Generating a Statement of Advice (SoA)

Paradino's Statement of Advice and Record of Advice tasks now run on Athena's 2nd-generation agent — the default whenever you start an SoA or RoA. Unlike the previous one-pass agent, Athena now plans the document with you before it writes a word: it gathers the client's information, develops the recommended strategies, and assembles supporting wording in clear, reviewable steps, pausing at each for your confirmation.

Because each step can take a few minutes, Athena tells you when it's working and notifies you when it needs your input — so you're free to switch to other tasks in Paradino and step away. This guide walks through preparing your workspace, briefing Athena, working through the planning steps, generating and refining the document, and turning it into a client presentation.

Tip: If you see a MAX badge next to Statement of Advice or Record of Advice, this indicates a premium version of Athena.

Phase 1: Preparation (Critical for Best Results)

The quality of the SoA depends heavily on what Athena has to work with. Prepare these before you start.

Template Customisation

Athena follows your chosen template's structure strictly — it generates one section per template section and does not reorder or restructure the document during generation.

Section ordering: Crucial. Ensure every section in the template is in the exact order you want it to appear in the final document.
Per-strategy sections. Where you want a block repeated for each recommended strategy (e.g. a "Benefits" and "Things you should know" block per strategy), use the template's strategy placeholders or repeat those headings — Athena uses these as the signal to render one block per strategy.

Practice Knowledge Base (Global)

Your practice Knowledge Base supplies the standardised, firm-approved content Athena weaves into every document:

Strategy wording — your standard Recommendations, Benefits, and Risks & Consequences text for each strategy.
Risk profiles & target asset allocations — the firm's documented profiles (e.g. Growth, Balanced).
Fees and product wording — fee arrangements, product blurbs, and standard disclaimers.

Tip: The more of your standardised wording lives in the practice Knowledge Base, the more the finished SoA reads in your firm's voice. Where a piece of wording isn't found, Athena synthesises a fallback from the Australian financial planning guide and tells you so.

Client Workspace & Knowledge Base (Specific)

Add the client-specific documents Athena will draw on — fact finds, file notes, product comparisons, and cashflow projections.

Upload consolidated Fact Finds / Comparisons / Projections rather than raw data exports. This avoids raw-data overload.
For statements, insurance quotes, and certificates of currency, Athena reads them carefully to capture current balances and premiums.

Connect Your Integrations (Optional)

If your practice uses them, connect a cashflow platform and an investment-research / product-comparison provider in Paradino before you start. When connected, Athena offers to pull projections and research scenarios directly into the SoA as evidence. These steps only appear when the relevant integration is connected — see Phase 3.

Phase 2: Starting the Strategy & Writing the Brief

Step 1: Initialise the Strategy

Navigate to Strategy Assist in the client's file.
Click New Strategy.
Name the strategy (e.g. "SoA for Client X").
Select Strategy Type: Statement of Advice (or Record of Advice).
Select the Template you prepared in Phase 1.

Step 2: Use the New Agent

The Use the new agent toggle (marked 2nd generation) is on by default. With it on, your strategy runs with planning stages, more robust document generation, and the ability to switch between tasks and get notified when you need to provide input.

Tip: You can turn the toggle off to fall back to the 1st-generation agent, but the planning steps, confirmations, and notifications described in this guide are only available with the new agent.

Click Next to move to the brief.

Step 3: Write the Brief — "What should Athena do?"

The brief is your starting instruction to Athena. You can:

Select client documents from the picker to add them as inputs — each appears as a chip in the brief (e.g. "Draft an SoA using @File Note and @Cashflow Projection").
Or describe what Athena should retrieve in plain language, and let it find the right documents itself.
Provide additional context if needed — anything you want Athena to weigh, such as "the client has just retired" or "prioritise the income-protection recommendation".

If you leave the brief blank, Athena uses a sensible default — for an SoA, "Draft an SoA using the latest file note, cashflow projections and product comparison."

Tip: Pointing Athena at specific documents anchors it to exactly those sources. If you name or attach a document set, Athena builds the plan from those alone and won't sweep more widely unless you ask. If you name nothing, Athena proactively searches the client's Knowledge Base for the relevant material.

