One Word Powering the Next Phase of RIA Growth: Connection
The wealth management industry likes to talk about growth in quantitative terms: new capabilities, product expansion and technology investments. But what’s not discussed is how new tools, without clear strategies for how they work together, can cause complexity that stunts growth instead of enabling it.
For years, RIAs have invested in technology to help advisors work more efficiently, serve clients more effectively and scale for growth. While the intent has been straightforward, the results have been more complicated.
Without a clear vision, firms often layer technology onto existing processes in ways that add friction rather than remove it. We recognize the signs: advisors work across disconnected systems, client data remains fragmented and service teams face too many handoffs.
On paper, the business looks more advanced, but in practice, it feels more complex.
Why Now?
This matters now more than ever because the pace of change is accelerating. The wealth management industry is growing more complex, client expectations are rising rapidly and technology itself is evolving quickly.
Let’s break that down:
First, the industry is being reshaped by powerful structural trends. Wealth management is steadily shifting toward advisory models, with advisors moving from product-centered portfolio managers to outcomes-centered wealth managers. That means advisors are increasingly being asked to deliver broader, more integrated advice that reflects clients’ full financial needs, not just part of them.
Second, client expectations are rising. Clients want advice that feels more coordinated, more personalized and easier to navigate. Increasingly, they are looking for partners who can solve more of their needs in one place instead of sending them across separate providers, platforms or teams.
Taken together, these trends are making advisors’ time and attention more valuable, and their inefficiency more costly. Technology is a key enabler of this evolution.
Third, technology is moving fast. It’s well documented that we’re experiencing one of the fastest periods of technological innovation in history. Yet, as I mentioned, the pace of innovation can make it difficult for firms to evaluate how new tools fit into end-to-end workflows, often creating complexity instead of efficiency.
This challenge is becoming more acute as firms increase spending on technologies like artificial intelligence. At BNY’s INSITE conference earlier this year, we polled industry participants and found that 67% now have a dedicated AI budget, up from 14% last year. Yet 65% of those respondents said they don’t have a metric for determining whether that spend is delivering its intended objective.
That’s a meaningful gap. If firms can’t define success, they won’t know whether their technology is actually improving efficiency, creating advisor capacity and, ultimately, if it’s supporting their growth.
More Is Not Always Better
Access to technology is no longer a primary issue. Instead, the challenge has become ensuring whether technology investments translate into meaningful business outcomes.
For many RIAs, the immediate challenge is knowing when to stop adding and start rethinking.
That same logic applies to today’s pace of acquisitions and partnerships, as firms look to close capability gaps faster than they could organically. The urgency is understandable in a market moving toward integrated platforms. But deals alone do not create advantage; they create the potential for it. What matters is whether those new capabilities are integrated into a model that feels coherent to advisors and clients.
Firms that continue to treat each new tool, acquisition or partnership as a standalone fix risk creating more fragmentation, not less. That is especially true with AI, which has real potential to enhance the advisor-client relationship, but only if it’s implemented with purpose.
Instead, firms should evaluate every technology and capability, not as novelty, but as part of a business’s holistic infrastructure. If it’s not embedded in workflows end-to-end and tied to specific business outcomes, it may be digitizing inefficiency rather than solving it.
The Case for Coherence: It’s a Growth Story
Across the industry, we’re entering a more consequential phase of competition. As firms look to grow, they’re no longer assessed based on capabilities, products and individual technology features. Now, they are competing as comprehensive platforms.
Increasingly, competitive advantage will depend less on feature proliferation and more on coherent strategies, meaning “tech rationalization” will be a central strategic priority across the industry.
In many cases, firms will need to challenge the assumption that more tools always create more value, and focus instead on which tools they truly need, how those tools work together cohesively and when it makes more sense to rely on trusted, scaled partners.
Of course, rationalizing technology alone won’t solve everything. Technology complexity is often one part of a broader operating model issue that includes fragmented data, inefficient servicing, unclear ownership and disconnected handoffs.
That’s why it should be viewed in broader terms. Rationalization isn’t just about reducing the number of tools; it’s about making the business easier to scale, easier to manage and easier for advisors to navigate, ultimately benefiting the end client.
Done well, rationalization should enable growth.
Questions RIAs Should Be Asking Themselves
How should RIAs assess their current state? A few questions stand out:
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Do our advisors operate across disconnected systems?
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Are we redesigning workflows, or just digitizing old inefficiencies?
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Are we adding technology faster than we are integrating it?
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Are our technology investments tied to specific metrics such as time saved, capacity created or service improvements?
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Are we over-customizing core infrastructure in ways that make the business harder to scale?
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Where would relying on trusted, scaled partners create more consistency and less friction?
The real opportunity is to create an environment in which advisors can be more present, more efficient and more focused on building lasting client relationships. That’s why these questions matter.
The firms best positioned to grow won’t be the ones with the most tools. They’ll be the ones that simplify, standardize and connect workflows, organize around outcomes and that are disciplined about where to build, where to buy and when to rely on trusted, scaled partners.
In a market full of innovation, connection will prove to be one of the most powerful drivers of growth.
