Your AI preparedness checklist

Is your firm ready for AI?

Investment banks and independent research providers have been doing more with less, and as the latest edition of the Singletrack Quarterly Benchmark Report demonstrates, it looks like this higher level of activity is the new normal.

At the same time, we’re witnessing the arrival of revolutionary new technology: AI. It’s crucial that investment banks and independent research providers ensure they’re ready to embrace this new way of working – if not, they risk being left behind.

That doesn’t mean becoming an expert in whatever the latest trending AI tool is. In fact, when capital market teams adopt the right approach and use cases AI will give them the freedom to become experts in their core responsibilities.

So how can you make sure that you’re ready to take advantage of each of these new opportunities? If you’re not already using AI, it’s time to prepare. Download our checklist for a handy reference or read on to learn how you can prepare your firm for today’s AI.

AI preparedness checklist for capital markets advisory firms

1. Capture and maintain high-quality data

• Structure and organise historical content. Ensure you have clear data and metadata structures to aid discovery and distribution  
• Use technology to componentize content so it is atomically ready for AI: leverage tools that reduce the cost of data and activity capture, mechanisms that identify anomalies, enabling you to work on an exceptions basis

2. Make a plan for AI training content

• Use your existing content from investment research, interactions, revenue, vote data and more to train generative AI tools to enhance production and analysis processes. Examples of training data include those with a long content history, both structured and unstructured types of data, and, critically, data that is labelled and tagged. 

3. Identify core use cases for AI tools

• What will best support and boost your commercial model? How will AI use cases feed back into your overall service delivery?  
• How do you value different components of your service (written content, analyst access, corporate access, data and models, tools)? Prioritise areas which deliver the highest impact from integrating AI, such as content generation, summarisation, pattern detection (e.g. anomalies) and automating manual tasks and data capture.  
• Consider distribution – how do you want to handle your email, portal, third-party aggregator distribution approach? How will you ensure attribution of content and analyst interactions when content is ingested into LLMs / aggregated  and do you want to provide LLM ready content (tagging, metadata, API feeds)?

4. Content-based outputs from AI tools

• Create a list of key content-based outputs where AI can make the production processes smoother, faster or more personalised. Examples might include:
  • Daily Sales Emails
  • Summaries
  • Pitchbooks
  • Roadshow Feedback
  • Search results
• Build feedback loops to understand intent, to impact and refine approach (readership data, interests, searches, sentiment, qualitative assessments)
• Also consider hyperpersonalised outputs for particular contacts and accounts with the potential to increase engagement 

5. Analytics and insights from AI

• You can unlock new insights by analysing – at speed – the entirety of your client base, helping you spot risk and recognise opportunities proactively and feeding into your decision-making.
• Consider linking services to outcomes. Can a clearer picture of service value productively influence analyst behaviour to boost results across the whole team? Examples could include
  • Customer tiering and segmentation, especially in an iterative or dynamic fashion
  • Content components
  • Models and forecasts
  • Natural liquidity
  • Buyers lists
  • Anomaly detection, to reveal at-risk accounts, or accounts who might engage and spend more

6. How will you integrate these outputs into your workflows?

• AI outputs are most powerful when they take the form of the right information in the right location at the right time, backed up by ongoing analytics and automations. This will unlock the full value of the data you hold, augment the expertise of highly skilled teams, and deliver better service to clients more efficiently.

Get ready now

The AI era will be a revolutionary period of change with the potential to rival that of electronic trading. Using this checklist, your firm will be well-placed to scout, interrogate and incorporate leading AI tools quickly, so you can stay competitive even in this fast-paced environment.

Singletrack has over a decade of experience incorporating AI into our core products. We’re here to support leading capital markets firms by bringing together truly cutting edge technology with a deep understanding of what’s truly important for the advisory industry. 

To find out how we can help you embrace the AI era, book a demo now.

Singletrack

Published: 15/10/2025