The Problem
Lockstitch Financial is a wealth advisory firm with a content bottleneck. They needed to produce compliance-reviewed client letters, quarterly market updates, internal research briefs, and educational content for their client base.
The problem wasn't ideas — it was throughput. Every piece had to go through a compliance review process, which created a queue that limited output to about one piece per week. The team had the expertise but not the bandwidth.
What We Diagnosed
We mapped the content production pipeline and identified three bottlenecks:
- First draft creation — advisors spending 3–4 hours per piece writing from scratch
- Compliance pre-screening — waiting for compliance review, often 2–3 day turnaround
- Formatting and distribution — manual formatting for different channels (email, web, print)
We determined that draft creation and formatting were highly automatable, while compliance review required human judgment but could be accelerated with pre-screening.
What We Built
- Assisted writing pipeline that generates first drafts from advisor notes, research inputs, and a library of approved language patterns
- Compliance rules engine that pre-screens drafts against Lockstitch's compliance guidelines before human review — flagging potential issues and suggesting compliant alternatives
- Multi-channel formatting that takes an approved piece and outputs it for email, web publication, and PDF in one step
The Results
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Content throughput | ~1 piece/week | ~3 pieces/week |
| Time per piece | 6–8 hours | 2–3 hours |
| Compliance review time | 2–3 days | Same day (with pre-screening) |
| Output multiplier | — | 3× |
The compliance team specifically noted that pre-screened drafts arrived with fewer issues, which reduced their review time even though the volume tripled.