Technology should make financial advice more abundant and more accessible.
It might not make wealth management any cheaper—particularly from the client perspective.
Welcome to Advisor Tech Talk, where we have an active week of wealthtech news to cover, but first, we’re going to talk about the cost of financial advice, because quality advice does not come cheap in 2026. We think it’s going be expensive in the years to come, too.
Now, if you’re a consumer of financial advice rather than a producer and provider of said guidance, you might be a bit confused. Every week we report on a startling array of new technology all purporting to make financial advisors’ lives easier, removing much of the overhead of running a business while reducing the cost of acquiring and serving clients. This technology is supposed to cut costs for the wealth management industry by saving time and energy.
Deloitte, in “Agentic AI and Wealth Management Productivity,” estimates that AI-driven productivity improvements could eventually free 25% to 50% of advisor time from lower-value operational work, while potentially increasing advisor productivity by roughly 30% to 100% by 2032. McKinsey, in “Wealth Management’s Value in the AI Era,” argues that AI can dramatically reduce the marginal cost of producing tax analysis, scenario modeling, portfolio commentary and meeting documentation. If work that once required hours can eventually be completed in minutes, clients and competitors will increasingly question why yesterday’s prices should apply.
But, truly modernizing a wealth management technology stack does not come cheap. Clients will probably be paying the same, or more, for wealth management services as those improvements occur.
The same McKinsey report states that average advisory fees for relationships containing $1 million to $1.5 million have remained around 104 basis points since 2019, despite years of technological improvement. One explanation is that wealth managers have been reinvesting productivity gains rather than returning all of them through lower prices. Firms are spending heavily on data infrastructure, cybersecurity, cloud systems, AI, compliance and platform modernization. Deloitte notes that much current wealth-management technology spending still goes toward core platforms and data foundations rather than immediately visible client-facing improvements.
At the same time, there’s no sign that the efficiencies being gained via technology are doing much to solve another economic problem: the world is short on financial advisors, in the U.S. alone, McKinsey estimate a shortage of roughly 90,000 to 110,000 advisors by 2034.
So while wealth managers might, in the coming years, be able to financially justify lowering the costs passed down to their clients, unless people start to fall in love with advice delivered by artificial intelligence, they’re probably not going to feel a lot of pressure to lower their prices.
That doesn’t mean wealth management clients won’t continue to enjoy some benefits stemming from new wealthtech and AI like, improved services, personalization and upgraded customer experiences.
That all seems to us like pretty good news for wealth management.
We believe that despite fintech and wealthtech’s stated aims of more advice for more people, wealth management will for now remain exclusive and expensive, which can be a vulnerability that potential disruptors will try to exploit.
It may also lead to an awkward situation for financial advisors—at some point, more clients may assume or recognize that wealthtech is lowering the cost of providing advice and reducing the overhead of running a wealth management business and start wondering whether their advisors’ fees are justified.
Let’s get to your headlines.
Are you and your firm AI-Ready? Join AICFP today and receive education certification for financial professionals and more – click here for more info!
49th Parallel Wealth Management
49th Parallel Wealth Management, a fee-only fiduciary firm serving clients who split their lives between the United States and Canada, today announced the launch of Cross-Border Day Tracker, a free mobile and desktop app now available for web download at https://49thparallelwealthmanagement.com/day-tracker/. Launching on the App Store this week as well as an Android version coming soon.
The app helps snowbirds, dual residents, and cross-border commuters track exactly how many days they spend in each country — and automatically calculates their standing against the IRS Substantial Presence Test, the rule that determines whether a non-citizen has crossed the threshold into U.S. tax residency.
All data is entered and stored on the user’s device. Nothing in the app constitutes tax, legal, or investment advice — a disclaimer to that effect appears on every screen, reinforcing that the app is a planning tool, not a substitute for professional guidance.
AdvisorFinder
AdvisorFinder, the modern organic growth platform for financial advisors, today announced the launch of AdvisorFinder Intelligence, a new platform designed to help advisors see and understand exactly how they appear online and how artificial intelligence (AI) platforms represent and recommend them. The solution allows advisors to measure and monitor their visibility when prospects use AI tools or search, and provides a plain-English action plan for how to improve their chances of being surfaced by AI platforms.
AdvisorFinder Intelligence was created as a solution to a challenge discovered by the company’s own research into how consumers find financial advisors and how AI platforms recommend them. AdvisorFinder’s inaugural State of Advisor Discovery report documented broad changes in how consumers look for financial advice, with 45% of people searching for an advisor being wealth builders rather than retirees. The findings underscore a changing advisor-discovery landscape where the next generation client is approaching their search for financial advice differently.
