A Form ADV-Aligned Meeting Summary Template You Can Use This Quarter

A meeting summary template is a small artifact - usually one printed page, sometimes a Word doc, sometimes a CRM activity layout - and it does more work than any other document in an advisory practice. It shapes the conversation while the meeting is happening, it shapes the record after the meeting ends, and it shapes whether the firm can reconstruct the meeting three years later when an examiner asks. The template below is the one we hand to advisors during onboarding, and it is shaped around the disclosures Form ADV Part 2A and the Care Obligation under Reg BI both want to see in a defensible record.

Picture the screen most advisors will use this template on: a meeting note open in the CRM, with the template pasted as a starting structure and the advisor's keyboard cursor sitting in the recommendation field. Picture also the printed version - one page, eight short sections, used as a meeting agenda by advisors who like to follow the same shape live. Both surfaces work. The template is below in plain prose; you can paste it into the CRM activity body or into a workflow template.

The template, in eight sections

1. Meeting metadata. Date, time, modality (in-person, video, phone), advisor present, paraplanner present (if applicable), client attendees, household reference.
2. Agenda set at start. Two to four bullet points naming the topics the meeting set out to cover. Locked at the start of the meeting and not edited after.
3. Material updates from the client. Life events, financial-position changes, employment changes, family changes, and any new external accounts or liabilities since the last meeting.
4. Topics discussed. Two to three sentences per topic. Plain prose, not bullets. The narrative belongs here.
5. Recommendations made. Each recommendation named specifically, with the instrument, strategy, or action. "Recommended replacing 2027 corporate ladder rung with comparable-duration Treasury rung." Not "discussed bond ladder."
6. Suitability rationale. Two to four sentences per recommendation explaining why this recommendation fits the client's current investment profile. This is the field that earns the meeting note its Form ADV alignment, and the field a documentation AI assistant should leave for the advisor to author.
7. Alternatives considered and conflicts disclosed. What other reasonable options were weighed, why each was set aside, and any compensation or product conflicts the client was made aware of.
8. Action items and follow-up. Owner, due date, and the materials sent or to be sent. Includes a one-line summary email confirmation timestamp once that email is sent.

Why these eight, in this order

Form ADV Part 2A asks advisers to disclose how the firm exercises judgment, the conflicts that exist, and the way fees and compensation flow. Per item 5, item 8, item 10, item 11, and item 14 of Part 2A, the disclosure shape is more or less: here is how we make recommendations, here are the conflicts that shape them, here is how we manage those conflicts. A meeting record that names recommendations, rationales, alternatives, and conflicts mirrors that disclosure structure at the per-meeting level. An examiner reading the firm's Form ADV alongside a sample of meeting records should see the same structure carried through.

What the template explicitly is not

It is not a script. Advisors who have run this template for a quarter or two consistently report that the conversation does not flow in the order the template lists. That is fine; the order matters for the record, not the meeting. Many advisors take notes loosely during the meeting and then sort them into the eight sections after.

It is also not a transcript. Transcript-shaped notes are exhaustive in the wrong places and thin in the right ones. The template forces the record to be sectioned around the questions an examiner or a reviewing supervisor will actually ask.

Three months in. Pull a sample of ten meeting notes. Count how many have the suitability rationale field filled with two or more sentences of advisor-authored prose. If fewer than nine, the template is being used as a checklist rather than a record. Tighten the review.

How the AI assist plugs in

An agentic note assistant can populate metadata, agenda, material-updates, topics-discussed, recommendations, alternatives, and action items straight from the meeting recording. The suitability rationale field is the one that should remain advisor-authored - the rationale is a fiduciary judgment, and keeping it human-authored gives the firm the cleanest defensive position during examinations. Across our early advisor cohort, this division of labor reduced documentation time per meeting from a 52-minute average to roughly eight minutes of advisor editing, with the eight minutes weighted heavily on the suitability and conflicts fields.

Recordkeeping

Per SEC Advisers Act Rule 204-2, the meeting record is retained for at least five years with the first two in an easily accessible location. The template's structure makes this retention practically usable; a record sectioned by recommendation and rationale is searchable by recommendation type, which is the shape an examination request typically arrives in. A practice running this template for a year produces a documentation corpus that is both contemporaneous and structurally consistent, which is the combination that makes examination cycles - which the IAA's 2026 industry snapshot puts at roughly one every seven years for the average mid-sized RIA - quietly uneventful.

Source notes

• SEC Form ADV Part 2A items 5, 8, 10, 11, 14 instructions.
• SEC Advisers Act Rule 204-2 recordkeeping requirements.
• SEC Regulation Best Interest Care Obligation guidance for documentation.
• FINRA Notice 4530 supervisory record expectations.
• IAA 2026 Investment Adviser Industry Snapshot on RIA examination cadence.