How a wealth manager gets recommended by AI assistants

Assistants recommend wealth managers on the things a careful adviser would check first: what you are registered as, how you are paid, and whether both of those are stated plainly in public. Performance claims do almost nothing, because a responsible answer will not repeat them, and in this category the assistant is unusually careful.

What buyers of a wealth manager actually ask an assistant

Four buyers, and their questions barely overlap. A salaried professional with a first surplus. A business owner with money outside the business. A non resident Indian managing assets from abroad. A family approaching a transfer of wealth to the next generation.

• "How do I check if a financial adviser is SEBI registered"
• "Difference between a SEBI registered investment adviser and a mutual fund distributor"
• "What should a financial planner charge in India"
• "Is a portfolio management service worth it compared with mutual funds"
• "Fee only financial planner for a salaried person"
• "Adviser for an NRI with property and investments in India"
• "My adviser put me in regular plans, what do I do"

Two of those seven are about how you are paid and one is about how to verify you. That is the shape of demand in this trade, and most firm websites answer none of the three.

Why this category is answered cautiously

A question about money and a stranger's savings is one an assistant treats seriously. It will often lead with the regulatory point rather than a name: check registration, understand the fee model, be wary of assured returns. Any page of yours that sounds like the thing it is warning against gets left out.

The regulator has added to this. SEBI publishes warnings about unregistered persons giving investment advice, and assistants have read that material. The result is that the fastest way to be named is to sound like the careful answer rather than the sales pitch.

Which sources the assistants read for this trade

The SEBI intermediary registers first. Your registration as an investment adviser, a portfolio manager or a research analyst appears there with the number, the entity name and the validity. This is the strongest third party record you have and it costs nothing, because you are already on it.

The administration and supervision body for investment advisers, which maintains the member list that a buyer checking you will land on.

The AMFI registration lookup, where a mutual fund distributor's registration number and entity details can be checked. If you hold one, a buyer can find it, so your page should say what it is and what it means.

SEBI's own investor material and the complaints portal, including the redress mechanism and the online dispute resolution route. Assistants use these to construct the caution they attach to any answer in this category.

Professional certification bodies, which publish whether a named certification is current. Name the certification exactly and name the body, because a vague designation is read as no designation.

Personal finance forums, communities and the comment sections of financial publications, where fee models and specific firms are discussed in the words a buyer uses.

What to state, publicly and plainly

Your registration, by category and number. Whether you are a registered investment adviser, a distributor, or a portfolio manager is the single most important distinction to a buyer, and most firms leave it buried. Put the category, the registration number, the validity and the name of the registered entity where anybody can read it, and link to the register.

How you are paid. Fee only, commission, or both, and if both, how the two are kept apart for the same client. If you charge a fee, say which of the permitted fee modes you use, how it is calculated, when it is billed, and what happens if a client leaves mid period. If you earn commission on a product, say so on the page about that product.

Who you actually serve. Minimum portfolio size, the cities you work in, whether you accept non resident clients, and the situations you specialise in. These constraints are what make you the right answer to a specific question.

What the engagement contains. How many meetings, what documents you produce, whether you execute or only advise, whether you review the portfolio and how often, and what is outside the scope.

What you do not do. Not insurance, not tax filing, not lending, if those are true. Being clear about scope reads as professionalism.

What a fee page looks like when it invents no figure

Fees are the commercial fact this trade refuses to publish, which is exactly why the page works. You do not need to invent a market rate. Publish your own structure.

Write it in four parts. First, the mode: state whether you charge a fee linked to assets under advice or a fixed fee for a defined engagement, and say that the regulator restricts both the modes available and the ceiling on them, with a link to the current SEBI position rather than a number of your own. Second, your own numbers: what you charge, in rupees or as a percentage, for each service you sell, with the month and year next to it. Third, what is included and what is billed separately, for example whether transaction execution, tax return preparation or estate documentation sit inside the fee. Fourth, the practical terms: the billing cycle, the permitted payment modes, and the exit terms.

Then add the sentence that makes the page trusted: a plain statement of every other way money reaches your firm because of a client, including commission on any product, platform revenue sharing, or referral fees, and what you do when the best option for a client pays you nothing.

A buyer can compare that page against another firm's page. They cannot compare two pages that both say "transparent fee structure", which is why nobody currently wins that question.

What actively hurts you

Any suggestion of assured or guaranteed returns. Past performance presented as an expectation. Unnamed "clients trust us" claims. Assets under management stated without a date or a basis. Logos implying institutional relationships you do not have. Each of these is not merely ignored: it changes how everything else on the page is read, and in this category it can produce an explicit warning instead of a recommendation.

How to measure it

Ask blind questions in the buyer's words, on more than one assistant, never naming your firm. Attach a city and a situation, because that is how these questions are typed. Score three outcomes: not named, named inside a general caution, named as a specific answer with a reason attached.

Then read which sources were cited. In this category the citations are usually a mix of regulator pages, personal finance publications and forum threads, which tells you two things: which explanation you should write yourself, and which community you are absent from.

Disclosure: we sell AI Knows Us, which runs this measurement on a schedule. No tool, ours included, can promise a position in an assistant's answer.

What this does not cover and cannot do

It cannot help you advertise performance. The rules on what an adviser may claim are strict, and an assistant is cautious about repeating a return figure even when it is genuine. Treat performance as something you show a client in a meeting, and treat your website as the place where your registration, your fee and your process live.

It does not replace the disclosures the regulator requires, including risk profiling and the advisory agreement. Those are obligations, not marketing.

It also cannot win a question about a product rather than an adviser. When somebody asks which fund to buy, the answer comes from fund research sites and factsheets, and it should. Your ground is the question about whether they need advice, what it costs and how to check you.

Common questions

We do both advisory and distribution. What do we say?

Say exactly which entity does which, and how you keep client level separation as the rules require. Ambiguity here is the single biggest source of distrust in this trade, and a clear two sentence explanation puts you ahead of most firms in the country.

Is it dangerous to publish our fee?

It loses you the enquiry from a buyer whose portfolio size does not fit, which is an enquiry you would have declined. It wins you the buyer who searched for what advice should cost and found an actual answer. Add the date and review it yearly.

Should we write about markets at all?

Market commentary is the most produced and least asked for content in this industry. Write it only if you enjoy it. The pages that get cited are the ones answering a decision: whether to use an adviser, how to check one, what a fee should cover, how to move away from an existing adviser, what to do with a specific windfall.

How do we handle non resident clients on the website?

One page, covering the account types available to a non resident, what can and cannot be repatriated, the tax deduction that applies on certain payments, and which documents you need at onboarding. Say plainly which countries of residence you can and cannot accept, because that restriction is real for most firms and nobody publishes it.

Our best clients came from referrals. Why does this matter?

Because the referral now checks you before they call. The person who was told your name asks an assistant whether you are registered, what firms like yours charge and what to ask in a first meeting. If your registration and your fee are not readable, the referral arrives less confident or does not arrive.

What to do first

Publish the registration line with the register link, and the fee page described above. Then write one page each on how to check an adviser, what to ask in a first meeting, and when somebody does not need an adviser at all. Those five pages answer the questions actually being asked, and answering them honestly is what gets you named.