The Advisor Tech Series: From Admin Overload to Advisor Excellence

In this episode of the Maximizer Advisor Tech Series, Gabe Karkanis, Senior Director of Product at Maximizer, sits down with John Connell, CEO of Focal, to explore how purpose-built artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the way Canadian financial advisors work.

John shares the origin story of Focal, which was born from a striking discovery: financial advisors were spending only 13% of their time actually engaging with clients, with the rest consumed by note-taking, data entry, PDF form filling, and manual system updates. Focal was built to change that, and today advisors are reclaiming 15+ hours per week through AI-powered meeting prep, real-time transcription, and one-click CRM sync directly into tools like Maximizer.

Gabe and John look ahead at where the industry is going, discussing the shift from generative AI (write this for me) to agentic AI (handle this for me), and what that means for advisors who want to stay ahead of the curve. Their advice for practices looking to adopt AI: start top-down, identify your highest-ROI workflows, choose purpose-built tools over generic ones, and don’t wait.