BUILT BY SEGMENTUM · COWORK COST GUIDE
What Copilot Cowork costs a financial advice firm
For a typical 14-person advice firm - eight in paraplanning and administration, three advisers, three directors - Copilot Cowork comes to roughly £1,800 a month all in: licences and usage together, about £129 per person. Below is what the everyday jobs cost, and the calculator set up with advice-firm defaults so you can put your own numbers in.
What the everyday tasks cost
Annual client review pack - 500-1,200 credits - £3.95 to £9.48 per run
Research summary ahead of a client meeting - 700-1,500 credits - £5.53 to £11.85
Meeting notes and follow-up letters - 300-700 credits - £2.37 to £5.53
Client onboarding letters - 100-300 credits - £0.79 to £2.37
A paraplanner assembling six review packs a month is spending £24 to £57 on the job that shapes their week. The saving lands in paraplanning first, not advice.
Your team
Starting numbers match the example on this page - change them to fit your business.
Your estimate
Uses Microsoft's default usage mix and list pricing ($0.01 per Copilot Credit, billed in US dollars), ex-VAT. Licences assume Microsoft 365 Business Standard plus a Copilot licence per person. For the full step-by-step version, use the calculator on the home page. Pricing last verified 13 July 2026.
Where the usage actually goes
Advice-firm work is review-cycle work: the annual pack, the meeting notes, the follow-up letters. That's paraplanner territory, which is where usage concentrates - the advisers' names are on the output, but the assembly hours belong to the back office, and so does most of the saving.
The line to hold is regulatory. A suitability report carries the firm's advice, and the FCA's Consumer Duty doesn't care who - or what - drafted it. Cowork can assemble the facts, the history and a first structure; the advice itself, and the sign-off, stays with a person whose name is on the register. Treat AI drafting like a paraplanner's work: reviewed, always.
The boundary: your back-office system and platform data sit outside Microsoft 365. Valuations and client records inside those platforms need exporting before Cowork can touch them - the reachable work is the correspondence, documents and spreadsheets around them, which in most firms is still where the admin hours live.
Common questions
Can Cowork draft suitability reports?
It can draft the structure and assemble facts from your files - but suitability is regulated advice, and the reasoning and sign-off must be the adviser's. Use it as paraplanning support, not report automation.
Does it reach our back-office system?
Not out of the box - it works across Microsoft 365. Platform valuations and client records need exporting first, or connectors where they exist.
Where does an advice firm see value first?
Review pack assembly, meeting follow-ups, and research summaries - the paraplanning workload. That's also where the hours are measurable.
Is client data safe in it?
It works within your Microsoft 365 tenant under your existing permissions - nothing leaves that wasn't already reachable. The real work is making sure those permissions are right before you start, and noting AI use in your data protection documentation.
BEFORE YOU COMMIT
That's the cost. The harder question is whether it's the answer.
A new tool sitting on top of an estate that nobody fully understands usually adds cost, not clarity. So before you commit the budget, it's worth asking a simpler question: is Cowork actually your constraint, or is it something underneath it? We help established UK businesses get a clear view of what they're running - and whether the next bit of spend earns its place.
Pricing and defaults last verified
13 July 2026
against Microsoft's published documentation.
Figures use Microsoft list pricing ($0.01 per Copilot Credit, billed in US dollars) converted at roughly £1 = $1.27, ex-VAT. Usage defaults come from Microsoft's Cowork Frontier programme data. This is a budgeting aid, not a quote - confirm current pricing with Microsoft. This is an independent tool built by Segmentum and is not produced or endorsed by Microsoft. "Microsoft 365", "Copilot" and "Cowork" are trademarks of Microsoft, used for identification only.