Advisors who use AdvisorFinder Intelligence receive a Digital Presence Report that includes a letter grade for search visibility, website health, online credibility and local presence. Advisors also receive a prioritized action plan to strengthen their online presence. AdvisorFinder also maintains an AEO Leaderboard, ranking the top 300 advisory firms based on their visibility across leading AI platforms.
Alts Custodian
Alts Custodian today announced the launch of its new Private Markets Portfolio Construction and Modeling Platform, giving financial professionals a new way to evaluate alternative investments — not in isolation, but as part of the investor’s overall portfolio.
Available at model.altscustodian.com, the platform allows advisors, family offices and individual investors to integrate private-market funds and other alternative investments into existing portfolios and immediately see how different allocations may affect long-term returns, liquidity and downside risk.
The idea is simple: before allocating to an alternative investment, model what it actually does to the portfolio. Users can build an alternative-investment sleeve using multiple private-market offerings, adjust allocations and compare the resulting portfolio against its traditional public-market baseline.
The Ameriflex Group
The AmeriFlex Group® (or “the firm”), an advisor-owned hybrid RIA recognized for its planning-first approach and succession solutions, today announced it has developed a proprietary AI-enabled program that analyzes hundreds of firms and creates comprehensive profiles of each in the time it once took to review a single practice. The program, called Scout, is currently being tested in five key markets for The AmeriFlex Group® and will be rolled out nationally next year.
Built in part with Anthropic’s Claude AI solution, the team applies this tool to a variety of public and proprietary data sources to develop a profile of firms that may need support with long-term succession planning. Using these profiles, The AmeriFlex Group’s succession specialists can more efficiently initiate conversations and engagement with more practices, while freeing them up to ensure a personalized and smooth transition.
By leveraging this program, along with other growth initiatives, The AmeriFlex Group® expects to expand its advisor ranks by 100 advisors in the next 24 months. Earlier this year, the firm announced it welcomed 18 advisors to the platform, representing more than $1.7 billion in total client assets in the first half of 2026. In January, the firm announced it had secured a strategic minority investment from its broker-dealer partner, Cambridge Investment Research.
Apex Fintech Solutions
Apex Fintech Solutions Inc. (“Apex”), the infrastructure powering modern investing, today announced a collaboration with Rippling, the modern intelligence system for running HR, IT, and Finance, to bring an integrated treasury product to Rippling’s business customers.
Through this alliance, Rippling will offer its 30,000+ existing business customers access to a digital investing experience powered by Apex’s cloud-native infrastructure, Apex AscendOS™. The initial offering will enable U.S. entity accounts to access Apex’s Money Market Fund Sweep program, with plans to expand into additional fixed income instruments.
The collaboration leverages Apex’s digital-first custody and clearing capabilities, including real-time account onboarding, automated cash management, and enterprise-grade compliance infrastructure. Apex Clearing will serve as the FINRA-registered Broker Dealer for the offering.
Citi
As institutional investors navigate compressed settlement cycles, continuous markets and AI-driven decision making, Citi Investor Services has launched Custody+, a comprehensive suite of near- and real-time solutions to meet always-on industry demand. The announcement comes as the bank completes the U.S. rollout of its patented Single Event Processing (SEP) technology, a milestone in the transformation of its custody infrastructure.
Custody+ represents a strategic shift from a standardized and traditional custody model to a modular ecosystem of solutions that can be adapted to clients’ workflows and operating models at scale. Citi’s Custody business supports clients in over 100 markets worldwide, inclusive of 62 proprietary markets
Corgi Invest
Corgi Invest today announced that Jeff Weniger, CFA, has joined the firm as Chief Investment Strategist. In the role, Mr. Weniger will help shape product strategy and lead the firm’s market commentary and investor-education efforts.
Corgi Invest, the ETF platform of AI financial infrastructure company Corgi, currently manages approximately $944 million across 197 ETFs as of August 17, 2026. Technology-driven from inception, the platform develops thematic, leveraged, structured-buffer and fixed-income ETFs, with an emphasis on cost-efficient access to specialized market exposures. The appointment comes as the firm expands its research and education capabilities following the rapid buildout of its ETF lineup.
Mr. Weniger joins Corgi Invest from WisdomTree Asset Management, where he served as Head of Equity Strategy. He has more than 20 years of experience in investment strategy and asset allocation. Before WisdomTree, he spent more than a decade at BMO, most recently as Director, Senior Strategist in the firm’s U.S. wealth management business, where he co-managed ETF model portfolios for the U.S. and Canada and served on the asset allocation committee. Mr. Weniger is a CFA® charterholder and is a frequent commentator in financial media, including CNBC, Bloomberg, and Barron’s.
