On November 2nd 2026 at Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, the panels, keynotes, and technology demonstrations at The Wealth Mosaic Live 2026: US uncovered the key themes and trends that are transforming US wealth management.
For this article, we’re exploring five of these themes: greater connectivity, effective deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, trusted and governed data, the shifting economics of advice, and more disciplined investment decisions.
Greater connectivity
Firms are looking for better connection across their technology stacks. In our opening “The Leaders’ View” panel, Tricia Rothschild of CFA Institute, Natalie Wolfsen of Orion, Mike Durbin of Cetera, and Aaron Schumm of Vestwell explored the convergence of retirement, workplace savings, brokerage, and traditional wealth management, and how technology is creating opportunities to connect services that have historically operated in separate environments.
In the afternoon, our mega-demo on the modern RIA operating system illustrated how this can work in practice, demonstrating how capabilities spanning prospecting, financial planning, portfolio implementation, private investments, and client communication could support a connected client journey.
But to make that work successfully, the technologies firms deploy all need to work together. And for many firms, integration remains a significant challenge. A team from Docupace highlighted how information held across custodians, CRMs, and planning systems can be labeled or interpreted differently, undermining workflows and making outputs unreliable. To connect systems effectively, firms need to understand the meaning and relationships behind their data.
Effective AI deployment
Moving artificial intelligence (AI) investments from pilot to production to actual ROI requires a strategy that enables them to add up to something aligned with the aims, capacities, and priorities of the company.
To that end, the discussions over the course of November 2nd offered a practical sequence for firms looking to turn experimentation into measurable business value:
- Start with a specific business problem. Identify a repeatable process where time, cost, or service quality can be improved. This might be an onboarding workflow, account servicing, meeting preparation, or a middle-office task. A focused use case with a clear baseline is more useful than an ambitious AI project without a defined outcome.
- Get the foundations right. Before deployment, first establish reliable and connected data, appropriate permissions, and an AI risk-management framework. From the outset, involve legal, compliance, and operational teams, but also the employees whose workflows will be affected, rather than bringing them into the process after a pilot has been developed.
- Build in oversight and measurement. In his keynote address, VastAdvisor CEO Ian Karnell demonstrated an approach to AI integration that combines shared organizational knowledge, human decision gates, and telemetry to monitor performance and identify failures. Systems need processes that verify that tasks have actually been completed: the danger to avoid is where automated systems report success when something has actually failed.
- Measure the outcomes that matter. Time saved is one measure, but firms should also consider advisor capacity, client experience, effectiveness, and business growth.
There’s no cut-out-and-keep guide to getting ROI from AI. What ROI means needs to be defined around the needs of a particular firm, its workflow, and its intended result. Once a focused application demonstrates value, then firms can use that evidence to inform their subsequent decisions on where and how to expand its deployment.
Trust, governance, and data
The foundations of successful AI deployment also raised a broader question: what makes these systems trustworthy?
Across the program, speakers returned to the importance of data quality, accountability, transparency, and human oversight. The Leaders' View panel questioned how fiduciary responsibility will operate as AI agents take on more tasks, and in his keynote Karnell then showed how human approval and performance monitoring can help identify errors that automated systems might otherwise miss.
Rich Walker, CEO of Quik!, brought these considerations together in his keynote presentation on trust by design. He identified three principles firms need to consider:
- Visibility over who can access data and when;
- Predictability in how systems behave; and
- Control over which decisions are automated and where human intervention remains possible.
These are strategic choices. To make them, firms need to establish clear principles for data access and consent and, based on those principles, define in advance where automation is appropriate and where it is not.
Rethinking the economics of advice
Technology is creating opportunities to reach client segments that were previously difficult to serve profitably, while giving advisors more capacity to focus on higher-value interactions.
But there are challenges associated with those opportunities, too. Clients increasingly arrive with AI-generated research and their own investment assumptions. That in turn means that advisors need to provide context, challenge incomplete conclusions, and explain how individual investments fit within a wider portfolio.
There are a few aspects of this that are worth paying special attention to. A practitioner-led panel explored the importance of understanding underlying exposures and portfolio overlap, rather than relying on product labels or surface-level analysis. Storyline offered another perspective on the client relationship, examining how personalized, data-driven video could make financial information more accessible while giving firms a more scalable way to maintain consistent client communication.
These challenges and opportunities all create choices that firms will each have to make for themselves, about how they deploy technology to improve the economics of advice without losing the judgment, context, and personal relationships that give the service its value.
Why business strategy needs to lead technology choices
The event also focused on the strategic decisions facing firm leaders as they make their technology choices. A panel chaired by Hilda Wong-Doo, Founding Partner of Greenline Consultants, argued that technology choices should follow business priorities, client needs, and the capabilities a firm wants to differentiate, rather than being driven by the availability of new tools.
Building may make sense where a firm has a genuinely distinctive capability to develop. Buying established functionality or renting for flexibility and scale may be more appropriate elsewhere. These choices are not mutually exclusive, but each requires clear ownership, realistic economics, reliable data, and effective change management.
In the closing fireside chat, Lori Hardwick reinforced the need for commercial discipline. She cautioned against pursuing AI simply to demonstrate activity, encouraging firms to understand their existing providers' roadmaps, improve data foundations, and experiment within defined budgets before committing to wider deployment.
The challenge for US wealth management firms is about making technology work for the business, not the other way around. Greater connectivity, effective AI deployment, trusted data, and more discipline investment decisions are not separate ambitions. They all depend on each other.
The Wealth Mosaic will be returning to New York on March 4th 2027 for WealthTech 2027: US Edition. Tickets for this event are on sale now here. If you’d like to participate in this event, discover your options here.
In the meantime, watch this space for further reflections and insights from The Wealth Mosaic Live 2026: US over the coming weeks.
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.
