Since ChatGPT’s launch, financial and professional services firms have been embracing AI to accelerate research, modelling, and drafting of pitchbooks, due diligence reports, investment memos, and more. Financial regulators are reporting a 12% increase in AI adoption since 2022, with 75% of firms now using it and another 10% planning to within three years.
But here’s the reality: while juniors can now produce more content per person, the reviewing stage hasn’t kept pace. Ensuring numbers are accurate and slides are on brand remains the biggest drag on client delivery. And the stakes are high: a single error or off-brand slide can damage credibility and erode client trust. Worse still, this work falls to senior managers – some of the most expensive and strategically valuable people in the firm. Freeing their time for higher-value work is critical.
At UpSlide, we’ve heard this repeatedly from our clients. So, we set out to solve it. If you’re planning your Microsoft 365 and AI roadmap for the next two or three years, here’s how we’ll help you deliver client-ready reports and pitchbooks faster, and with confidence.
AI reshaped how we work, not what great work looks like
The way work gets done has changed, but two forces explain why the way financial services firms use AI still presents critical gaps – but also opportunities to take workflows to the next stage of efficiency.
Drafting is (somewhat) solved. Reviewing isn’t.
Generative tools can now accelerate first reports and pitchbook drafts, with clients seeing value in two main ways:
- Using chatbots like Microsoft Copilot to quickly research and explain themes without relying on subject matter experts, while enhancing the quality and impact of text.
- Leveraging data mobility tools to transfer and combine VDR intelligence with external providers such as LSEG, S&P, and FactSet.
That’s progress, but it hasn’t fixed the real bottleneck: late-stage number mismatches, formatting cleanup, brand drift under pressure, and slow approvals. Senior managers are bearing the brunt of this shift – and AI investments aren’t delivering real results to clients.
The firms that will win aren’t the ones who draft fastest; they’re the ones who streamline reviews and approvals without slowing down.
The toggle tax is killing flow
Even with great tools, fragmented workflows break focus. Research shows digital workers switch between apps and sites roughly 1,200 times per day, losing nearly four hours each week just re‑orienting after each switch – time that should be spent elevating client work. The cost isn’t just minutes; it’s cognitive load, errors, and approvals that stall.
Where we’re headed:
Our vision for UpSlide AI is to bring AI-powered reviews to where work already lives, inside Microsoft 365, so quality, brand, and compliance become accelerators, not obstacles.
How UpSlide AI helps M&A teams (inside M365)
Over the past months, we’ve sat down with our clients to discuss how generative AI is supporting their work – and where it falls short. Three challenges emerged:
- Quality and brand alignment: Making documents client-ready the first time – consistent layouts, correct styles, clean structure, easy reviews.
- Numbers you can trust: Keeping figures in sync across slides and documents – no last‑minute contradictions.
- Fewer steps, fewer tabs: Bringing all actions into Microsoft 365 to save teams from playing bookmark bingo across portals.
We’ve listened, and we’ve built functionality to solve those challenges.
AI-assisted reviewing to solve the “senior” bottleneck
UpSlide AI will act like a senior reviewer inside PowerPoint, so you can approve faster:
- Catch and fix inconsistencies across numbers (e.g., EBITDA showing $12.3m on one slide and $12.8m on another), references, and text; spot broken data links or outdated components.
- Use natural “please fix”‑style commands to trigger multi‑step changes (e.g., “remove the third tombstone and realign the rest across the slide”) without hunting through menus.
How we’re already supporting this today:
We’ve laid the groundwork with Track Changes for PowerPoint, a feature that makes version control and collaboration easier by showing exactly what’s changed in your slides. This reduces back‑and‑forth between reviewer and reviewee and speeds up approvals, even before AI enters the picture.
Bringing your AI and data into Microsoft 365 (no context or toggle switching)
As more firms invest in internal chatbots, data services, and specialist tools, we want to surface them in the UpSlide side panel and ribbon so actions live where work happens – reducing toggles and improving adoption. Access is governed with a firm’s existing Entra ID groups (no shadow directory).
