In July 2023 the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules under both the Securities Exchange Act and the Investment Advisers Act aimed at preventing conflicts of interest in firms’ use of predictive data analytics with investors. The proposal, announced in SEC Press Release 2023-140, would have required broker-dealers and investment advisers to evaluate and neutralise certain conflicts arising from algorithmic engagement with investors. The proposal generated heavy industry response and remained unfinalised through 2024 and 2025. In June 2025 the SEC formally withdrew the predictive-analytics proposal as part of a broader withdrawal of pending rulemakings, captured in a June 17, 2025 Federal Register notice. The withdrawal does not change the underlying conflict-of-interest standards that already apply, but it removed the specific framework the SEC had proposed.
The Shape of the US Wealth Tech Stack
A US registered investment advisor in 2026 typically runs a stack of eight to twelve distinct software products to operate the business. The portfolio management and accounting layer is dominated by Orion, Black Diamond from SS&C, Tamarac inside Envestnet, and Addepar at the higher end of the assets-under-management spectrum. The customer relationship management layer is Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, Wealthbox, or Redtail. Financial planning splits among eMoney, MoneyGuidePro, RightCapital, and newer entrants including Income Lab and Conquest. Compliance and surveillance run on Hadrian, Smarsh, or Global Relay. Document storage, billing, and onboarding each have their own specialised vendors.
The stack used to be vertically integrated. Big broker-dealers built proprietary platforms that did everything in one place. Independent RIAs assembled best-of-breed stacks themselves. The two models have converged through 2024 and 2025, with major broker-dealer platforms increasingly licensing or acquiring the best independent tools and independent RIAs increasingly choosing all-in-one bundles from custodians like Schwab, Fidelity, or Pershing. The net effect is a US wealth-tech market that looks more like enterprise SaaS than the financial-services category it once resembled.
What Cerulli Actually Reports
Cerulli Associates publishes an annual State of US Wealth Management Technology report that surveys US wealth-management decision-makers about technology adoption and procurement. The report tracks build-versus-buy decisions across categories including portfolio management, financial planning, CRM, document management, and the newer AI-assisted tools. Cerulli has also published research on RIA consolidators, finding that integrated technology platforms are one of the most valued services aggregators offer to acquired practices.
Where AI Has Actually Landed in Advisor Workflows
Large language models entered the advisor workflow around 2024. The clearest production gain has been meeting-related work: AI co-pilots from vendors like Jump, Zocks, Pulse360, and similar tools record and transcribe advisor-client meetings, draft follow-up notes, and surface compliance-relevant moments from the conversation. The hours saved translate into more client meetings, deeper relationships, and capacity for advisors to handle larger books. Several of the major US wealth-tech platforms acquired or built their own AI tools in 2024 and 2025, integrating note-taking and prospect-research features directly into the existing CRM and planning stacks.
Compliance and surveillance is the second area where AI has produced real gains. Pattern-based surveillance has improved as machine learning has been applied to the firm’s own corpus of advisor communications. Hadrian, Global Relay, and Smarsh have each integrated machine-learning models that reduce false-positive flags. Investment-advice generation remains the most cautious area. Most US RIAs treat AI-generated recommendations as draft material that an advisor must review before acting on, and the major US custodians have published guidance asking firms to maintain that human-in-the-loop posture explicitly. The withdrawn SEC predictive-analytics proposal would have formalised some of these expectations, but in its absence firms operate under the broader fiduciary and conflict-of-interest standards that already apply.
The Custodian Conundrum
Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and Pershing each control a large share of US RIA custody, and their platform decisions ripple through every independent firm that custodies there. When a custodian acquires or integrates a wealth-tech vendor, the rest of the ecosystem reorganises around the move. Schwab’s integration of certain wealth-tech offerings into its core platform has shifted the competitive equation for several independent vendors. Fidelity’s Wealthscape platform continues to expand its bundled offering. Pershing’s ongoing platform modernisation under Bank of New York Mellon has pulled advisor workflow software more tightly into the custodial relationship.
The trend tightens lock-in for advisors who pick a primary custodian. Several independent vendors have responded by building stronger multi-custodian integrations to keep advisors mobile and to avoid being trapped on a single custodial roadmap. The result is a more concentrated infrastructure layer with a more competitive application layer, which is the same pattern that has played out in adjacent enterprise software markets over the past decade.
| Date | Action | Primary source |
|---|---|---|
| July 26, 2023 | SEC proposes rule on conflicts of interest in broker-dealer and investment-adviser use of predictive data analytics | SEC Press Release 2023-140 |
| August 9, 2023 | Federal Register publishes the proposed rule (17 CFR 240.15l-2 and 275.211(h)(2)-4) | Federal Register |
| June 17, 2025 | SEC withdraws the proposed predictive-analytics rule as part of a broader withdrawal of pending rulemakings | Federal Register |
Sources linked in the right column.
What to Watch Through 2027
Three threads will shape US wealth management technology through 2027. First, the SEC will continue to issue staff statements and risk alerts on AI use, even without a formal predictive-analytics rule. Firms that document their AI decision-making in detail will be better positioned for examinations than those that treat AI as a black box. Second, the continued consolidation of advisor practice management will reshape vendor selection patterns. Private-equity-backed RIA aggregators have made wealth-tech selection a core part of their playbook, often standardising newly acquired practices on a single stack within six months.
Third, the integration of tax-aware investing across the stack will continue to push downmarket. Direct indexing and tax-loss harvesting have grown rapidly at the high end of the US RIA market, with several platforms now offering it for accounts well under the previous typical minimum. The technology required to scale these features down to the mass-affluent segment is in active development, with the trade-offs between cost, customisation, and operational complexity still being worked out.
The interesting US wealth-tech question for 2026 is not whether AI will replace advisors. It is which platforms give advisors the leverage to serve more clients without sacrificing the depth that makes the relationship worth paying for. The vendors that figure that out first will not just win wealth-tech revenue; they will reshape what a US client expects from financial advice across the next economic cycle.
