The wealth management industry is facing rising demand from digitally-native clients who expect advice that is personal, immediate, and accessible across every channel. Yet many providers remain weighed down by manual processes, legacy systems, and disjointed operations that make delivering on these expectations difficult, if not impossible.
At the same time, competition is heating up. Digital-first challengers and platform-based players are reshaping how financial products are offered, consumed, and experienced. In this context, maintaining the status quo is not just inefficient, it’s risky.
This is where intelligent automation, powered by AI, comes into play. But it’s important to draw a distinction. Automation is often misunderstood as simply speeding up existing workflows. True intelligent automation, however, is about rethinking those workflows entirely. It means redesigning the way value is delivered, embedding intelligence, removing friction, and building systems that are adaptive by design.
With AI embedded across advisory journeys — from onboarding and suitability to portfolio rebalancing and personalised nudges — automation can become a lever for transformation, not just efficiency.
Why wealth managers should care
The wealth management industry has long operated on a foundation of human expertise, bespoke service, and strong relationships. That’s not going away. But the way these qualities are delivered must evolve to meet modern expectations.
Clients today want control and transparency. They want access to real-time insights and the ability to engage on their own terms — be that through a relationship manager, a digital interface, or both. They also want journeys that are intuitive, fast, and personalised.
This puts enormous pressure on legacy processes. Many firms still rely on fragmented back-office systems and heavily-manual compliance checks. This legacy drag consumes time, introduces errors, and stifles scalability. AI-enabled intelligent automation addresses this operational drag.
By layering AI agents across front, mid, and back-office processes, financial institutions can reduce manual workloads, streamline compliance, and accelerate journeys, without overhauling their core systems.
Just as importantly, automation unlocks scalability. Traditionally, personalised wealth services have been reserved for the affluent few. But with the right orchestration, firms can now extend relevant, compliant, and contextual advice across all segments from entry-level investors to high-net-worth clients.
And this matters. In many markets, a significant portion of the population remains underserved. In the UK alone, over 8.4 million adults have more than £10,000 (US$13,400) in savings but no access to financial advice for reasons including high fees, lack of availability, or limited digital options. This ‘advice gap’ is both a challenge and an opportunity. Intelligent automation makes it possible to serve these clients at scale, offering tailored guidance without the cost burden of traditional models.
However, automation must go beyond digitising what's already been done. That approach often fails. In fact, studies suggest up to 70 percent of automation initiatives underperform when focused purely on replication. The real opportunity lies in redesigning the operating model and rethinking the journeys themselves, not just the steps within them.
This requires a shift in mindset: from automation as a back-office fix, to intelligent orchestration as a front-to- back strategy for delivering better client outcomes. It means embedding intelligence at every stage, from product selection to portfolio monitoring, and creating experiences that are responsive, data-driven, and continuous.
This is the essence of radical automation: combining AI, business logic, and orchestration, to remove friction, scale access, and deliver hyper-personalised experiences — efficiently and at pace.
The firms that succeed won’t be those that adopt automation as a tool. They’ll be the ones that embrace it as a lens for transformation.
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What automation makes possible
With intelligent automation, the advisory experience becomes more dynamic, more responsive, and more client-centric.
This starts at onboarding. What was once a multiweek, form-heavy process can now be completed in minutes. Automated risk profiling, identity verification, and regulatory checks streamline compliance while improving user experience. Client preferences, investment goals, ESG considerations, and risk tolerance can be captured interactively and embedded into portfolio recommendations in real time.
Behind the scenes, this is powered by a coordinated system of AI agents, each specialisng in distinct tasks. These agents intelligently select the most appropriate models—be it NLP, machine learning, or generative AI—to deliver efficient and personalised outcomes.
Crucially, all actions remain within a framework of human oversight, ensuring accuracy, compliance, and trust throughout the advisory journey. Once onboarded, clients can engage however they choose. Some will prefer full digital journeys. Others will want human interaction. Many will want a hybrid. Automation enables all these modes to co-exist and, critically, to stay synchronised. Clients and advisers can view and act on the same real-time portfolio data, collaborate through shared dashboards, and adjust strategies based on live insights.
On the compliance side, automation simplifies complexity. Suitability checks, disclosures, and periodic reviews can all be embedded into workflows rather than treated as separate steps. This not only reduces risk but also ensures a more seamless experience for both clients and advisors. Perhaps most powerful among the possibilities of automation is the ability to deliver personalisation at scale. With AI-driven orchestration, firms can move from reactive advice to proactive, context-aware engagement. They can send timely nudges, like rebalancing alerts or milestone updates, based on real-time behavioural and market signals, not quarterly reports.
Examples of this shift are already visible in the market. Institutions are building platforms that automate onboarding and profiling end-to-end, enabling hybrid servicing models that reach thousands of clients without increasing advisor headcount. Others are deploying mass-affluent offerings built on straight-through processing, making personalised wealth accessible to broader segments and driving significant growth in assets under management (AUM).
All of this signals a new direction for the industry. Automation is no longer just a way to cut costs. It’s a way to unlock value for clients, for advisers, and for the business.
The opportunity ahead
The next phase of digital wealth will be shaped by firms that can deliver relevant advice, at scale, without adding complexity. Radical automation, powered by embedded intelligence and real-time orchestration, provides the foundation for this shift.
Automation is not about replacing advisers. It’s about empowering them. It’s not about eliminating human interaction. It’s about making it count. And it’s not about deploying tech for tech’s sake. It’s about embedding intelligence where it drives real value.
This is where intelligent orchestration becomes critical — bringing together AI, business logic, and real-time data, to enable smarter, faster, and more personalised client journeys. When processes are coordinated end-to-end, not just digitised, firms can reduce friction, scale effectively, and continuously evolve their services without ripping out existing infrastructure.
For firms willing to rethink how their services are designed and delivered, the opportunity is significant: stronger client relationships, lower operational costs, faster time to market, and new revenue streams unlocked through expanded reach.
Wealth management doesn’t need to be complex or exclusive. Remove the friction, embed intelligence, unlock access, and reimagine the experience with radical automation at its core.
Interested in reading the UK Toolkit 2025? You can read and download the report online here.
About the UK Toolkit 2025
The UK Toolkit 2025 report examines the shape of wealth management in the UK today, and how industry participants are responding to the challenges and opportunities of this market. It features 14 articles contributed by a range of industry participants — including wealth managers, vendors, and consultants focused on financial services. It also showcases eight technology offerings relevant to the wealth management industry in the United Kingdom.
Our broader Toolkit Report Series covers thematic, geography and wealth manager segment-focused reports, each tasked with delving into the topics and supporting technologies of relevance to help wealth managers of all types better understand how they should bring technology into their business and in which areas.
Following this third report, focused on the UK, we are publishing:
About The Wealth Mosaic
The Wealth Mosaic is a UK-headquartered online solution provider directory and knowledge resource, focused specifically on the wealth management industry.
For wealth managers, the buy side of our marketplace, The Wealth Mosaic is designed to enable discovery of key solutions, solution providers and knowledge resources by specific business needs.
For solution providers and vendors, the sell side of our marketplace, The Wealth Mosaic exists to support the positioning, exposure and business development needs of these firms in a more complex and demanding market.
For more information, visit: www.thewealthmosaic.com
Discover our latest reports!
- UK Toolkit 2025 – read here
- European WealthTech Landscape Report 2025 – read here
- AI Toolkit 2025 – read here
- Client Experience Toolkit 2024 – read here
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