As wealth management firms seek new avenues for organic growth, many face a familiar challenge: how to transition transactional clients into deeper, advice-driven relationships. While this shift has long been underway, AI is now the accelerator—turning signals into strategy and opportunity into growth. The move from brokerage to advisory is no longer just a trend; it’s a business imperative. And firms that embrace this shift with the right tools will be the ones who lead.
The value of advisory relationships is well-established. Clients with advisory accounts typically demonstrate greater asset retention, longer tenure, and deeper engagement with their financial institutions. According to Cerulli Associates, assets in fee-based advisory programs have grown 169% over the past decade—nearly doubling the 92% growth in total advisor assets. At the same time, managed account assets reached $13.5 trillion in Q3 2024, with Unified Managed Accounts (UMAs) showing a notable 8.7% quarter-over-quarter increase.
Despite this trend, many firms—particularly banks and brokerages—are still leaving significant opportunities on the table by failing to migrate clients into advisory relationships or by taking a one-size-fits-all approach to doing so.
Often, the challenge lies in the inability to identify which clients are ready for more—and what “more” should look like.
Where AI Creates Advantage
AI plays a critical role in solving this challenge. AI can synthesize and analyze client data across the firm—brokerage activity, cash balances, digital engagement, life events, and more—to surface clients who are likely ready for an advisory relationship. But it doesn’t stop there.
AI can prioritize those leads based on predicted receptiveness, advisor capacity, and firm goals. It can also arm advisors with the right message, context, and timing to convert the opportunity—making the conversation more personalized, relevant, and ultimately more effective.
According to Accenture, 97% of financial advisors believe AI can help them grow their book of business by more than 20%—a testament to the technology’s potential in driving both conversion and cross-sell success.
We’ve seen this in action. A large North American wealth management firm partnered with TIFIN AG to consolidate more of their existing clients’ assets—what we call “Wealth Consolidation.” While the firm had years of CRM and data warehousing in place, they lacked the intelligence layer to act on it.
TIFIN AG developed a tailored machine learning model to identify clients with the highest potential to consolidate assets—based on the traits and behaviors of their own high-net-worth clients. In just 15 months, more than 1,500 advisors participated in the program, generating over 100,000 growth insights. Advisors who acted on those AI-driven insights saw a +1.9% increase in net new assets (NNA) compared to a -0.5% outflow in the control group—a net swing of +2.4%. The most engaged advisors saw an even greater impact, with a +5.2% difference in NNA.
What made this successful wasn’t just the technology—it was the seamless integration into advisor workflows. Opportunities were delivered directly in Salesforce, allowing advisors to accept, reject, or defer them based on their judgment, pairing AI-powered data with human intuition.
This is the power of AI: helping firms uncover hidden opportunities, equipping advisors with confidence, and driving measurable organic growth at scale.
A Strategic Shift, Not a One-Time Push
Making the move from brokerage to advisory isn’t a marketing push or a one-time campaign—it’s a strategic transformation in how firms view client relationships. AI allows that shift to be proactive rather than reactive. And as firms look sustainable growth, the ability to identify, prioritize, and act on advisory opportunities across the client base becomes not just beneficial—but essential.
At TIFIN AG, we believe the future of wealth management lies in combining human relationships with data science and machine intelligence. When done right, AI doesn’t replace advisors—it empowers them to serve more clients, more deeply, with greater precision and impact.
Now is the time for firms to move from aspiration to action. Advisory growth isn’t just a future goal—it’s an AI-enabled opportunity that’s available today.
To learn more, schedule a consultation today.