Practifi's Sentir folds AI into the CRM's core

Practifi wants the advisor-CRM relationship to run from data delivery instead of data entry, and this week's launch of Practifi Sentir is its most literal attempt yet: an AI-native system the Chicago vendor describes as the first in a "new category" of wealth-management CRM, with intelligence embedded in the platform rather than layered on top. InvestmentNews reported the launch Aug. 27.

The original product, rebranded Practifi Naya, remains available for firms that prefer a configurable but non-agentic CRM. Sentir's 16 named AI agents work across every client record and interaction, generating daily briefings, drafting meeting notes to a firm's template, and answering plain-language questions about household history or portfolio-wide trends; a permissioned MCP server extends that same client context into other AI tools advisors already use.

CEO Adrian Johnstone framed the launch as an attempt to subvert the arrangement advisors have lived with. "For decades, CRMs have been perceived as takers. A system where advisors need to input and constantly update information," he said. "With Sentir ingrained in operations, client service, and account management, advisors can view their CRM as a giver." Head of product Conor Curtis said the agents draw on more than 200 primary sources spanning industry guidance, academic research, and legislation, grounding output rather than leaving advisors with generalized, unverified answers. "Advisors have spent decades learning to speak computer just to get what they need out of a CRM," Curtis said. "We wanted to flip that dynamic."

Salesforce, whose Financial Services Cloud remains among the more widely used CRM platforms in the advisory space, rolled out its own agentic AI suite in June, contrasting it with tools that work "completely detached from [firms'] core system of record," while Advisor CRM launched a branded AI onboarding tool the same month. Each is a bet on integration over detachment, but Practifi's is the most literal — the intelligence lives inside the database.

The moment is right for the argument: days before the launch, this publication's reporting on the 7.5 out of 10 problem hanging over every RIA CRM found advisor satisfaction with CRMs lagging planning software, and AI notetakers pushing beyond the transcript as CRM platforms close in. Sentir is Practifi's answer to both, folding the notetaker into the CRM and trying to close the gap between the system's data and the advisor's question.

The practical test is trust. Sixteen agents are a lot of machinery to maintain, and firms will have to decide whether the briefings and drafts drawn from more than 200 sources are reliable enough to skip the double-check. The first firms to run Sentir on real client records will decide whether "AI-native" is a category or a tagline.