Exponential advances in AI and adjacent technologies are set to revolutionize how wealth and asset management firms serve their clients and manage their businesses. By transforming their strategies, business models, and operations through AI-enabled digital solutions, firms will not only create frictionless and engaging experiences for clients, but also boost productivity and savings, minimize fraud and risks, and drive new levels of profitability and growth.
To investigate these developments, ThoughtLab is conducting a multi-client research program, The AI- Powered Investment Firm: How wealth and asset management providers will transform their businesses through AI. As part of the study, we asked industry experts and study sponsors their views on how the industry will change in the AI era. This is the first of a set of articles providing their perspective on the wealth management industry’s AI-powered future.
Question: How will AI transform the wealth and asset management industry? What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges?
James Dunne, Managing Director, FNZ
AI is poised to radically reshape wealth and asset management: bringing hyper-personalization, real-time insights, and scalable advice to the forefront. AI innovation in the wealth and asset management industry is lowering costs and improving accessibility. Crucially, it will help to open up wealth, democratizing strategies and services once reserved for the ultra-wealthy.
That said, the biggest opportunities come with serious challenges. The regulatory landscape is still catching up to the pace of AI, and politically, there’s increasing scrutiny to ensure AI promotes financial inclusion rather than entrenching digital divides. The firms that succeed will blend financial depth with technological agility. For incumbents, partnering with innovative disruptors that are shaking up the wealth and asset management industry is no longer optional – it’s existential.
Peter Smith, Director, Customer Strategy, LSEG
AI is already reshaping the wealth and asset management industry, and its impact will only accelerate. The biggest opportunity lies in enabling advisors to deliver more personalized, timely, and scalable advice. AI helps filter the noise, surface relevant insights, and automate routine tasks—freeing advisors to focus on strategic client engagement. Agentic AI, in particular, will be transformative, acting on behalf of advisors to monitor market movements, prompt next best actions, and anticipate client needs.
The challenge, however, is ensuring that this transformation doesn’t compromise trust or transparency. Firms must strike a balance between automation and human judgment, and ensure that AI-driven recommendations are explainable, compliant, and aligned with client goals. The firms that succeed will be those that embed AI into advisor workflows in a way that enhances—not replaces—the human touch.
Richard Doherty, VP, Asset & Wealth Management Lead, Publicis Sapient
AI, and particularly agentic AI, will fundamentally reshape the industry by embedding intelligence into the heart of operations. Traditional generative AI applications have enhanced productivity in discrete tasks, but agentic AI brings the ability to autonomously plan, decide, and act across complex workflows—whether that’s onboarding clients, modernizing trading platforms, or automating compliance reporting.
The biggest opportunities lie in accelerating time to market for new propositions, hyper-personalizing client engagement, and unlocking operational resilience through elastic, self-adjusting processes. These capabilities will also enable firms to launch new data-driven products and services, shifting from transaction-led models to continuous value delivery. The challenges are equally significant: firms must address governance of autonomous systems, prevent uncontrolled AI proliferation, integrate legacy and modern technology stacks, and—most importantly—earn the trust of clients, regulators, and their own teams by ensuring transparency, auditability, and control in AI-driven decisions.
Shane O’Neill, Partner, Technology Advisory, Grant Thornton
AI will transform the wealth and asset management industries in two main ways. It will enable productivity and efficiency gains, using smart AI tooling and AI literacy and training programs. Staff will simply become more efficient and effective in doing everyday tasks associated with their job roles, ranging from research to content creation and so forth.
It will also allow for more domain-specific and AI agents embedded in operations across areas such as onboarding, portfolio management, trade execution, client servicing and elsewhere. These agents will become increasingly prevalent, taking on more of the workloads in due course, which will require companies to really assess their operating models and related trust and oversight models.
Jamie Solomon, Head of Technology, North America & Head of Data and AI, FNZ
AI is no longer a future concept–it’s already changing how firms work from day to day. The biggest shift is around simplification: AI is taking things that used to be slow, and making them faster, cleaner, and more accurate.
