Practice and client management

The answer depends first and foremost on how much time financial advisors have for an emotionally and technically challenging process, experts said.

The most precipitous drop of any category was in asset allocation, as advisors signaled they would be less aggressive with investments in the new year.

Edward Jones stood accused of not properly supervising advisors who were charging clients commissions for mutual funds and then moving the fund shares over to fee-generating accounts.

A recent Smarsh survey found that although 79% of finserv firms view AI as critical to the sector's future and 81% of large firms feel pressured to adopt AI to stay competitive, only 32% have formal AI governance programs in place.

Industry experts say the new team of 25 investment specialists seems designed to tackle the more esoteric aspects of working with wealthy clients and leave asset gathering and relationship management to advisors.

If there's one thing we should have learned by now, it's that the constant state of change in our industry is driven by advances in technology.

But even as many firms' tech budgets are likely to increase, experts say carefully spending that money to increase efficiency will be paramount to maintaining a nimble tech stack.

While not denying the benefits of PE backing, a subset of RIAs and wealth managers remain determined to go it alone.

Even though some firms have been able to command top dollar selling themselves to large aggregators, plenty of variables are still helping to hold purchase prices in check.

Experts in the finance and wealth management industries say AI saves time and helps synthesize large amounts of data, but technical and ethical limitations remain.