Click Start Strategy. Athena begins working through the plan automatically.

Phase 3: Planning with Athena (Confirm As You Go)

This is the heart of the new agent. Rather than generating in one pass, Athena builds the document in reviewable steps and pauses for your confirmation at each one. At every step you can confirm, edit, add, remove, or flag gaps directly in the chat. Athena will not move to the next step until you've confirmed the current one.

The Information Plan

Athena gathers the client's information and presents an Information Plan — a table of the sources it found and why each matters, plus any gaps it couldn't fill.

Review the sources. Confirm to proceed, edit the plan, or point Athena at additional documents.
Athena flags gaps explicitly (e.g. "missing: product comparison") rather than inventing data — provide the missing material or confirm the gap is acceptable.

Tip: You can ask Athena at any time to "show me the information plan again."

Investment Research / Product Scenario (only if a research provider is connected)

After the Information Plan is confirmed, Athena asks whether to include investment research or scenario evidence in this SoA.

If you decline, the document relies on Knowledge Base evidence and supplementary data instead.
If you agree, Athena helps you identify the right scenario — presenting candidates as a table if needed — and pulls that scenario report in as evidence for the strategies and the investment/product/asset-allocation sections.

Cashflow Projections (only if a cashflow platform is connected)

Next, Athena asks whether to include financial projections or modelling in the SoA.

If you decline, any cashflow or tax-projection section relies on Knowledge Base evidence or records the gap.
If you agree, Athena retrieves the available scenarios for the client and presents them as a table (scenario name, notes, projection start, years). You confirm which scenario is the recommended one.
If nothing is set up on the platform yet, Athena offers to build the client's base plan from the confirmed information, then models the recommended scenario using your instructions (e.g. salary sacrifice, extra contributions, downsizing).
You then choose the projection horizon — the full scenario, or the first 5, 10, or 20 years.
Athena shows a brief visual of the key figures (e.g. projected net worth or cashflow) so you can see the trajectory at a glance, and persists the projection so it feeds the strategies and any cashflow/tax section.

Tip: You can ask Athena to model a "what-if" at any time (e.g. "what if Charlie salary sacrifices $500/month until retirement?"). Athena models it as a new scenario, leaving the base plan untouched, and makes the result available to the rest of the document.

When both integrations are connected, Athena handles the investment-research step first, then cashflow.

The Strategy Plan

Athena develops the recommended strategies and presents a Strategy Plan — a table of each strategy with its rationale, grounded in the confirmed information and current-year rules, caps, and thresholds.

Confirm the strategies, or ask Athena to modify, add, or remove any of them. For example: "Update strategy 2 — the AIA waiting period is 30 days, not 60."
Athena preserves the strategies you didn't touch and shows you only what changed.

Supplementary Data

Once the strategies are confirmed, Athena assembles the supporting detail and presents a Supplementary Data table covering:

Strategy wording — the Recommendations, Benefits, and Risks & Consequences text for each strategy (from your practice Knowledge Base where available, synthesised otherwise, with the source noted).
Risk profile & target asset allocation — the client's documented profile.
PDS links — a Product Disclosure Statement link for each recommended product.

Review and confirm, edit any entry, or flag gaps. Athena records anything it couldn't find (e.g. a PDS link) rather than hiding it.

Tip: To check the exact wording before generation, ask Athena "show me the wording for strategy 3" — it reads back the stored Recommendations, Benefits, and Risks & Consequences text with the source for each.

Document Preferences

Finally, Athena surfaces any style preferences it has learned from your previous work (see Learned Preferences in Phase 6) and folds in any styling instructions you've given in chat this session (e.g. "bold all dollar figures", "keep sections concise"). Confirm what to apply, and Athena uses these preferences throughout generation.

Crucial: If you provide new material after the plan is confirmed but before the document has been generated, Athena re-plans — it updates the Information Plan and re-confirms the strategies and supplementary data. Once the document has been generated, new material is instead treated as a refinement (see Phase 6).