How UpSlide AI bridges the gap in the wider AI ecosystem
The AI landscape in financial services is evolving fast. Dozens of tools now generate content using AI with the aim of revolutionizing document creation. This ranges from Microsoft Copilot, to highly-specialized players focused on financial services use cases for summarizing research and repurposing data to draft slides.
AI generated content is great for starting to answer client requests, but here’s the truth: drafting is only half of the story.
What our financial services firms’ clients care about hasn’t changed: original perspectives articulated with accurate data, wrapped together in consistent branding. Together these act as a proxy signal for trust and quality – strategically aligned propositions don’t land if the numbers don’t match or the formatting lacks polish.
That’s where UpSlide comes in: turning AI output into branded slides with the details that matter, and the tools to tweak, review and edit directly inside the number one storytelling tool – PowerPoint.
Think of it this way:
- Drafting AI agents accelerate ideation and first versions.
- UpSlide AI ensures those drafts become client-ready deliverables: accurate, on-brand, and approved faster.
Our vision is an open ecosystem where generative tools handle the research and writing, and UpSlide acts as the specialist layer for review and refinement.
Together, we create a seamless pipeline from “first draft” to “final approval” – without the toggle tax, without the brand risk, and without burning senior time on endless checks.
Our goal is to remain infrastructure-agnostic and ensure our clients have the flexibility to use their generation tools of preference – leveraging UpSlide alongside them.
The result? Faster time-to-approval, stronger brand control, and data consistency.
Not “yet another tool,” but the specialist layer that makes Microsoft 365 output client-ready at scale.
UpSlide AI today and what’s next
Today, you can already rely on UpSlide for the foundations of high-quality deliverables.
Core capabilities our clients already rely on:
- Excel to PowerPoint/Word Link to keep models and narrative aligned.
- Libraries for approved, on-brand content.
- Formatting and structuring tools (TOC, sections, styles, charts/tables).
- Surfacing internal tools in Microsoft 365 to minimize context switching and govern access with Entra ID.
- PowerPoint Track Changes to reduce version control and speed up reviews.
AI-powered features available now:
- AI Assistant to shorten, translate and refine your presentation commentary and analysis to have maximum impact.
- AI Glossary to generate a perfectly formatted, alphabetically-ordered glossary slide in seconds.
What’s coming next
Our 2025 roadmap is laser focused on reviewing and improving draft content – regardless of whether it is produced by reusing existing assets, by writing new content, or by relying on gen AI agents:
- AI-powered Consistency Check to reduce back and forth between reviewer and reviewee in PowerPoint.
- Natural language prompting to create and edit slides, so you don’t need to be a PowerPoint or UpSlide expert to produce brand compliant decks.
Our vision: to be the ideal agentic AI partner for content refinement, formatting, and reviewing – wherever the content originates.
Planning your AI roadmap with UpSlide AI
When evaluating your Microsoft 365 and AI stack, the key isn’t “Who drafts fastest?”, it’s who helps you approve with confidence. Our focus is the reviewing bottleneck: embedding AI where your teams work, governed by Entra ID, and designed to work alongside Copilot and your internal tools, not against them.
Ready to end the reviewing bottleneck with UpSlide?
- Talk to us → Book a discovery call
- See how to surface your internal tools in Microsoft 365 → Read the guide: Surfacing your tools within Microsoft Office using UpSlide
TL;DR
AI adoption is rising in financial services, but while drafting is faster, reviewing remains a bottleneck.
Senior managers are spending too much time fixing formatting, checking numbers, and approving slides.
UpSlide AI bridges the gap by embedding review, refinement, and formatting tools directly inside Microsoft 365.
UpSlide doesn’t replace drafting tools that use AI – it complements them by turning AI output into client-ready deliverables.
The UpSlide AI vision: an open ecosystem where generative AI handles ideation, and UpSlide ensures quality, trust, and delivery.
The result: faster approvals, stronger brand control, and reduced senior time spent on manual checks.
