How to edit financial writing, part 5
Vague writing feels safe. It’s hard to argue with. It’s hard to be wrong about. It’s also hard to remember, hard to trust, and hard to act on.
“We help clients achieve their financial goals.” Yep. So does everyone else.
“We’ve helped 1,400 clients in the Greater Boston area retire on schedule since 2017.”
Now we’re talking!
Specificity is the single editing skill that separates financial content that builds trust from financial content that fills space. And in 2026, it has become the clearest dividing line between human writing and AI writing — because specificity requires knowledge an AI tool doesn’t have.
What vague writing looks like
Vague writing hides behind general statements that sound meaningful but commit to nothing. It is the written equivalent of a firm handshake with nothing behind it.
Here is what it looks like in practice:
Vague: “Our experienced team has a proven track record of delivering results for clients.”
Specific: “Our 12-person team has managed institutional portfolios for an average of 19 years. In 2024, our flagship strategy returned 11.3% net of fees.”
Vague: “We offer a range of solutions to meet your unique needs.”
Specific: “We offer three fixed-fee planning packages — starter, growth, and comprehensive — designed for households at different stages of wealth building.”
Vague: “Financial planning is important for long-term success.”
Specific: “Households with a written financial plan accumulate 2.5 times more assets than those without one, according to a 2023 Charles Schwab study.”
In each case the specific version says something the vague version only implies.
And in financial services, where trust is a hard driver of performance, implication is not enough.
Four techniques for more specific editing
Replace adjectives with numbers. Every qualitative claim has a quantitative equivalent that works harder. “Significant growth” becomes “37% year-over-year growth.” “Many years of experience” becomes “23 years in institutional asset management.” “Low fees” becomes “0.35% annual management fee.” If you cannot find the number, the adjective is a placeholder — go find the fact.
Name the thing. Vague writing refers to “leading institutions,” “major financial firms,” and “top-tier clients.” Specific writing names them, where permitted. “We’ve worked with regional banks, independent RIAs, and family offices managing assets between $50M and $500M” is more credible than “we work with a variety of financial clients.”
Use dates and timeframes. “Recently” is meaningless. “In Q1 2025” is not. “Over the past 18 months” is specific enough to verify. Dates make claims testable, which is why readers trust them more than vague temporal language.
Anchor examples in real situations. The strongest specificity in financial writing comes from actual client situations — described with enough detail that a prospect with a similar problem recognizes it immediately. You do not need to name the client. You need to describe the problem precisely enough that it feels real. “A mid-sized RIA in the Southeast was losing advisors to a competitor offering better digital tools” is more persuasive than “one of our clients faced a retention challenge.”
Specificity and compliance
The instinct to write vaguely in financial services often comes from a legitimate place: compliance. Specific numbers require disclosure. Named clients require consent. Performance data requires context.
While these are real constraints, they are not an excuse to be vague, but to be specific carefully.
The goal is not to write claims that require lengthy disclaimers. It is to find the specific details that are accurate, compliant, and more persuasive than the vague version. Third-party data, industry statistics, and properly disclosed performance figures all qualify. So do process details, team credentials, and client outcomes described in aggregate rather than individually.
Compliance reviewers are not asking you to be vague. They are asking you to be accurate. Specific and accurate is a higher standard than vague and unverifiable, and it makes for substantially more better reading.
The AI problem
This is the editing dimension where AI falls shortest. It is also the one most worth understanding.
AI writing tools do not have access to your firm’s performance data, your client outcomes, your team’s credentials, or your specific process. They have access to general knowledge about financial services. As a result, AI-generated financial copy defaults to the vague because it does not have the specifics to offer.
“Our experienced team is dedicated to helping clients achieve their financial goals” is not a failure of AI. It is the honest output of a tool that doesn’t know how many people are on your team, what their backgrounds are, or what your clients have actually achieved.
The problem comes when the vague output goes straight to publish without a human adding the substance the AI could not. That is an eminently fixable gap. The AI provides a scaffold. The specific facts that make the scaffold mean something have to come from you.
This changes how you should use AI in financial content production. Use it to structure, to draft, to suggest. Th en treat every vague claim it produces as a prompt to supply the specific fact it was standing in for. “Our experienced team” is your cue to write in the team’s actual credentials. “Proven results” is your cue to find the number. “A range of solutions” is your cue to name and describe them.
The edit is where the human adds the value the AI cannot. Specificity is the clearest form that value takes.
The Claude prompt
Use this prompt after you have run the earlier edits in this series — throwaway lines, fluff, wordiness, redundancy. Specificity is the final pass, and it requires the most from you: you will need to supply the facts Claude flags as missing.
You are a financial content editor specializing in specificity. Read the text below and identify every vague claim, generality, or unsubstantiated statement.
Look specifically for:
– Qualitative adjectives standing in for numbers: “significant,” “strong,” “experienced,” “proven,” “leading,” “major,” “various,” “numerous”
– Vague temporal language: “recently,” “in recent years,” “over time,” “historically”
– Unnamed entities: “leading institutions,” “top clients,” “major firms,” “many investors”
– Unanchored claims: any statement that asserts a positive outcome without a specific result
– Generic value propositions: “we help clients achieve their goals,” “we deliver results,” “we offer solutions”
For each instance:
1. Quote the vague phrase
2. Identify what specific fact, number, date, or name would make it concrete
3. Flag it as [NEEDS SPECIFICITY: describe exactly what information is required]
Do not invent specific facts. Flag every gap and describe what kind of information would fill it.
Then provide a revised version of the text with all vague phrases replaced by their flagged placeholders, ready for a subject matter expert to complete.
Here is the text:
[PASTE YOUR TEXT HERE]