Phase 4: Generation & Assembly

Once your preferences are confirmed, Athena generates the document. It assigns specialised workers to generate the different sections simultaneously from your template, then assembles them into the complete document.

This typically takes a few minutes — Athena streams a progress line as each section finishes.
The assembled document appears in the editor panel beside the chat, ready for review. It's saved automatically.

Phase 5: Notifications & Stepping Away

Because the planning and generation steps run for a few minutes each, Athena keeps you informed so you don't have to wait and watch.

Step-away cues. When a long step begins, a calm notice appears above the chat input letting you know you can step away — for example:
- "Gathering the client's information. This can take a few minutes — feel free to step away; you'll be notified when the information plan is ready."
- "Developing the recommended strategies… you'll be notified when the strategy plan is ready."
- "Gathering supplementary data… you'll be notified when it's ready."
- "Generating the document. This can take several minutes… you'll be notified when the draft is ready."
You're notified when input is needed. When the Information Plan, Strategy Plan, or supplementary data is ready for your review, you get a notification (e.g. "information plan is ready — click to review and confirm") that pages you straight back to the task.
Switch tasks freely. You can move to other clients or tasks in Paradino while Athena works, and return when it's ready for you.
Live activity. The chat shows Athena's progress in real time, so you can see what it's doing at each step.

The assembled document is a starting point you can refine conversationally.

AI-Assisted Edits

Instruct Athena via the chat window to refine the document. Athena identifies the affected section(s) for you — you don't need to specify section numbers.

Edit content within a section — reword a paragraph, update a figure or table row, add a sentence. Athena applies the targeted change and tells you exactly what it changed.
Remove an entire section — ask Athena to remove it.
Add practice content to a section — ask Athena to pull in a product blurb, your standard fee arrangement text, or a disclaimer from the practice Knowledge Base, and it regenerates that section with the new content included.
Adding a brand-new section is not supported — the structure is fixed by the template. Athena will say so and offer to expand an existing section instead.

Tip: Athena cannot reorder sections or make significant structural changes after generation — it follows the template structure. Set the section order in the template (Phase 1) before you start.

Interactive Charts

Where a section contains a suitable table (for example a target asset allocation or a multi-year projection), Athena can present it as a chart — such as an asset-allocation pie or a projection bar chart — so the recommendation is easy for the client to read.

Learned Preferences

Athena remembers your document-generation preferences across sessions and applies them to future documents, so you don't have to restate them each time.

Example of Learned Preferences: a preference for plain-English wording, bolded dollar figures, concise three-to-four-sentence paragraphs, or risks presented as bullet points.
Athena learns style and formatting preferences only — it does not carry over one-off, client-specific edits (such as a particular fee figure).

Phase 7: Create a Digital Presentation (SoA only)

From a Statement of Advice you can also create a digital presentation to share with your client.

Once the document has generated, click Advice Presentation to turn the finished SoA into a client-ready presentation you can refine and share.

Summary of Best Practices

Area	Best Practice
Template	Put sections in the exact final order — Athena follows the template strictly and can't reorder after generation.
Per-strategy blocks	Use template placeholders / repeated Benefits & "Things you should know" headings so Athena renders one block per strategy.
Practice Knowledge Base	Keep standardised strategy wording, risk profiles, fees, and product blurbs current so the SoA reads in your firm's voice.
Client inputs	Upload consolidated Fact Finds, comparisons, and projections — avoid raw-data overload.
Integrations	Connect your cashflow and investment-research providers before starting so Athena can offer to pull them in as evidence.
The brief	Name or attach the documents you want used to anchor Athena to exactly those sources; add context where it helps.
Confirm as you go	Review each step (Information Plan → Strategy Plan → Supplementary Data → Preferences) carefully — confirming locks it in before Athena proceeds.
Flag gaps, don't fill blindly	Athena surfaces what it couldn't find; provide the missing material rather than accepting an invented value.
Refine in chat	Use plain-language instructions to edit content, remove sections, or pull in practice content — no need to specify section numbers.
Step away	Switch tasks while Athena works; you'll be notified when it needs your input or the draft is ready.