To get ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to recommend your advisory practice, make it easy for them to find and check what you do. That means a page that states your SEBI registration and how you charge, listings that match each other, honest mentions on trusted sites, and advertising that stays inside SEBI’s rules. Advisers have SEBI’s advertising rules to work within, so the order matters.
This guide walks through each part in the order we’d tackle it for a practice in Thane, Navi Mumbai or anywhere else. Where a rule is changing, we say so.
Why do investors ask AI before they call an adviser?
Most people who need an adviser don’t know where to start. They want to understand SIPs, the tax on mutual fund gains or whether they’re on track to retire at 55, so they type the question into an AI tool before they phone anyone.
A survey by HSBC and Ipsos, reported in June 2026, of affluent and high-net-worth investors found that 86% of Indian respondents use AI for finance and investing, the highest share of any market in the study. The global average was 73%, according to Outlook Money’s report on the survey. It covers wealthier investors, so read it as a direction rather than a census.
The same survey is clear that people still want a human. Financial professionals were the main source of investment ideas for 67% of respondents and the top influence on final decisions for 31%. And 51% preferred a hybrid of AI and a human adviser. The AI gets the first look. You still get the call, if your page makes the case.
What does an AI tool look for in a financial adviser?
There’s no approved list. When someone asks for an adviser in Thane, the AI searches the web, reads a handful of pages and names the firms those pages describe clearly. Our guide on how AI tools decide which business to recommend explains the mechanics. For an adviser, these are the things that count.
| What the AI checks | What you should publish |
|---|---|
| Are you registered, and for what? | Your SEBI registration number and category, or your ARN if you distribute funds, on the homepage and every service page |
| How do you get paid? | A fee page in plain words: fee-only, commission or both, with one worked example |
| Who does the work? | Named advisers, the qualifications they actually hold and what each one handles |
| Do the details agree? | The same name, address and phone on your website, Google, LinkedIn and Justdial |
| What do other people say? | Genuine client reviews, press mentions and professional body listings |
| Can the advice be checked? | Plain articles on SIPs, tax and retirement that say what they don’t cover |
A line like “Your trusted wealth partner” gives an AI nothing to repeat. “Fee-only adviser in Thane, with a flat annual fee for retirement planning” does, provided that’s how you actually work.
Does it matter whether you’re an adviser or a distributor?
It matters a lot, and your website should say which one you are. A SEBI-registered investment adviser gives advice under its own registration and charges for it. A mutual fund distributor sells funds and earns commission under an AMFI Registration Number (ARN). The two are regulated differently, so a client reading your site should be able to tell which you are within a few seconds.
SEBI keeps a current list of registered advisers, and investors are told to check that the name is on it and to ask for the registration certificate. Put your registration details where that check takes no effort.
Distributors have a sharper trap. AMFI publishes a list of ARNs it has declared invalid. Those are distributors whose firm names still include adviser-type terms without the required name change, and AMCs have been told to stop accepting business from them since 1 July 2021. If you distribute funds, check your ARN status before you put “advisory” on your homepage.
What can you say in your ads, and what must you leave out?
This is where most advisers get caught out. SEBI’s advertisement code for investment advisers and research analysts, issued as a circular dated 5 April 2023, took effect on 1 May 2023. It rules out superlatives such as “best”, “No 1”, “top adviser” and “leading”, and it says ads can’t promise assured returns to investors, as The Week reported when the code was issued. Under that code, an adviser’s ads also need prior approval from a SEBI-recognised supervisory body.
SEBI has since notified a Common Advertisement Code, on 8 October 2026. A compliance firm’s summary says it comes into force on the 180th day after gazette publication, which works out to about 7 April 2027. It bars guaranteed or risk-free return claims and says celebrity endorsements need approval from the supervisory body. Check with your compliance adviser whether your ordinary ads still need pre-approval once it applies. Until it applies, the 2023 rules still govern, so check which one applies on the day you publish.
Do listings and reviews still count?
Yes. Google says that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking”, and that “businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results”. For a practice, that means one name, one address and one phone number across your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and Justdial, with the services you really offer listed by name.
Ask happy clients for reviews in the normal way, and reply to every one. Client testimonials need a compliance check first, though. One compliance firm’s summary of the 2026 code describes testimonials as prohibited in covered advertisements, so don’t put a client quote on your homepage until your compliance adviser has signed it off.
Mentions on other sites help for a similar reason. A quote in a business paper, a talk at a college that gets written up or a listing with a professional body all give anyone checking you a second page to compare against. You don’t control those pages, which is why they carry weight.
Can AI tools read your site?
Check that your robots.txt file isn’t blocking OpenAI’s search crawler. OpenAI describes OAI-SearchBot as “used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features”, and says sites that block it “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”. It also says robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours to apply.
Google’s position is simpler. Its guidance says a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet, and that “there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary”. For most practices, good SEO does most of the job.
Keep fee tables and service details as plain text on the page. A fee card saved as a PDF or an image is harder for a client to check and quote. Our AI SEO service covers the crawler and content setup in one go, and if you serve clients across several areas, our local SEO work covers the listings for each.
What results can a practice realistically expect?
We don’t have a case study from a financial adviser yet, so we won’t invent one. The closest example is a produce exporter in Thane that sells to the USA. It’s a different sector, but it shows AI referrals can be measured. Its AI assistant referrals went from 0 to 43 a month. Its keyword result, 9 of 14 US keywords in the top 3, is a Google Search result, not an AI one.
Plan on a few months, not a few weeks, before a pattern shows across tools. Track it monthly and change one thing at a time, so you can see what moved the answer.
How do you check whether AI recommends your practice?
Test it once a month in fresh chats across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok. Ask what your clients actually ask:
- “Which fee-only financial planner in Thane can help me plan my retirement?”
- “Is a SEBI-registered adviser in Navi Mumbai better than a mutual fund distributor for SIPs?”
- “Who explains capital gains tax on mutual funds in plain English in Mumbai?”
- “Which advisers in Kalyan work with first-time investors?”
Note whether your practice is named, what the tool says about your fees and which pages it cites. If an answer quotes an old fee or a wrong registration number, fix the page it cites first.
Frequently asked questions
Can I pay ChatGPT or Gemini to recommend my advisory practice? No. These tools name firms based on the pages they read and the sources they check. You can improve those pages and earn honest mentions, but there’s no paid place in the answer.
Can I call my firm the best adviser in town? No, not in an advertisement. SEBI’s code for advisers bans superlatives such as “best”, “No 1”, “top adviser” and “leading”. Describe what you do and let the facts carry the page.
Can I show my clients’ returns on my website? Not casually. Don’t show return figures in an ad without a compliance check. Have your compliance adviser check the figures and the wording first.
Can a mutual fund distributor use “advisory” in its firm name? Not until the required name change is done. AMFI lists distributors whose ARNs are invalid for this reason, and AMCs stopped accepting their business from 1 July 2021. Check your ARN status before you rename your website.
Does a SEBI registration help AI tools recommend me? It gives your page something checkable to state, and it gives clients a reason to trust you. On its own it won’t make an AI tool name you. The pages around it, your listings, reviews and mentions, do most of that work.
Find out what AI says about your practice
We’ll ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok the questions your clients ask, show you who gets named, and point out what needs fixing within SEBI’s rules. It’s free. Request your AI visibility check.
