meetings, not having enough information in front of them is not usually one of them, meaning MeetingOS may need to find a better way to show advisors the information they need when they need it… but otherwise not distract them so they can stay present with their clients for the rest of the conversation.

This article first appeared on the Nerd’s Eye View at Kitces.com at https://kitc.es/advisortech-march2026, and has been reprinted here with permission.

Ben Henry-Moreland 

Ben Henry-Moreland is a Senior Financial Planning Nerd at Kitces.com, where he specializes in writing and speaking on financial planning topics including tax, practice management, and technology. He also co-authors the monthly Kitces #AdvisorTech column. Drawing from his experience as a financial planner and a solo advisory firm owner, Ben is passionate about fulfilling the site’s mission of making financial advicers better and more successful.

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Michael Kitces

Michael Kitces is Head of Planning Strategy at Focus Partners Wealth, which provides an evidence-based approach to private wealth management for near- and current retirees, and Focus Partners Advisor Solutions, a turnkey wealth management services provider supporting thousands of independent financial advisors through the scaling phase of growth.

In addition, he is a co-founder of the XY Planning Network, AdvicePay, fpPathfinder, and New Planner Recruiting, the former Practitioner Editor of the Journal of Financial Planning, the host of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, and the publisher of the popular financial planning industry blog Nerd’s Eye View through his website Kitces.com, dedicated to advancing knowledge in financial planning. In 2010, Michael was recognized with one of the FPA’s “Heart of Financial Planning” awards for his dedication and work in advancing the profession.

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