Investsuite’s Storyteller turns reports into narratives

Investsuite launched Storyteller earlier this year to convert quarterly investment reports into narrative-driven, interactive formats that label top and bottom performers as “heroes” and “villains.” The platform has more than 5,000 users. Standard Life, the largest pension provider in the UK and Europe, represents nearly half of Investsuite’s client base.

Storyteller combines portfolio data with written and audio narratives and delivers results as interactive PDFs, videos and personalized podcasts. A web version is available for advisers to use during client meetings. The product groups holdings by sector and asset classification so clients can see whether a position is, for example, a large-cap or a small-cap stock.

David Connor, an Investsuite executive with 35 years in the industry, described the product as built from adviser feedback to make portfolio composition and performance easier to understand. “Stories are the best way I know to accomplish that,” Connor added, explaining that a “hero” marks a holding with strong positive return or loss mitigation while a “villain” denotes an underperformer.

On the technology side, Investsuite uses a deterministic form of artificial intelligence that pulls only from a firm’s internal systems — the CRM, the portfolio management system and other internal data — and does not use external sources. The platform runs attribution and a news-matching algorithm, then assembles narratives from a pre-built database of scenario templates rather than relying on open-ended AI text generation. Investsuite says pre-approved language can be used to meet compliance requirements and limit inaccurate statements.

Standard Life ran a controlled study with 600 participants split into two groups of 300. After three months, the group that received Storyteller reports increased contributions by 30% compared with the control group. Investsuite also reports adoption among several registered investment advisers in the United States.

Connor estimated that about eight in 10 clients do not fully understand what they own, which can make client conversations harder. Connor noted Storyteller is intended to make reports more accessible, sustain dialogue during reviews and help advisers engage younger family members in discussions about wealth transfer.

Firms can configure data access and restrict the language used in reports to satisfy compliance teams. Advisers can personalize the presentation for each client while relying on a curated set of scenarios and data inputs to maintain consistency and accuracy.