200 documents a day: the agent that files and summarises for a family office
How an agent handles a family office's incoming documents without touching investment decisions.
Geneva-based family office, twelve people, three families served. Audit conversation in March. The same observation as with other firms we have met: partners collectively lose half a full-time position every month filing and reading incoming documents.
Here is the agent we would build — and the one we would not.
The current workflow
Every day the office receives:
- Custodian bank reports (PDF, mixed formats).
- Private bank letters (positions, transactions, fees).
- KYC documents for held structures (articles, registers, powers of attorney).
- Correspondence from clients and their lawyers / tax advisers.
An assistant files them by family, by matter, by date. Partners read what is urgent and set the rest aside for "later". Later rarely arrives.
The agent
1. Classification. For each incoming document (email or drop into a watched folder), the agent identifies: family concerned, type (report / KYC / correspondence / tax), urgency, reference period. It moves the file into the correct folder tree and indexes it.
2. Summary. For non-routine documents (correspondence, one-off letters, requests), the agent writes a one-to-three-sentence summary: who is writing, about what, action expected, deadline.
3. Morning briefing. Every morning at 7:30, each partner receives an email covering what arrived yesterday, sorted by family, with summaries attached. Three sections: read today, for information, automatically archived.
What it gives back
- No more backlog. Everything that came in yesterday is filed this morning.
- Focused reading. You read the 7:30 briefing and know in five minutes what deserves your time.
- Instant search. The index lets you find "the letter received in November 2024 from bank X about structure Y" in seconds.
What it does not do
- The agent never decides what is important for the family. It flags; you judge.
- It does not touch investment decisions. No advice, no recommendations, no automation on positions.
- It does not process sensitive tax or legal documents without human involvement. These documents are identified and set aside for handling by a partner.
Cost and timeline
Six to eight weeks for a deployment with Swiss hosting, action logging, and human-in-the-loop safeguards. The pilot on a single family fits in three weeks.
A free 30-minute audit will tell you whether this workflow profile exists in your firm — and whether the agent is worth it.