The opportunity here is huge: it’s not just about cutting down on admin; it’s about giving advisors and teams more breathing room to actually do what they’re great at, supporting clients. That means less time chasing data, more time having better conversations.
However, AI doesn’t work in a vacuum. If your data’s messy or your systems are disconnected, it won’t matter how clever your models are. The really key point is that you need good, enterprise-level data to really power up GenAI. That’s still a big blocker for a lot of firms. To really get the benefit, you need everything talking to each other. That’s where properly integrated, end-to-end platforms make a massive difference.
Marc Butler, Financial Planner and Advisor, Anthony Petsis & Associates; Owner, Marc Butler Consulting; Founder and CEO, Wealth Management GPT
As both a practicing advisor and consultant to the industry, I see AI as one of the most transformative forces we’ve encountered in decades. For advisors like me, the greatest opportunity is delivering more personalized, proactive advice at scale. With AI tools integrated into financial planning, tax analysis, and investment research, I can spend less time on spreadsheets and more time helping clients make thoughtful life decisions.
At the industry level, AI is reshaping the entire value chain—from client onboarding and engagement to portfolio construction and compliance automation. The ability to synthesize data across platforms and surface real-time insights gives firms a strategic edge, but only if they pair it with strong governance and advisor training.
The biggest opportunities lie in personalization, productivity, and decision quality. The biggest challenges will be managing data security, model transparency, and cultural adoption inside firms. In the end, I believe the future belongs to firms and advisors who treat AI as an augmentation tool—not as a replacement for the human connection at the heart of wealth management.
Karan Gulati, Partner, Financial Services Advisory, Grant Thornton
One of the biggest AI-led capabilities will be enhanced engagement and personalized investing, allowing real-time investment portfolios tailored to a client’s financial goals, risk tolerance, and life stages. This goes well beyond risk profiles to account for changing circumstances or tax situations. Firms and advisors will be able to incorporate behavioral tendencies, investment patterns, and curated insights based on consumer preferences into both investment portfolios and subsequent conversations with clients.
Meanwhile, agentic AI agents will streamline core operations from data aggregation and reconciliation to compliance and reporting, which will allow financial advisors to focus on higher-value activities and driving cost efficiencies. Firms that move swiftly to embed AI across business operations through investments in data infrastructure, change management, and governance will lead the next era of growth and client service.
Erik Smith, CFP® Senior Vice President, Wealth Planning Product Management, LPL Financial
AI has enormous potential due to transform wealth management due to the sheer amount of data, information, and complexity firms work with on a daily basis. We see opportunities to use AI to make advisors more efficient and smarter, helping them to provide the best advice possible to their clients and creating a competitive advantage.
We see AI impacting many core tasks in positive ways. One is improving client meetings and follow-ups by using generative AI to take notes and turning them into data to summarize the meeting with next steps for both the clients and advisors. Another is providing advisors with faster and more thorough investment research and analysis of the growing universe of securities to better manage portfolios and adjust proactively to changing market conditions.
A third important area is reviewing complex planning topics such as taxes and estates to identify risks and find opportunities. The tax code, coupled with applicable regulations and guidance is over 75,000 pages long. We’ll need AI to navigate this complexity with any degree of success and determine where it applies to specific client situations.
Steve Wray, Executive Director, Block Center for Technology and Society, Carnegie Mellon University
AI can allow for individuals to obtain personalized advice without ever setting foot in an office or meeting with a human. That creates both opportunities and challenges. On the opportunity side, costs can be reduced, service can be 24/7, and language barriers can be eliminated, broadening the potential marketplace for asset management firms.
On the challenge side, without the personal touch of a human advisor, firms risk losing the glue that keeps a client loyal. The business model will also need to change: entry-level positions may be replaced by AI agents, leading to questions about progression and development of senior advisors and counselors. The fee model will need to be overhauled, as much of the research and analysis may be replaced by agents. And risk management will need to be an increased priority: not only must employees be monitored, but also AI agents as they become part of the core infrastructure of the firm, working with both employees and clients.
