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Robo-advice promised wider access to investing. What is AI actually changing in wealth management?

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Robo-advice promised wider access to investing. What is AI actually changing in wealth management?

Published:
2026-11-05
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AI in Wealth Management

What robo-advice taught the industry, and where AI changes the business next

Wealth management has always run on trust. Robo-advice was meant to open it up to far more people, yet over the last two decades the share of people accessing public markets has barely moved. So where does AI make a real difference, and what still depends on people?

In this episode of the GetFutureReady Podcast, host Maulik Sailor is joined again by Justin Peimani, co-founder of Relace, a regulatory technology platform. It is the fourth episode in a series on regulation and compliance with Relace's co-founders.

The discussion covers the lessons of robo-advice, where wealth managers are investing in AI today, whether wealth management could ever be fully agentic, how UK regulators view accountability, and advice for founders and established firms. The views shared are opinion, not regulatory, legal or investment advice.

Justin Peimani and Relace

Justin is a lawyer by training, qualified in New York, who has spent the last ten years building software companies focused on financial services. He has worked with banks, hedge funds, asset managers, wealth managers and fintechs. He and his co-founder, Lyubomira, started Relace after seeing the same pattern across customers: regulation is everywhere and only growing, there is a shortage of talent, and many firms still rely on pen and paper or siloed spreadsheets.

Relace offers a series of products, starting with a Consumer Duty solution, that help firms make sense of the rules that apply to them, apply them in the context of their business and let their teams move faster. Justin also shares that, since the previous episode, Relace has announced its pre-seed fundraise.

Why Robo-Advice Did Not Widen Access

Maulik frames wealth management as a business whose main product is trust, followed by performance, with the customer relationship and personal service making the difference. He asks what lessons the last fifteen to twenty years of robo-advice offer.

Justin explains that the idea behind robo-advice was that moving wealth management onto digital platforms and phones would open up access, so that more people would invest and the pool of clients would grow. Looking at the data over the last twenty years, he says, there is hardly any change in the number of people accessing public markets, which typically hovers around 60% in the US and around 20% in the UK.

What the generation of companies such as Robinhood, Nutmeg and E-Trade got right, in his view, was offering a different experience to certain demographics, for example younger people who want to learn about finance and manage their own money without going into a bank. Some of those assets have since been acquired by banks such as JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.

What did not happen is a wider move into public markets, and Justin adds a third factor to trust and performance: expertise. Wealth is not only the investments someone holds today but what happens to them later, including how they are passed to children, the tax implications and avoiding a very large inheritance bill. Those are services that Swiss private banks have been very good at delivering and that robo-advisers have not yet picked up. He sees AI as a chance to ask how much expertise can be brought to someone on their phone without a meeting.

Where AI Is Landing in Wealth Management

Maulik notes that wealth management was an early adopter of data modelling, machine learning and predictive models, and asks why little major has come out of the recent AI wave. Justin splits the answer into two categories: client-facing and non-client-facing AI.

On the client-facing side, he points to Lloyds' push into the mass affluent segment, where the theme is delivering personalisation at scale. On the other side, where he sees much more change, are client onboarding, enabling relationship managers, helping compliance teams manage the volume of regulatory change, and helping finance deal with assets. That ranges from using Copilot for analysis in Excel to full internal systems that some private banks use for suitability assessments. In his view, that is where the bulk of the investment is going, in the back and middle office.

Justin recalls a relationship manager at a large Swiss private bank who said half of their day is spent filling out forms, whether onboarding a new client or expanding a relationship with an existing one. Digitising that is already an improvement in service, which ultimately should lead to more business.

How quickly a firm adopts these tools depends on its size and the clients it serves. A private bank serving ultra-high-net-worth clients will invest heavily in a seamless experience and in delivering expertise quickly. Firms further down the wealth scale tend to focus more on the client-facing side, for example clients with a couple of hundred thousand in investable assets who may be investing for the first time.

Could Wealth Management Be Fully Agentic?

Maulik asks whether wealth management could exist purely on AI agents, with no human involvement, for everyday investors. Justin says there is a place for it: many people already put their finances into ChatGPT or Claude and ask what they could do better. But he cites polling data showing a 50 percentage point difference in trust between a person and AI when it comes to financial advice. That gap, he expects, will close as it did with the internet and with mobile, and there is already a demographic, particularly people in technology, who prefer to deal without a human. Whether that reaches 80% of the market is, in his view, unlikely in the short term. Maulik compares it to supermarket self-checkouts, which people first disliked and now use for the convenience.

On regulation, Justin says the FCA has made recent announcements and that regulators are clear that whether or not an agent acts on a firm's behalf, the firm is ultimately accountable. Any firm delivering an experience entirely through an agent therefore runs the risk of whatever that agent does, as it would if a person behaved badly. He says regulators are watching closely, both within wealth management and outside it, because the technology is here and adoption will grow. He believes the FCA has made clear it will not become an AI regulator directly, while some other regulators are taking a different approach.

