In this guide 6 sections
A good review pack has five sections: goals and changes in circumstances, current holdings, insurance cover, open issues and agreed actions. Fill it from the client record rather than retyping it, so each meeting starts from facts that are already checked. Send it the same day.
Why the pack should come from the record
Many advisers build a review deck by hand before every meeting, copying balances from one portal, cover details from a policy PDF and goals from last year’s notes. It eats an hour per client. Slips still creep in.
A pack generated from the client record skips that work, because the holdings, policies and meeting notes already sit there. The adviser spends the hour thinking instead.
Every pack also looks the same. Clients learn where to find things.
Section one: goals and what has changed
Open with the client’s stated goals, each with a target date and an owner, such as retirement age, a child’s fees or a property purchase. Keep the wording the client used.
Then list what changed since the last meeting, because a new job, a birth, a divorce, an inheritance or a fresh loan can each alter the plan. Ask about each rather than wait.
Leave room for the client’s own items. The best agenda points often arrive early.
- Goal, target date and current progress
- Income or employment change
- Family change
- Loans taken or repaid
- Health events
Section two: holdings and section three: cover
Holdings come as a table of asset, platform or folio, value on the review date and share of the total, with a line for anything held elsewhere, marked client-reported.
Cover gets its own table. List each policy with insurer, type, sum assured, premium due date, nominee and status, and flag any policy near its grace period or with a missing nominee.
Compare cover against the goals. A term plan that ends before the youngest child finishes college is a finding, not a footnote, and it belongs near the start of the cover table.
- Asset, platform, value and date
- Policy, insurer, sum assured and nominee
- Premium due dates and status
- Outside holdings marked client-reported
Section four: open issues and section five: actions
Issues are things you noticed that nobody has fixed yet, such as a lapsed mandate, an expired ID document or a beneficiary form that was never returned. Give each one line and a date.
Actions are things somebody agreed to do. Each needs a named owner, a deadline and a way to check it was done, because vague actions such as “review insurance” never close.
Send the pack the same day. Set the next review date on the record before anyone forgets it, because a review nobody scheduled rarely happens at all.
Keep the template honest
Run it for three clients, delete the sections you never used, and add a row for anything you had to write by hand twice. Keep the pack lean.
Version the template itself. When you change it, note the date, so that older packs still make sense when someone opens them two years later.
Check the output once a quarter against a real client file, and if a figure disagrees with the source, fix the source before you regenerate.
Client review pack template
It runs to four pages. Page one holds client details, review date and the goals table with target date and progress, so the meeting opens on what the client wants. Page two lists holdings. Page three lists insurance policies with insurer, sum assured, premium due date, nominee and status, so gaps show up next to the goals they threaten. Page four has open issues and actions.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
How long should a client review pack be?
Four pages is enough for most clients. If a pack needs more, the extra pages are usually raw statements that belong in an attachment, not in the pack itself.
Should insurance cover be part of a wealth review?
Yes. Cover protects the plan. A lapsed policy or a missing nominee can undo years of saving, so it belongs in the same pack as the holdings.
Can the pack be generated automatically?
Yes, if holdings, policies and notes all live on one client record, because the pack then becomes a view of that record. The adviser only adds the commentary before the meeting.
How often should each client get a review pack?
Set the cadence by client size and complexity. Annual is the minimum for most. Larger households may need quarterly packs.