07.02.25 By Bridgenext Think Tank
When our SVP John Carmody sat down with a seasoned wealth advisor in Atlanta earlier this year, the conversation turned, as it often does, to the client experience.
“She told me, I know my clients like family. But I can’t always show that at scale anymore, and if I don’t, someone else will.” John recalls.
That moment stuck with him. Not because the advisor lacked care, but because even the most relationship-driven advisors are hitting a ceiling. They’re being forced to scale empathy, trust, and strategic insights in a world that’s moving faster than ever.
John’s takeaway? Hyper-personalization isn’t just a competitive edge anymore. It’s survival.
And if firms don’t act now, they risk becoming the next EF Hutton, a legacy institution that once dominated the wealth management landscape, only to fade into irrelevance after failing to modernize.
Hyper-personalization in financial service industry is about knowing what your client needs before they ask and building your entire data and advisory model to deliver that seamlessly. The tools exist. The question is, are you using them, or waiting to be outpaced?
Here’s how most firms are making it happen, and what’s holding others back.
The foundation of hyper-personalization is rich, real-time data. Income, risk profiles, life goals, ESG preferences, behavioral cues, when siloed across departments or platforms, they’re just noise. But when integrated, they power deep client understanding.
As Brie Williams, Head of Practice Management at State Street Global Advisors puts it:
“Data is vital as its utilization rapidly evolves. The wealth management industry is undergoing a transformative shift as it redirects its focus toward embracing more comprehensive and advanced descriptive and predictive analytics. This transformation aims to craft more complete client profiles…”
Generative AI solutions and machine learning aren’t buzzwords, they’re the only way to deliver personalized advice at scale. Whether it’s real-time portfolio recommendations or detecting life changes based on spending patterns, these technologies give advisors superpowers.
Carl Robertson, Global CMO at FNZ puts it plainly:
“The race for competitive advantage in wealth management is increasingly being fueled by advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). We expect these technologies to play an increasingly important role as firms look for ways to create hyper-personalized wealth management services…”
Cookie-cutter portfolios don’t cut it anymore. Hyper-personalization demands tools that adjust strategies in real-time, to match not just goals and risk, but clients’ personal values, such as ESG or faith-based investing.
Clients want the best of both worlds: instant digital access and human empathy. The winning model isn’t digital-only or advisor-only, it’s digitally-augmented human relationships.
The best firms don’t wait for annual review meetings. They anticipate. Hyper-personalized wealth management firms use AI solutions to prompt timely nudges, alerts, or even content, before clients even realize they need it.
Despite the clear path forward, most firms hit the same blockers:
| Critical Needs | Key Blockers |
|---|---|
| Comprehensive data integration | Data silos, legacy platforms |
| Strong data analytics via AI | Cultural resistance, lack of leadership buy-in |
| Personalized advice at scale | Advisor bandwidth and resource constraints |
| Blended digital-human engagement | Compliance and oversight complexities |
| Proactive service delivery | Talent and skills gap in digital execution |
April Rudin, CEO of The Rudin Group, nailed it:
“The underlying challenge that most wealth management firms face regarding emerging digital technologies lies in change management and ultimately firm culture, which is beyond any individual technology itself.”
The firms that do commit to hyper-personalization are already seeing quantifiable gains:
Morgan Stanley’s NBA system leverages AI to deliver personalized recommendations. During the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic, advisors used NBA over 11 million times, resulting in an average increase of five to six customer calls per day. The time to generate a personalized investment idea dropped from 45 minutes to instantaneous.
Ethic, a technology-driven asset manager, uses advanced data analytics to create customized sustainable investment portfolios based on clients’ ESG preferences. The percentage of investors applying ESG principles to at least a quarter of their portfolios increased from 48% in 2017 to 75% in 2019, partly due to more precise alignment of investments with client values.
A Temenos and Forbes Insights survey found that 82% of wealth management executives believe that increasing product personalization is key to success. Refinitiv’s survey showed that 61% of executives rated analytics and insights as “very important” for their firms’ future.
By 2025, over $84 trillion is expected to change hands as Baby Boomers pass assets to Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. This Great Wealth Transfer isn’t just a numbers game—it’s a loyalty shift. To stay competitive, firms must start combining digital intelligence with advisor empathy—something we explore in more depth in this post:
Enhance Client–Advisor Relationships with AI-Driven Digital Solutions
If wealth management firms don’t evolve to meet these expectations, they risk becoming irrelevant to the very clients they’re about to inherit. Hyper-personalization will be an answer to this mindset shift. It’s the strategic glue between your data, your advisors, and your clients’ evolving lives.
The question isn’t whether to do it, it’s how fast you can start.
At Bridgenext, we help wealth management firms bridge this gap. Whether you’re rethinking legacy data systems, implementing AI, or training advisors to work smarter with tech, we partner with you to bring personalization to life, not in 5 years, but this quarter.
Want to explore what that looks like for your firm?
Let’s talk. Before your clients find someone who already has.
References:
www.fnz.com/news/how-digital-technology-and-ai-will-change-wealth-management
www.forbes.com/sites/aprilrudin/2020/07/10/hyper-personalization-may-be-wealth-managers-north-star-through-unchartered-waters/
grovepointfinancial.com/how-we-think/hyper-personalization-in-wealth-management/
www2.deloitte.com/ca/en/pages/financial-services/articles/disrupting-wealth-management-hyper-personalization.html
