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The wealth management industry has an advice delivery problem.
Research conducted by eMoney found that tens of millions of U.S. households are seeking professional financial guidance, yet many still lack a defined financial plan.1 More recent industry research points to a similar reality: Investors overwhelmingly recognize the value of financial planning, but a substantial planning gap remains. The desire for guidance is there. Access remains the challenge.2
The Scalability Problem in Wealth Management
For decades, wealth management firms have invested heavily in technology to improve efficiency. Advisors can build more sophisticated plans, analyze more scenarios, and manage larger books of business than ever before. Despite those advances, millions of households still lack access to meaningful financial planning.
Artificial intelligence (AI) presents an opportunity to change that.
Much of today's discussion about AI focuses on productivity gains. Advisors can summarize meetings faster, automate routine tasks, and draft communications more efficiently. Those benefits are important, but they are not the most transformative aspect of the technology. The real opportunity is much bigger.
Every major technology wave in wealth management has helped advisors scale parts of their businesses. Earlier technological advances made planning faster and more sophisticated, but advisors still had to identify opportunities, personalize recommendations, initiate outreach, and maintain engagement.
AI is different because it can help reduce effort across all those activities. That creates the potential to extend high-quality guidance to more households, helping them understand their options, evaluate trade-offs, and take action.
Serving Mass-Affluent Investors Profitably
The households that stand to benefit most from scalable advice are often those least likely to receive it. Many mass-affluent investors face increasingly complex financial decisions, from retirement readiness and tax planning to education savings and caregiving responsibilities. Their need for guidance is real, yet many fall outside the traditional service models built around minimum asset thresholds and advisor capacity limitations.
Advisors have always been willing to help these clients. The challenge is economics. Comprehensive planning requires time, forcing firms to make difficult choices about who can be served profitably and at what level.
AI has the potential to change that equation. Unlike earlier technologies that primarily streamlined plan creation, AI can help reduce effort across the broader advice process, from data gathering and documentation to client engagement and follow-up. Capacity alone, however, will not automatically expand access. Firms need to rethink segmentation models, service workflows, and pricing approaches if they want AI-enabled efficiency to translate into more households receiving advice.
3 Ways AI Expands Advisor Reach & Engagement
Advisors spend countless hours gathering information, documenting goals, preparing for meetings, and handling follow-up. These activities are necessary, but advisors create the most value by interpreting information, understanding clients’ concerns, and helping people make better decisions.
In many cases, the advice gap is also an engagement gap. Planning creates value when clients engage with it, understand it, and act on it over time. AI can help close that gap through three capabilities: increasing advisor capacity, personalizing guidance, and creating greater continuity between reviews.
For example, a household approaching retirement could receive tailored education on Social Security claiming strategies, reminders tied to planning goals, or proactive notifications during a job change, tax deadline, change in spending, or market or life events that create new planning needs.
AI can help maintain an ongoing dialogue through personalized reminders, educational content, and timely prompts that keep planning alive between formal reviews. In that world, AI is not replacing the advisor. It is expanding the advisor's reach.
That expanded reach matters because access to advice has long been associated with greater confidence, better financial habits, and a stronger sense of preparedness. The more people who can benefit from ongoing guidance, the greater the profession's potential impact.
Balancing Human Empathy & AI Technology in Financial Planning
Of course, AI alone will not close the advice gap. Helping someone navigate a difficult financial decision cannot be automated. AI's role is to make those uniquely human capabilities available to more people. Trust, judgment, empathy, and the ability to help someone through a challenging decision are the heart of planning, and AI’s role will be to help make advisors more available to more people.
The wealth management profession has always understood the value of advice. The challenge has been making that advice available to everyone who could benefit from it.
The ultimate measure of AI's success will not be the number of hours it saves advisors, but whether firms use that capacity to deliver more plans, support more households, drive greater client action, and extend guidance to people who previously fell outside traditional service models.
For decades, technology has helped advisors work more efficiently. AI can finally help the profession scale advice itself. If that happens, the most important outcome won't be greater efficiency. It will be bringing the benefits of financial planning to millions more households.
Sources
1 eMoney, Bringing Planning to More People (2022).
2 Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, “Those With a Financial Plan Feel More Confident, Satisfied and Less Financially Worried, Finds Morgan Stanley Wealth Management,” July 8, 2025.
Connor Sung, CFP®, is the director of practice management at eMoney.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
