AI voice agents for prospect qualification in wealth management ask only routing questions: how they found the firm, what they want help with, their timeline and whether their assets meet the firm's minimum. They never ask about risk tolerance or holdings. They book a discovery meeting or connect an advisor. Outbound AI prospect calls need prior express written consent.
Key Takeaways
- Ask whether assets clear the firm's minimum, never for an exact figure.
- Risk tolerance and holdings questions belong to the advisor, not the agent.
- An outbound AI-voice call to a prospect needs signed written consent first.
This post is part of our guide to AI voice agents for wealth management, where prospect calls come last, after compliance review. Below, we cover the questions and consent rules for prospect calls. Then we set up the prospect call in Dograh, the open-source AI voice agent platform we build.
The questions a prospect call asks
A prospect call collects routing facts for the advisor, and nothing that starts advice. The agent asks how the prospect heard about the firm, what they want help with, their timeline and when they would like to meet. It also asks whether their investable assets are above or below the firm's minimum, such as $500,000, and never for an exact figure.
It never asks about risk tolerance or current holdings. Those questions start a client profile, and that profile is the advisor's work in the discovery meeting. A prospect who is asked about "risk appetite" by an AI on the first call has started a suitability conversation with no advisor present.
Each answer becomes an extracted variable that the agent records as the prospect stated it. That record is an AI summary, and the transcript and recording are the exact record. A Webhook node sends the answers to your CRM after the call. The general pattern, for any business, is in AI voice agents for lead qualification. This post stays with what changes for advisory firms.
A prospect below the minimum hears the firm's fixed referral line, played as Transition Speech on a "below minimum" pathway, such as "We may not be the best fit right now. Here's a firm that works with clients at your stage." The agent never judges the prospect's money in its own words.
Inbound first, outbound on written consent
Inbound calls are the safe place to start, because the prospect chose to call you. Outbound calls are different. Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the FCC's 2024 ruling on AI-generated voices treats an AI voice as an artificial voice, so the calling rules for artificial voices apply to every AI call you place.
A call to a prospect encourages them to invest through your firm, so it is telemarketing, and an artificial-voice telemarketing call needs prior express written consent. Under the FCC's calling rules, that means a written agreement the prospect signed, electronically or on paper, that clearly allows such calls to the number given. It must also say that signing is not a condition of buying anything. A past inquiry or an old client relationship does not stand in for it.
So a callback to a web-form lead generally rests on the consent that form captured. Your own system checks that record before it starts the call through the API Trigger, because Dograh keeps no consent store. The same rules allow sales calls to homes only between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the prospect's own time zone. A campaign's calling hours run in one time zone, so split the list by time zone and set the hours for each campaign.
A prospect who asks not to be called again comes off your own list. The agent writes the opt-out to your system through an HTTP API tool, and your system removes the number from the next list, because Dograh keeps no do-not-call list.
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Broker-dealers add FINRA's telemarketing rule
Firms that are broker-dealers, or dual registrants calling on the brokerage side, follow FINRA's telemarketing rule on top of the TCPA. It sets the same 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. window for calls to a residence. It also requires a firm-specific do-not-call list, with each request honored within 30 days, and caller ID on every call.
The rule also tells the caller what to say at the start: their own name, the firm's name, a phone number or address where the firm can be reached, and that the call is a sales call for securities or related services. Put those disclosures in the Start Call Greeting Text, which is spoken word for word, so they never depend on the model's wording. What name an AI agent gives as "the caller" is a question for your compliance team. SEC-registered advisers that are not FINRA members follow the TCPA rules above.
The prospect script gets compliance review
Anything the agent says about the firm's services is part of a script, so compliance reviews it before the first call. The SEC Marketing Rule covers communications that offer an adviser's services to prospective clients, and it leaves out extemporaneous, live, oral communications. Whether an AI agent's speech counts as live and oral is not settled, so do not lean on that exclusion.
Treat the prompt and its fixed lines like any other material that describes the firm. Keep a copy of each version that went live, and keep the agent from describing performance or fees beyond what the approved script says. Then use QA with a System Prompt that flags any call where the agent went past the script, and keep the Sample Rate at 100% while you start out. Treat this as general information, and confirm your firm's position with counsel.
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Handing the prospect to an advisor
The call ends with a booked discovery meeting or an advisor on the line. Transfer Call works on Twilio, Telnyx, Plivo, Cloudonix and Asterisk ARI. Dograh calls the destination first and connects the caller only when someone answers. On Twilio, it can play a short spoken introduction to both people before connecting them.
Set the destination source to Dynamic HTTP Resolver so your system picks the advisor, such as the one on duty or the one who covers the prospect's state. Your system must always return a number, even if it is a general sales line. No summary travels with the call by default, so the agent writes the answers to your CRM through an HTTP API tool first, and the advisor picks up already knowing the prospect's goal and timeline.
If nobody answers within the 30-second default, the prospect stays with the agent. Tell it in the prompt to book a discovery meeting from the advisor's live slots instead. AI voice agents for advisory appointment scheduling covers how that booking works, including meeting lengths and retry-safe writes.
Glossary
- Prior express written consent
- A signed agreement, electronic signatures included, that clearly allows sales calls with an artificial or AI voice to a given number and says signing is not a condition of purchase. An outbound AI call to a prospect needs it.
- Asset minimum
- The smallest amount of investable assets a firm takes on. The agent asks only whether a prospect is above or below it, so the record never holds an exact figure.
- Discovery meeting
- The first meeting between a prospect and an advisor, where goals and risk are discussed. The voice agent books it and leaves every profiling question to the advisor.
- API Trigger
- The Dograh endpoint your own system calls to start an outbound agent call. Dograh keeps no consent store, so your system checks the prospect's written consent record before it calls the trigger.
