Wealth Insider Insights: AI, advisors & the new wealth experience 

• Wealth management is evolving rapidly, driven by regulatory complexity, generational wealth transfer, and rising client expectations for digital-first, personalized experiences.
• AI is helping firms scale and advisors become more productive, with tools like GenAI for summarizing data, agentic AI for automating tasks, and chat assistants for improving client engagement.
• Client-centricity remains key, with technology enhancing—not replacing—human advisors, and digital platforms needing to balance automation with empathy, personalization, and emotional intelligence.

The wealth management industry is undergoing rapid transformation. From shifting investor demographics to rising regulatory complexity and the acceleration of AI, firms are being challenged to evolve quickly. In this edition of Wealth Insider Insights, we spoke with Sarlota Hohwald, Director of Wealth Data Solutions at LSEG, to explore how firms are navigating this change, what technologies are gaining traction, and how to stay client-centric in a digital-first world.

Watch the full interview with Sarlota Hohwald

The industry is becoming much more tech-led and client-centric. Geopolitical shifts, economic factors, and regulations are shaping how investors and firms operate. Each region is navigating this differently, but there are common challenges.

Regulatory complexity is a big one—fragmented rules across jurisdictions increase compliance costs, especially for firms operating globally. Fiduciary standards are rising, and regulations around SRI and ESG are tightening. Data privacy and cybersecurity are also adding cost and risk.

Competition for client acquisition and retention is intense. Digital players are dominating, and younger investors are fee-sensitive, prefer holistic life plans, and expect digital-first experiences. Traditional firms are having to reinvent themselves and modernise their tech stacks. Market volatility is making clients more reactive, and firms need to deliver new tools and safe trading experiences—again, costly to keep up with. That said, there’s also a looming shortage of advisors, which is pushing firms to use technology to scale as well as build up scale within human capital.

But, in general, wealth management remains a very profitable space, and we’re seeing strong investment in it globally. The generational wealth transfer is bringing more digitally native affluent investors who want data and services to the forefront and technology is enabling personalised self-service advice and helping firms serve a broader range of clients more effectively and efficiently.

Technology is helping firms operate at better margins, improve time to market, and bring hyperscale to workforces. In wealth, AI adoption has been slower and more cautious due to trust and long-term unknowns or concerns, but in pockets, we can see it’s insertion starting to deliver real ‘action’ or, value.

AI powered tools are making advisors more productive, helping them engage better with clients and surfacing the right information at the right time. Generative AI can easily summarize large volumes of fast-moving data—news, research, earnings calls, filings—into digestible insights quickly and accurately and can bring valuable fast-read meaning to users, but some might say buyer, beware, the output is only as good as the data powering it and needs to be from a trusted source. Also, now agentic AI has gained traction, this helps automate repetitive tasks, which in Wealth is able to give advisors more time back to focus on long-term wealth building goals with clients vs. Administrative tasks plus we are certainly seeing a surge of ‘AI co-pilots' being embedded in CRMs and banking systems that help advisors know who to call, when to call, and what actions to take. For investors, natural language chatbots simplify financial jargon, help with screening, and deliver personalized education, commentary and content in-app.

It is generally thought that Firms should use AI to enhance their human advisors—not replace them. Technology should handle repetitive or data-heavy tasks so advisors can focus on building relationships and bringing empathy into their interactions. 

There are a few ways firms can do this. They can use tech to foster better communication—video messaging, direct client messaging integrated into workflows. They can analyse portfolio performance and relationship health to understand decision patterns and client sentiment, which helps reduce disengagement and highlight risks or pivot points. 

It’s also important to develop platforms that meet clients where they prefer to collaborate—whether that’s a digital or human interaction, it needs to be in their channel of choice and seamless. And finally, firms should assign high-emotion or life-changing events to human advisors, not machines, let tech handle low-stakes tasks like moving money or rebalancing portfolios, while humans manage the more significant moments.