As wealth management firms experiment with artificial intelligence, Orion CEO Natalie Wolfsen believes the technology could dramatically scale the advisory model − potentially doubling the number of Americans who receive financial advice.
“Personally, I want AI to increase our output. I want it to increase advisors’ productivity. Right now, about 20 percent of Americans benefit from advice, and if I can double every advisor’s productivity, then that means that 40-plus percent of Americans can benefit from advice,” Wolfsen tells InvestmentNews.
A 2024 survey from YouGov found that 27 percent of Americans work with a professional financial advisor. Orion launched the enterprise version of its Denali AI for advisors earlier this year, opening the software to Orion’s ecosystem that spans $5.8 trillion in platform assets and $133 billion in wealth management assets across thousands of advisors and eight million end-client accounts.
“For me, it’s not about eking out an extra couple of dollars or an extra couple of points in margin, but instead, can I take functions of Orion and functions of advisory businesses and double the productivity in that area,” says Wolfsen.
Advisors using Orion had a 2025 organic asset growth rate that was approximately 40 percent higher than that of non-Orion client advisors, according to Orion’s Advisor Wealthtech Survey. Orion has also debuted its AI-powered Report Assistant to draft automated reports for clients and its Query Studio assistant that lets operations teams ask questions in plain English to pull complex data.
“We know that this will replace this swivel chair that advisors have, where you go into your research, and then you go into your custodial system, and then your financial planning system, and then your trading system, and then your portfolio construction system, and then your reporting. All of that information can be put in Denali AI, and then actions can be started and questions can be answered using this tool,” says Wolfsen.
All Orion employees have been tasked with individual “AI goals” for 2026. While some newer RIA startups believe AI can fully automate investment portfolio decisions, Orion views the tech as being more limited to streamlining research and data entry.
“A lot of the basic work that goes into portfolio construction, like evaluating securities and evaluating scenarios, that’s really where the tools are able to help. Making the recommendation or making the decision, to me, that’s still very much an advisory act,” says Wolfsen.
Orion had previously planned to have a wealth innovation lab in San Francisco, but it has now pivoted to innovation hires in multiple locations − Omaha, Nebraska; Jacksonville, Florida; and Lehi, Utah, rather than concentrating them in a single San Francisco hub.
“Going into the AI innovation lab, we thought it would be great to have a team of people co-located in San Francisco working on nothing but AI. Instead, we found we need AI capabilities across all of Orion, because the whole company needed to transform to an AI-native company,” says Wolfsen.
“So we pivoted, and we’ve hired the AI innovation resources, but instead of hiring them in one location, we’ve hired them in multiple locations. Now, all of Orion is transforming into an innovation lab, rather than having a smaller, highly competent resource group do it.”
Orion touts having 17 of the top 20 largest RIA firms as clients, including its addition of Edelman Financial Engines announced in January. Another mega-RIA client of Orion is the Kansas-based RIA roll-up firm Mariner, which integrates its own AI tools for advisors on top of Orion’s wealthtech layer.
“Orion is part of our core infrastructure layer, helping organize and unify data,” says Mariner’s chief innovation officer, Kenny Pointer. “Our advisor-centric AI tools − like Sherpas, Zocks, LLMs − sit on top of that foundation to automate workflows and generate insights.”
The family office of Mariner Wealth Advisors founder and CEO Marty Bicknell, 1248, is a lead investor in AI startup Sherpas. About 125 Mariner advisors are using Sherpas, which automates the investment proposal process for prospective clients.
“Advisors are using Sherpas to accelerate the path from an initial prospect conversation to a personalized, high-quality recommendation. It automates much of the analysis and proposal-building process, reducing turnaround time from days to hours, while allowing the advisor to guide the strategy and final output,” says Pointer.
The tech stack for Mariner Wealth Advisors also includes meeting management via AI assistant Zocks and back-office automation from Humanity Labs. Mariner reported a 30 percent organic growth increase from 2024 to 2025 and said AI could help offset the roughly 100,000-advisor shortage that McKinsey & Company projects for the US wealth management industry by 2034.
“AI will reshape the advisor workforce by making advisors more capable and scalable. It will also accelerate training and development, enabling more professionals to step into client-facing roles and helping to address the industry’s looming advisor shortage,” says Pointer.
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