The forces reconfiguring global wealth management are accelerating faster than most firms can adapt, with artificial intelligence, shifting client behavior and the world's largest-ever private wealth transfer converging to fundamentally rewrite the industry's value creation logic.
The findings are drawn from EY's Wealth Management Strategy Radar, developed by the firm's Global Center for Wealth Management which frames 30 industry-specific convictions that challenge assumptions and guide decision-making for firm leaders through to 2030.
Of those, 10 are highlighted as carrying the broadest strategic weight, with AI topping the list.
"The more we learn about AI's effect on wealth management, the clearer it becomes that the impact will be both strategic and structural, for incumbent firms and new entrants alike," state the report’s authors, Jun Li, EY global and Americas wealth and asset management leader, and Olaf Toepfer, founder and leader of EY's Global Center for Wealth Management.
EY frames AI's practical implications through what it calls a "5E" schema: staff enablement, workflow efficiency, client experience, front office effectiveness and guided business engineering.
Rather than treating these as parallel benefits, Li and Toepfer describe them as a compounding value pathway, with early productivity gains creating the conditions for deeper client experience and front office transformation before AI-guided business engineering becomes viable at scale.
The report urges leaders to treat AI implementation "as a redesign of operating and governance models with humans in the loop, not an IT project."
The second priority concerns the development of cohort-specific value propositions for affluent and lower high-net-worth clients.
EY's own research shows that 45% of mass affluent clients now demand financial planning services, while 29% express interest in values-based investing compared with 23% among HNW clients. The challenge, the report notes, is that legacy technology and scaling constraints continue to prevent firms from translating those signals into genuinely differentiated experiences.
Private markets growth earns a prominent place in EY's framework, but the emphasis is on caution rather than expansion.
Semi-liquid structures have opened a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity within wealth channels, but Li and Toepfer warn that managing liquidity expectations is "critical to client satisfaction," particularly during periods of market stress. The report argues that liquidity governance must move upstream from portfolio management into suitability, mandate design and client dialogue.
On pricing, EY identifies a structural disconnect between how firms charge and where clients actually perceive value.
As regulatory scrutiny tightens and asset-based fee grids come under pressure, the report predicts that pricing power will migrate toward accountable advice on complex matters such as succession, tax, lending and family governance. Hybrid pricing models, it suggests, will become increasingly defensible as a result.
Self-directed investing represents one of the most disruptive forces in the framework.
EY forecasts that mature markets could move toward an equilibrium of roughly 35% fully self-directed and 50% partially self-directed clients in the coming years, driven largely by AI reducing the barriers to going it alone. The report cautions that wealth managers face "a narrowing window to integrate AI into their advisory offerings" before client-controlled AI begins to mediate those relationships directly.
Tax is identified as another area of escalating strategic relevance. Clients are increasingly focused not on after-tax benchmarks but on post-fee, post-FX, post-tax and post-inflation net outcomes, and EY argues that wealth managers must respond by industrializing tax clarity at scale rather than relying on manual cross-border support models that Li and Toepfer describe as increasingly uneconomic.
The report also addresses the fragmented economics of global wealth management, noting that while European AUM reached a record €33 trillion in 2024, up 11.7% from 2023, operating profit margins had fallen sharply in 2022 and 2023 before only a modest recovery in 2024. In 2023, margins dropped to 11.1 basis points of average AUM, the lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis.
EY's prescription is that winning firms will separate where they originate, book and service wealth, building multi-hub franchise structures that combine local client relevance with centralized operational efficiency.
Risk and compliance also feature prominently. Li and Toepfer argue that traditional reactive models must give way to an automated preventive control function producing real-time evidence, with controls embedded directly into operating workflows rather than applied after the fact.
The final priority addresses AI's role as a direct client-facing advisory tool.
With wealthy individuals already turning to external AI platforms for financial guidance, the report warns of "a major threat of disintermediation in early stages of client journeys." Firms that build institution-controlled AI advisory engines, backed by verified financial data and connected seamlessly to human advisors, will retain mandates and deepen relevance over time.
Underlying all 10 priorities, Li and Toepfer argue, is the need for wealth management leaders to build sharper foresight and execution discipline. The research concludes that despite the pace of transformation facing the sector, clients' fundamental needs remain unchanged: "a relationship they can trust and support they can rely on at critical and complex moments."
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