AI in wealth management has arrived. Firms are increasingly using AI-driven tools to capture client data, automate workflows, and streamline compliance processes, allowing advisors to spend more time with clients and less time on administrative tasks.

Good thing, too. On the cusp of these AI tools transforming wealth management, too many financial advisors were overwhelmed. J.D. Power found that nearly 30% of financial advisors didn’t have enough time to spend with clients. These same advisors also reported significantly lower Net Promoter Scores (NPS), signaling lower client loyalty.

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Clients value personal attention

And they notice when they don’t get enough of it.

Every wealth management firm and every advisor experiences the daily pain points that detract from giving clients their full and dedicated attention. The manual and administrative tasks that are important and necessary but not valuable in and of themselves keep advisors from doing what they do best: advising clients and building trust.

Tools for automation (such as AI notetakers for client meetings) capture more data than advisors can, and they accomplish mundane tasks more efficiently. We estimate that these tools save individual advisors more than 10 hours per week on essential but non-value-added manual tasks like inputting meeting notes into a CRM. Follow-ups. Task creation.

That’s an easily won 10 hours a week for deepening client relationships, something that can never be automated. Plus, advisors can glean actionable insights from the data more easily and efficiently. These tools also automatically track compliance, identify client life events, and surface proactive opportunities advisors may have missed.

Of course, not all automation tools are created equal. Many generic solutions in the market are not designed for wealth management, and too many automate tasks so simple they’re not worth the investment. This is the challenge with low-risk, low-barrier tools. Firms need to select platforms that integrate into advisor workflows, deliver measurable ROI, and maintain regulatory trust.

The most efficient early adopters are CTOs and wealth management leaders who take the time to develop a more comprehensive enterprise AI strategy, assess the value-add throughout the organization, and ensure it integrates seamlessly with the entire tech stack. We’ve seen them achieving phenomenal results.

If a firm stops here, with a conscientious AI automation strategy, it’s already won back time for its advisors, and with it, the opportunity for improved client relationships, trust, loyalty, and outcomes.

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Yet those who don’t stop at automating will soon progress to delegating

Even with automated AI tools capturing and summarizing more data, wealth management professionals are still overloaded with manual tasks.

And as these tools become more standardized in the industry, automation will become the new baseline expectation in wealth management. Clients, advisors, and firms are all becoming comfortable with the AI tools that are increasingly permeating our lives. Soon, automation won’t be enough of a differentiator.

The real differentiator will be advisors capable of delegating significant portions of their workflow to agentic AI assistants, tools that can take aligned action.

These advisors will maximize their focus on their clients. By relying on AI agents, they’ll be freed from even more time-intensive administrative, regulatory, and compliance work. Rather than executing many of these tasks themselves, advisors will stay in the loop, reviewing outputs, making key decisions, and maintaining oversight, ensuring that every action aligns with both client needs and compliance requirements.

The work is necessary. But it’s not necessary for an advisor to do, at the expense of client relationships.

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What does agentic AI in wealth management look like in practice?

AI agents combine coordination and execution as core components to complete complex assignments.

• The coordination components, or the orchestrators, conduct strategic prioritization. They analyze client data (including meeting notes) to figure out which tasks need to be completed. They then assign these tasks to the correct AI agents or tools, coordinating the workflow between them.

• The execution components, or the workers, conduct the actual tasks assigned to them by the orchestrators. They might pull historical data from a client’s file, complete regulatory forms, and provide recommendations to advisors. Each agent can be optimized for a specific function, and they can include generative AI models capable of generating reports and providing analyses.

In practical terms, automated AI tools can complete the busy work that an advisor tasks it with. AI agents, however, are specialized assistants that can understand advisor workflows, make informed decisions, and handle the required busy work without constant instruction from the advisor.

It’s the difference, to put it bluntly, between a high school intern and an educated colleague. Both get work done, but they require different levels of management. Both, for instance, can take notes in a meeting and provide a summary. But only one is capable of drafting personalized follow-ups for clients, providing analyses of portfolio impact, handling scheduling, and recommending strategies for upcoming life events—autonomously.

That’s the power of industry-specific AI agents.

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Agentic AI will redefine wealth management workflows

Despite AI’s prevalence (or maybe even because of it), firms have reasonable skepticism about entrusting so much of an advisor’s traditional workflow to agentic AI. Particularly in wealth management, so much of the relationship with clients relies on personal understanding and trust. It’s built on being human, perhaps more than anything else.

Is there room for AI in that equation?

We’ve worked with advisors who see how delegating to the right agentic AI tools delivers value and improves their ability to be more human with their clients. It creates less work for more action.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether the AI agent or the advisor identifies client opportunities, tracks compliance benchmarks, or sends out routine emails. What matters is that those things get done. With agentic AI carrying more of the workload, advisors can actually act on more of those opportunities. They expend less effort on admin, and thus have more capacity for advice.

Delegating to agentic AI, it turns out, simply augments advisors’ capacity. It buys back more of their time. Which is, as the saying goes, even more precious than money.

‍Ready to see how Zeplyn’s agentic AI assistant can take action for you? Book a demo.