CurrentClient
XYPN, the leading business support platform for fee-only financial planners, today announced a new partnership with CurrentClient, a modern phone platform designed specifically for financial advisors. Through the partnership, XYPN members will gain access to exclusive discounted pricing on CurrentClient’s suite of communication tools, including compliant texting, business phone services, AI-powered call summaries, and team collaboration capabilities.
The partnership reflects XYPN’s responsiveness to innovative opportunities for supporting its members’ evolving needs. By adding CurrentClient to its growing ecosystem of member benefits, XYPN continues its commitment to helping advisors build stronger firms while maintaining flexibility in how they run their businesses.
CurrentClient helps advisors consolidate client communications through a single platform that combines compliant texting, phone calls, AI-generated call summaries, and CRM integrations. The solution integrates with key advisor technologies, including Wealthbox CRM and XY Archive for compliant message archiving.
FINNY
FINNY, the AI growth engine for financial advisors, today announced “Pay-as-You-Grow”, a new outcome-based fee model granting advisors unlimited access to its platform for $50 a month, plus a small slice of assets brought under management facilitated by FINNY, paid only while those clients remain with the advisor. By tying its pricing directly to client acquisition outcomes, FINNY is aligning its incentives with the growth of the advisors it serves.
Up until now, FINNY adopted the industry’s traditional software pricing model, charging a flat annual subscription of either $6,000 or $12,000, billed regardless of growth outcomes. However, as FINNY worked closely with advisors and industry leaders to shape its platform, the company heard a consistent message: upfront software costs were keeping many firms from investing in growth. Pay-as-You-Grow reflects FINNY’s commitment to building alongside advisors and responding to their evolving needs.
Pay-as-you-win pricing isn’t new to wealth management. For years, leading custodians have offered referral programs using an identical framework. Historically, however, access has been limited to a select group of the largest RIAs, with minimums, custody requirements and lock-ins attached. FINNY is opening the same proven model to any advisor, but with no minimums, no custody move and no requirement to change how they run their practice.
FP Transitions
FP Transitions, a leading provider of business valuation, succession planning and enterprise growth solutions for financial advisors, today announced the launch of its new Estimated Value Index, a proprietary benchmarking tool designed to give advisory firm owners a clearer, more immediate view into the financial strength and relative value of their businesses.
The firm also announced the appointment of industry veteran Tom Kimberly as Chief Operating Officer, bringing extensive experience in financial technology, product innovation and advisor solutions to FP Transitions as the company expands the ways it turns decades of advisory firm data and consulting expertise into actionable business intelligence for firm owners.
The Estimated Value Index is available through FP Transition’s core offering, FPInsights® and assigns advisory businesses a score from 1 to 100 based on key financial information, with higher scores indicating stronger financial performance relative to comparable firms in the FP Transitions database. Unlike a standalone revenue or asset figure, the Index is intended to give firm owners a directional view of how their business compares with peers and the revenue multiple range their financial profile may support.
Intellicheck
Intellicheck, Inc. (Nasdaq: IDN) (“Intellicheck” or the “Company”), an industry-leading identity verification company delivering proprietary, on-demand digital and physical identity validation solutions, today announced that a recently signed channel partner has secured a major deployment with one of the world’s largest investment management companies.
Under the deployment, Intellicheck’s advanced identity verification technology protects the investment management firm against identity-based fraud. At the same time, the technology helps the investment management company accelerate customer acquisition and protection, while enhancing customer trust, giving good customers a rapid, frictionless onboarding experience.
The Company continues to expand its channel partnership initiatives as demand grows for scalable fraud prevention technologies that can be rapidly deployed across enterprise environments. Under the channel partner model, partners incorporate the Company’s identity-verification technology into their offerings and deploy it with their enterprise clients.
NewEdge Capital Group
NewEdge Capital Group, LLC (“NewEdge” or the “firm”) today shared an update on the fast-growing momentum behind its firmwide collaboration with Anthropic. In the weeks since advisors and staff across NewEdge Advisors and NewEdge Wealth gained full access to Claude, adoption has moved quickly — with a growing number of advisors already building and using custom tools to support their practices and serve clients.
NewEdge Capital Group is comprised of NewEdge Advisors, the firm’s growth-oriented RIA supporting entrepreneurial financial advisors nationwide, and NewEdge Wealth, an RIA specializing in servicing the needs of ultra high net worth and high net worth families, family offices and institutional clients.
