Broker guide
Is Granola AI Safe for Client Meetings in 2026?
Before Granola handles a client meeting, check what it captures, where notes go and which sharing, training and retention controls your brokerage can use.
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Granola AI can suit client meetings if your brokerage approves its overseas processing and the meeting meets your consent and data-handling requirements. Its training opt-out, sharing permissions and transcript deletion settings address different risks. For a brokerage that needs enforceable controls across staff, Enterprise provides workspace policies that individual settings cannot replace.
What Granola Captures
Granola captures meeting audio to produce a transcript, then uses the transcript and your written notes to generate meeting notes. On desktop, it captures your microphone and computer meeting audio without adding a meeting bot. Granola’s security information describes cloud transcription and AI processing, so the desktop app does not keep the whole process on your computer.
The documented processing route uses transcription providers and AI providers to turn speech into text and summaries. Granola says desktop transcription happens in real time. Mobile transcription uses temporarily cached audio, which Granola says it removes after transcription.
The retained text still contains client information. Granola’s privacy policy states that it stores personal data on Amazon Web Services servers in the United States. Notes also have a local cache, and its data FAQ says Australian regional storage is not available.
Opening a note matters too. Granola’s transcription instructions say an upcoming meeting’s note can start transcribing at its scheduled start time if you have already opened it. Opening a note early is therefore a capture decision, even before you begin writing.
Green moving bars show audio capture. Inspect that indicator before a conversation turns to information outside the agreed purpose.
Treat the transcript and generated summary as separate records. A summary can omit a sensitive remark while the underlying transcript retains it. Restricting the visible summary alone does not establish that the rest of the meeting is inaccessible.
Training, Sharing and Retention
Granola’s own model training, its providers’ training and other people’s access have separate controls. Turning one control off leaves the others to manage.
Training Controls
Granola says its service-provider agreements prevent those providers from training on your data. Separately, Granola can use de-identified data to improve its own models. Its model training instructions describe an account-wide opt-out under Settings > Preferences.
Turn off “Use my data to improve models for everyone” before using the account for approved client work. Enterprise workspaces are opted out by default and have administrator-enforced controls. Granola’s privacy policy also says de-identified data already incorporated into models or datasets may remain there, so opting out cannot be treated as undoing earlier training.
Sharing Controls
Granola’s sharing controls distinguish personal defaults from Enterprise workspace restrictions.
| Control | Individual Account | Enterprise Workspace |
|---|---|---|
| Link sharing | Free and Business users can choose Private in their preferences | An admin can set Restricted access and require explicit invitations |
| Existing notes | A stricter default can be applied to existing notes when prompted | Workspace sharing restrictions apply retrospectively to notes and folders |
| Staff changes | Personal settings depend on each user | Members cannot exceed the workspace permission level |
Changing a personal default does not remove access already granted to specific people or folders. Review those recipients separately. Granola’s sharing documentation explains that recipients can use Chat to ask about the meeting transcript, which makes transcript review part of a sharing decision.
Retention Controls
Granola’s transcript auto-deletion guide provides personal retention settings and Enterprise workspace policies. Personal settings apply only to your own transcripts in that workspace. A workspace policy overrides them.
Choose the approved period under Settings > Preferences > Data & sharing for a personal account. Enterprise admins set the workspace policy under Settings > Workspace > General, or Security & data in the admin portal. Enabling or changing a period starts a one-week cooldown before the new policy schedules deletions.
Transcript auto-deletion leaves both manual and AI-generated notes in place. It also limits later Chat answers and prevents normal regeneration from the deleted transcript. Your brokerage therefore needs a separate decision about how long to retain the notes.
Client Meetings and Consent
Before a lending discussion, apply your brokerage’s recording procedure and explain the AI processing to everyone whose speech will be captured. A meeting bot’s absence gives participants no visible notice by itself.
For organisations covered by the Privacy Act, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s AI privacy guidance addresses AI meeting minutes directly. It calls for reasonably necessary collection and consent where sensitive information is collected. It also recommends seeking consent as best practice because meeting content is unpredictable.
Granola has participant notification features, including an automated chat message and a video watermark. These provide notice. Your brokerage must still apply the recording laws relevant to the participants and circumstances, together with its own consent procedure.
Consider a hypothetical refinance meeting. Your client discusses salary and liabilities, then starts explaining a medical condition affecting work. Before the meeting, explain the transcription and overseas processing, identify who can access the notes and explain how to proceed without AI capture.
If that health discussion falls outside the approved purpose, stop transcription before it continues. Use an approved way to record any information the brokerage actually needs. Record the consent decision and any limits in the client file.
Afterwards, compare the generated notes with the discussion and supporting documents before treating them as a file record. Correct an incorrectly attributed statement or income figure. Keep the approved record in the brokerage’s designated system under its retention requirements.
Choose, Restrict or Remove It
Choose Granola for client meetings only after your brokerage accepts the processing terms and assigns responsibility for its controls. If the business requires central enforcement, use the Enterprise workspace settings. Keep client meetings out of personal accounts when your brokerage cannot govern those accounts.
Before the next approved meeting, work through these actions in order.
- Confirm the account and workspace. Set the required training choice and sharing restrictions, then reopen settings to check they persist.
- Set the approved transcript retention period and allow for its cooldown. Assign a separate retention rule for the generated notes.
- Explain capture and obtain the agreement your procedure requires before opening the meeting note. Use the transcript panel’s Stop control when a discussion must remain outside capture.
- Review the transcript before sharing. Remove unnecessary transcript chunks and check the summary separately, then inspect the note’s named recipients and folder access.
- Preserve the required client-file record before deleting a Granola copy. Confirm that the retained record contains the corrections and decisions the broker relies on.
Granola’s note deletion instructions distinguish moving a note to trash from permanently deleting it. Trashed notes remain recoverable until permanent deletion, including automatic deletion after more than 30 days. Select the permanent-delete action only after the brokerage’s recordkeeping requirements are satisfied.
For full removal, Granola’s account deletion guide provides Settings > Profile > Delete my account. Directory-managed accounts require the organisation’s administrator. Notes already transferred to another account remain with that account, so identify those copies separately.
If a required control or participant agreement is missing, leave transcription stopped and take notes through the brokerage’s approved process. That gives the client a usable meeting without creating an uncontrolled transcript.
