Financial services leader Hargreaves Lansdown adopts Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams Premium to drive productivity and improve customer experiences

Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) is one of the UK’s leading financial services companies, managing more than £134 billion (US$165 billion) in assets for 1.8 million clients. For the financial advisors who meet with those clients, delivering exceptional service and building trust is paramount. With the advent of generative AI, HL saw the potential to redefine key business workflows to drive increased productivity with their employees that would result in differentiated experiences for their clients. Case in point, while answering client questions and listening to their concerns in a digital meeting, advisors often found their attention torn between manual notetaking and keeping the conversation moving. After a session, advisors had to manually transfer their notes to a branded template to send to customers. Dispensing personalized advice and professional-looking documentation this way helps HL advisers win the loyalty of clients, but it was a time-consuming process—one that was ripe for optimization.

That’s one scenario where Vicki Holman, Collaboration Platform Owner at Hargreaves Lansdown, identified the potential for AI features from Microsoft to help HL people work more efficiently, all without losing the company’s essential focus on clients. With Microsoft Teams Premium, an enhanced Teams experience with additional features and security controls including AI-generated action items and watermarked video feeds, and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, a next-generation AI tool, the business is helping save time and streamline work. By combining Teams Premium and Copilot, HL is bringing advanced security and leading-edge generative AI together to promote a more intelligent way to work. Already, 96 percent of employees who use Copilot are reporting that they find the tool useful, and the majority expect it to become even more so.

Those financial advisors tasked with taking and sharing meeting notes with clients? Today, many use Teams Premium features like AI Notes and Intelligent Recap along with Copilot to transform the process. Their goal is to use the new tools from Microsoft to reduce a 4-hour process to one that takes a single hour. Not only will these employees save time, but they will also be empowered to give more dedicated attention to customers.

HL’s early success with the AI features in Teams Premium and Copilot is in keeping with Holman’s vision for how the business could use new technology to advance its market edge. “When I saw an opportunity for Hargreaves Lansdown to start using Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, I thought it would be an exciting chance for us to put ourselves ahead of the curve,” says Holman. “Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, coupled with Microsoft Teams Premium, is a chance for us to transform how we work and deliver even better experiences for clients.” 

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Teams Premium streamlines collaboration, writing, research

Rob Compton, Unix Infrastructure Manager at Hargreaves Lansdown, describes his role as one that requires constantly staying up to date on lengthy documentation, sending and reading a large volume of emails, and attending countless meetings, “some of which overlap,” he says. In short, his role is well-placed to benefit from the time-saving potential of AI. Working in combination, Teams Premium and Copilot empower employees like Compton with unique AI capabilities distinct to each experience. In Teams Premium, AI features are built into the experience, enhancing meetings with experiences like speaker and chapter markers and real-time translation. Copilot complements Teams Premium, and other Microsoft 365 apps, by acting as an on-demand AI assistant that responds to conversational prompts. Employees can use both products in conjunction to generate meeting summaries, understand sentiment, and generate next steps in an instant. “I’ve already found Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 very useful for helping me catch up on meetings,” says Compton. “I also use Copilot to summarize documents.” By simply prompting Copilot from within Teams or Microsoft Word, Compton can generate a summary of key points and main ideas.

Daniel Toman, Systems Operations Manager at Hargreaves Lansdown, also uses Copilot and Intelligent Recap in Teams Premium to make high-quality meeting summaries available to all who need them. “Not only are you making information more accessible to all meeting participants, but it’s good quality information—we know nothing is being missed," he says.

Preparing for meetings is also easier for those who combine Copilot note-taking capabilities with the Teams Premium’s Intelligent Recap feature. Toman shares that employees use Copilot to prepare higher-quality input for meetings by quickly compiling information from past emails, meetings, and documents. And, when composing emails, Toman uses Copilot in Microsoft Outlook to help draft messages with the correct tone. “Using Copilot in Outlook to help draft emails helps me finetune my message,” says Toman. “It’s a better experience for everyone and elevates communications.” 

Pairing productivity improvements with a commitment to security

HL operates within the highly regulated financial services industry. As such, the productivity benefits of adopting new, AI-powered tools had to be carefully considered against any potential security risks. In that regard, Teams Premium and Copilot delivered. “We wanted to find an AI solution that could provide us with great time-saving benefits without making us feel like we were placing ourselves at unnecessary risk,” says Holman. “With Teams Premium AI features and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, we found a highly secure alternative to the AI solutions employees were using outside of our well-protected environment.” 

Because Teams Premium and Copilot are beholden to the same security policies inherent in Microsoft 365, Holman and her colleagues felt confident in the security posture of the new tools, particularly when Teams Premium security features such as watermarking were also factored in. “You don’t have control over the shadow IT employees are using to experiment with AI tools for productivity,” notes Holman. “We had peace of mind using Copilot because we’ve already got our Microsoft 365 E5 licenses, and we are quite mature in terms of the security and compliance we already have in place.” 

Empowering employees with a tool that 96 percent find useful 

Since deploying Copilot and Teams Premium, HL has seen tangible improvements in both employee productivity and client experiences, measures they have tracked through internal surveys. Of those employees who had a chance to use Copilot, 53 percent said they found the tool extremely useful, and 43 percent indicated they found it somewhat useful. Initial estimates indicate that employees are saving 2 to 3 hours per week each. Ninety percent of surveyed employees expect their time savings to grow as their Copilot proficiency improves.

The benefits of Microsoft AI tools were not limited to time savings. HL people also reported that Copilot assistance helped make meetings more inclusive. “The positive impact we've seen on people who've got workplace accessibility needs has been incredible,” says Holman. “I've had people tell me they suffer from stress that makes it difficult for them to stay present in meetings. Those employees have shared that features like Intelligent Recap and AI Notes in Teams Premium help them review information and overcome their anxiety around meetings.” Additionally, non-native English speakers use Copilot in Outlook to help draft emails and adjust tone. Overall, employees are enjoying a less stressful, more productive experience at work with the help of AI tools. “These tools are helping us make it more enjoyable to be at work,” says Holman. “Employees are no longer struggling to complete tasks or find the information they need.” 

The road ahead: envisioning Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 across the business

After a successful initial launch of Copilot, HL plans to expand usage across the organization. Already, employees are requesting the tool, and the business has created a center of excellence channel in Teams to help advance the use of Copilot across the business. Potential new use cases include using the tool to help IT professionals code more efficiently and connecting Copilot to more data sources and core business applications. "I can see us integrating Copilot into our Jira ticketing system, ServiceNow, and PowerPoint. It can help us write better documentation,” says Toman. And, with Teams Premium, advanced webinar functionality is a stand-out capability for departments within HL who regularly host webinars. And, for financial advisors who are used to emailing back and forth with customers to arrange a meeting time, Teams Premium has the potential to improve customer experiences through features like a branded lobby, which creates a cohesive customer journey and establishes trust in digital interactions, and the ability to self-schedule meetings. And, HL has recently launched virtual appointments for additional business areas.

For Holman, the combination of Teams Premium and Copilot has ushered in an exciting new era for employees at HL. “Teams Premium and Copilot work hand in hand to take our ways of working to the next level,” she says. The new technology has impacted ways of working at the business, something Holman has noticed first-hand among her team. “We just keep saying, wow, what an exciting time to be working here. AI tools like Copilot and those within Teams Premium are changing the way people work, it’s becoming indispensable,” she says. “Every day I think we could uncover something new.”