Since gaining access, advisors across the network have moved quickly to fold Claude into their own day-to-day work, turning hours of preparation and analysis into minutes. Early use cases span the full arc of an advisor’s workflow: distilling lengthy financial plans and meeting notes into concise briefings advisors use to prepare for client conversations, in minutes rather than hours. Advisors are building retirement roadmaps that give them a clearer, more visual framework for structuring planning discussions. Dense insurance and annuity contract language is being translated into plain-English explanations advisors can use directly in client conversations. And the amount of time it takes to build a client webinar is being cut down from hours to minutes. Advisors have also turned the tool toward their own firms’ client-facing presence, using it to review and refresh client-facing materials and communications, further evidence that adoption is happening from the ground up, not only at the corporate level.
Robinhood
TradePMR by Robinhood, a provider of custodial services and technology solutions for growth-focused RIAs, today announced a new integration with Artha, a wealth management platform focused on scenario-based stress testing, optimization, and rebalancing.
Through this integration, financial advisors who custody with TradePMR can access Artha’s AI-driven portfolio construction and analysis tools, allowing them to evaluate existing client portfolios, develop model strategies, and assess how portfolios may behave under different economic and market environments. More specifically, the platform allows advisors to better align portfolios with client preferences and long-term investment objectives. Additionally, advisors can explore how portfolio allocations may respond to changing assumptions around factors such as interest rates, inflation, growth, and geopolitical developments. By incorporating scenario analysis into the portfolio design process, advisors can evaluate trade-offs and refine allocations.
Advisors will be able to sign up directly with Artha and their data directly from Fusion via the API integration between the platforms. Once authenticated, advisor’s client account and portfolio data will automatically import into Artha, enabling them to analyze client portfolios, apply portfolio optimizations to those client portfolios, rebalance and trade client accounts, and implement tax-loss harvesting strategies for their taxable clients.
Stash
Stash, the digital financial advisor helping everyday Americans build long-term wealth, and Capitalize, the industry’s leading platform for retirement account transfers, today announced a new partnership to make it easier for Stash customers to consolidate retirement savings.
Through the partnership, Stash has integrated Capitalize’s Embedded Rollover API, enabling customers to seamlessly transfer legacy 401(k) accounts into Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) directly within Stash’s application. The integration allows customers to consolidate retirement savings into one place, making it easier to track their progress and stay focused on their long-term financial goals. The partnership arrives as Stash expands the tools available within its digital financial advisor experience, giving eligible customers a clearer path to consolidate retirement savings alongside the guidance they already receive in the app.
Stash is among the digital financial advisors reshaping how Americans approach retirement by combining broad consumer reach with intuitive experiences, automated savings tools, and personalized guidance. These capabilities are particularly relevant for younger generations, who are beginning to save earlier and are increasingly comfortable managing their finances digitally. According to a May 2024 Goldman Sachs Asset Management report, 60% of Gen Z and 67% of Millennials report having a personalized retirement plan, while 68% and 69%, respectively, believe their retirement savings are on track or ahead of schedule. Making it easier for individuals to find and consolidate these assets represents an important opportunity to improve long-term retirement outcomes and help investors remain engaged with their financial futures.
VastAdvisor
VastAdvisor, the AI-powered Organic Growth OS for wealth management firms, today announced the close of its $1 million SAFE round led by investments from fintech industry titans. The firm will utilize this funding to accelerate its product roadmap and support its go-to-market efforts.
Debuting earlier this year at Future Proof Citywide, VastAdvisor has initiated its enterprise relationships and will be expanding across registered investment advisors (RIAs), broker-dealers and wealth platforms. VastAdvisor is building a new category of organic growth infrastructure focused not on managing assets, but on acquiring them — an area long underserved in wealth management. The platform integrates AI-driven audience intelligence, campaign orchestration, compliance automation, and continuous performance optimization into a single, self-improving system.
Dani Fava, chief strategy officer at Carson Group, Jason Pereira, CFP, senior partner at Woodgate Financial and Sally George, partner at Convergency Partners, led the funding round.
YCharts
YCharts, a leading investment research and client engagement platform trusted by thousands of financial professionals across North America, today announced the appointment of Steve Bendt as Chief Marketing Officer. He will lead YCharts’ global marketing organization, reporting to CEO Sean Brown, with responsibility for brand, demand generation, and go-to-market strategy across the company’s RIA, enterprise, and asset manager markets.
Bendt joins YCharts with nearly 30 years of marketing experience, including CMO roles at industry leading investment research and fintech companies, bringing a track record of building high-performing teams inside high-growth financial data and investment research businesses.