The Next Twelve Months: Admin Burden and Client Experience

Asked what the right balance looks like over the next twelve months, Justin points to two areas that are ripe for disruption: the administrative burden an organisation carries, and its ability to deliver an experience to the end client.

On the first, processes are still heavily manual. He mentions filling out forms, bringing data together from different systems to feed a suitability assessment, and offboarding clients, and says firms are either building tools internally or going to outside vendors. In UK wealth management, he says, the two key words right now are Consumer Duty. After what happened over the summer with some high-profile firms receiving significant fines, every firm is looking at the experience it delivers and whether it meets the outcomes clients want, because the regulator is holding them accountable.

On the second, he describes firms that go to market through advisers. An adviser with a mobile app that shows exactly who the client is, what they need and what their priorities are can give better advice and spend less time with each client, and that time is high value. In his words, one adviser could go from five, six or ten clients to potentially 100, which he calls the real opportunity.

Can London Lead in Wealth Tech?

Maulik asks whether the UK is well placed to produce a fully autonomous wealth tech platform. Justin, who describes himself as a little biased as a London-based founder, says London offers a regulator that is close to the market and regularly engaged, a deep pool of wealth managers and family offices, and regulators that actively invest in innovation.

He adds that wealth creation is largest in China and the US, so more companies would be expected to emerge there. In the US, activity is concentrated around New York, where he sees AI-native wealth managers starting to appear alongside companies building AI tools for the back, middle and front office. He expects London to have a good number of such companies too, because the clients, the regulator and many technologists are all close together.

His top tip for a founder building a new agentic wealth platform is to spend time in Mayfair. He says it is partly a joke and partly not: the density of family offices and firms in a very small area means that you can hear the challenges that compliance, risk and portfolio managers have, and once a solution works for one firm it is a very dense network to grow in.

Advice for Established Wealth Managers

Maulik poses a scenario: a wealth manager with a healthy level of assets under management, existing platforms and a personalised CRM, who keeps hearing that agentic AI will replace humans. Justin says he reacts a little when the conversation is about replacing humans and efficiency, because the more interesting part is the growth story. How can AI help find more clients, or help existing clients place more of their wealth with the firm? He suggests enabling relationship managers with more information and better prospect lists so that advice can be more tailored and suitable.

He also points to a trend that is not discussed enough: the nature of wealth being created is changing. In the current AI boom there are more entrepreneurs, professional athletes and influencers, whose needs differ. Someone whose wealth sits in one company faces different risks and taxation from an influencer with a high cash-flow business, and firms now have the ability to tailor their proposition to a specific kind of client. Justin says the question of replacing people does not grow a business, whereas efficiency can come at any time, and a more productive team means a business can bring on more people to do more work.

Maulik then asks what he would advise the chief innovation officer of a wealth platform. Justin describes his advice as quite boring: work out what is broken, fix it, then find the next problem. He would start with what constrains growth, such as freeing up time for relationship managers, helping compliance handle higher volumes, or making onboarding, offboarding and suitability more seamless. From that menu, a firm decides what to build internally and what to buy from a vendor, and chooses the work with the highest return. He tends to shy away from low-hanging fruit and suggests focusing the internal team on the biggest problems.

What's Next for Relace

Asked what comes next, Justin says the company's saying is build product, sell product. He mentions an upcoming roundtable on operational resilience with chief operating officers and chief compliance officers from wealth, asset management and other sectors. Relace supports the UK and the EU, has done some work for the US and the Middle East, and will continue to grow based on customer demand. He has nothing to announce on a US expansion, and for 2027 hopes for more product and more sales.

FAQ

Why did robo-advice not widen access to investing?

According to Justin, the number of people accessing public markets has barely changed over the last twenty years, hovering around 60% in the US and around 20% in the UK. Robo-advice offered a better experience to certain demographics, but it did not bring the expertise, such as estate and tax planning, that wealth clients often need.

Where are wealth managers investing in AI?

Justin says much of the investment is in the back and middle office: client onboarding, supporting relationship managers, managing regulatory change in compliance, suitability assessments and offboarding. Client-facing work, such as personalisation at scale, is another focus, particularly for firms serving the mass affluent.

Could wealth management run entirely on AI agents?

Justin sees a place for it, especially among people who work in technology, but cites a 50 percentage point trust gap between a person and AI on financial advice. He expects the gap to narrow over time and thinks it unlikely that it will cover 80% of the market in the short term.

Who is accountable when an AI agent acts for a wealth manager?

In Justin's account, regulators are clear that whether or not an agent acts on a firm's behalf, the firm is ultimately accountable. A firm that delivers an experience entirely through an agent runs the risk of whatever that agent does.

What should an established wealth manager do first with AI?

Justin suggests starting with growth rather than replacing people: find more clients, help existing clients place more of their wealth with the firm, and tailor propositions to specific types of client. After that, work out what is broken, fix it, and focus the internal team on the highest-return problems.

Is London a good place to build wealth tech?

Justin, a London-based founder, says London has a regulator that is close to the market, a deep pool of wealth managers and family offices, and many technologists. He acknowledges he is a little biased, and his tip to founders is to spend time in Mayfair.

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