Brie Williams Global Head of Advisory Solutions & Wealth Intelligence, State Street Investment Management
AI is not just a tool – it’s a new lens for decision-making. It enables firms to move from static models to adaptive, outcome-driven solutions that evolve with markets and client needs. The biggest opportunity is elevating intelligence across every client segment. The challenge? Using AI to enhance — not commoditize — insight. Leaders won’t be those who automate the most, but those who apply AI with precision to deepen trust, improve outcomes, and differentiate in a crowded market.
Chris McDonald, Capital Markets Specialist, AWS
The wealth and asset management industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by cloud- native AI and gen AI solutions and in particular agentic AI. This shift is democratizing sophisticated financial services, enabling firms to offer personalized, data-driven advice at scale across various client segments. The most significant impact is visible in two key areas: the growing mass affluent market, where younger generations are gaining unprecedented access to advanced financial services through AI capabilities, and the high-net-worth individual (HNWI) segment, where advisors are achieving remarkable efficiencies.
The opportunities are substantial and multifaceted. AI, especially generative AI and agentic workflows, revolutionizes wealth management by simultaneously processing and analyzing vast amounts of structured and unstructured data–from client financial records to market data and news to social media behavior–even at a scale beyond human capability. This unprecedented ability to synthesize diverse data sources enables wealth management firms to deliver hyper-personalized investment strategies, financial planning, and portfolio management.
The industry is evolving towards a dual model: AI-augmented platforms for complex wealth management needs, and scalable, AI automated, direct-to-consumer solutions that scale to broader market reach. This approach enables firms to serve a wider client base while optimizing resource allocation. However, this transformation presents certain challenges. Data quality and privacy issues are compelling firms to build more robust resilient cloud-based data platforms and infrastructures. Legacy system integration remains a hurdle as organizations work to connect traditional infrastructure with modern AI applications, firms are bridging this gap with cloud solutions.
Dr. Henning Stein, Senior Partner, 1Business World; Finance Fellow, Cambridge Judge Business School
Many of the most meaningful AI advances in portfolio construction, risk modeling, ESG data integration, originate in institutional asset management. One common opportunity stands out: AI as an enabler of transparency and democratization in private markets. From feeder fund structures to tokenized private equity secondaries, the pressure is on to deliver institutional-quality access to sophisticated wealth clients, but without the opacity and fee drag we often see today. AI-powered secondary pricing models could change that, as pilots by firms like Hamilton Lane and Colleber Capital have shown.
For larger players, including sovereign funds and insurers, AI is accelerating optimization of blended portfolios. Whether balancing an investors’ liquidity needs with their legacy goals, or navigating regime change in a global macro fund, asset allocators are increasingly using AI to simulate stress scenarios and construct multi-asset frameworks that integrate both traditional and alternative exposures.
The biggest challenge I see isn’t technical, it’s cultural. Many executives still treat AI as a bolt-on to existing workflows rather than a catalyst to reimagine how we construct, deliver, and explain investments. And unless data structures are unified, across compliance, risk, ESG, and CRM systems, even the most sophisticated models remain underpowered.
David Murphy, Head of Financial Services, EMEA & APAC, Publicis Sapient
Before we consider how AI will transform the industry, it is worth understanding the current challenges that the industry faces. These include lower interest rates, continuing fee compression and homogenization of products and services. Firms have invested hugely in technology, but their investments are still not delivering the predicted returns and results, and the increased spending has not consistently translated into higher productivity. The challenge has always been that the cost and complexity of maintaining legacy systems has, by and large, not gone away. When new technologies, platforms and systems are implemented, the legacy systems, rather than be decommissioned, continue to remain–sometimes indefinitely.
With the advances of AI, we begin to see a truly transformative force that can help firms overcome many of these challenges. Agentic AI, particularly, is thought to be able to potentially deliver up to 40% efficiencies on a firm’s cost base. This can include increased speed to market for software development, improved distribution flows and investment processes, and automation of regulatory compliance. Most importantly, a better grasp of the data firms hold will allow AI to provide actionable insights and improved client experiences and interactions. In time, AI will prove to be the transformative catalyst that reimagines the industry.