Asset and wealth management (AWM) organisations need to rethink how they compete. Disruptive technologies like generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), distributed ledger technology (DLT), big data and cloud computing continue to serve as vital tools to improve efficiency and performance—but their impact is expanding. These and other innovations are not just enhancing operational capabilities, they are revolutionising offerings, revenue models and business frameworks within the AWM ecosystem.
A remarkable 80% of the 264 asset and wealth managers we surveyed report that disruptive technology is fuelling revenue growth—nearly as many as those who observe improvements in operational efficiency. What’s more, seven out of ten highlight the pivotal role of disruptive tech in driving product and service innovation, as these technologies transition from supporting back-office functions to playing a more prominent role in customer interactions.
A tech-driven ecosystem
The revenue potential stretches from product innovation and opening up new markets to offering tech-as-a-service to other ecosystem players, including platforms for product distribution, portfolio management, and risk and data analytics. According to our analysis, tech-as-a-service could on its own deliver a 12% boost to revenues for AWM organisations that move quickly to embrace the potential.
Opening up the mass-affluent market
Disruptive tech is also bringing AWM organisations closer to what for many would be the ultimate prize—delivering personalised high-net-worth (HNW)–style financial solutions to a vast and still largely untapped mass-affluent market, which consists of individuals with moderate investable assets. More than seven out of ten asset and wealth managers (72%) believe that disruptive tech will lead to a shift in customer preferences towards tech-enabled solutions.
Capitalising on the great wealth transfer
This shift in customer preferences is expected to be especially marked among a younger generation of investors, who’ve become accustomed to high levels of tech-enabled engagement, experience and hyper-personalisation—many of whom will be the beneficiaries of an intergenerational transfer of wealth, estimated at US$68 trillion over the next decade. They’re also seeking out brands that reflect their values in areas such as sustainability and social inclusion, underlining the strategic interplay between disruptive tech and other megatrends, including climate change and demographic shifts.
Breaking out of the squeeze
The big question is whether AWM organisations are moving far and fast enough to capitalise on the opportunities and keep pace with the tech-driven shake-up in their industry. Most asset and wealth managers (68%) currently allocate less than one-sixth of their total capital expenditure to innovative and potentially transformative technologies. The question is especially pressing for a potentially ‘squeezed middle’ set of companies that generally lack both the scale and sizeable investment budgets of their larger counterparts and the targeted niche focus of specialist players. (See our five-point plan for these companies, ‘How can the squeezed middle keep pace?’ below.)
Rethinking value propositions
The findings from our survey of 257 institutional investors, including insurance companies, pension funds, endowments and family offices, further underline the urgent need to rethink investment strategies—and, ultimately, value propositions. When asked whether they believe that disruptive tech could make it easier to access investments and hence reduce their reliance on asset managers, 59% of these respondents said yes.
Institutional investors are coming to expect tech-enhanced capabilities like data-enabled insight, adaptability and customisation. Six out of ten hold regular discussions with their asset managers on how technological innovations are incorporated into investment strategies. Institutional investors are also stepping up their own investment in disruptive tech in areas such as real-time risk monitoring, advanced market trend forecasting and efficient portfolio rebalancing.
Why act now?
Amid shifting investor demands and rapid technological progress, organisations need to pursue growth beyond their traditional business model for their long-term viability.
Accordingly, this report is structured around four broad action areas designed to harness the growth potential of disruptive technologies:
1. Make tech a value creator
Innovate products, expand into private markets, engage mass-affluent clients, and break down silos in your data management.
2. Collaborate to compete
Forge strategic partnerships within ecosystems, support smaller players, maximise ROI and manage third-party risks.
3. Reimagine talent and skills
Accelerate upskilling in your workforce, harness tech-driven workforce value, and shape future roles and career paths.
4. Build confidence in disruptive tech
Enhance visibility, bolster protection, and prioritise cybersecurity across your organisation.
1. Make tech a value creator
The largest AWM groups are becoming tech and data firms in their own right. The results are opening up innovative new value propositions and sharpening competitive relevance in a market that is now growing faster than we anticipated last year.
In our baseline scenario, we expect global assets under management (AuM) to reach US$171 trillion by 2028. This growth reflects a 5.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), up from the 5% in last year’s analysis. We expect AuM in alternatives to grow much faster than overall AuM—namely, at a CAGR of 6.7%, to reach US$27.6 trillion by 2028. Interest in private markets is accelerating the creation of multi-asset managers, and driving a step up in the acquisition of infrastructure, private credit and other potentially high-margin businesses.
Leveraging technology to drive product innovation
One focus of growth-driving innovation is the new generation of tokenised products. In our baseline scenario, AuM in tokenised investment funds (including mutual funds and alternatives, excluding mandates) is projected to increase from US$40 billion in 2023 to more than US$317 billion by 2028. Although that represents a small portion of the overall market, it is growing at an impressive CAGR of more than 50%—driven by the need for heightened liquidity, improved transparency and broader investment access, especially within alternative funds, which could include private equity, real estate, commodities and other non-traditional assets.
Further openings include expanding into digital asset classes as regulatory restrictions ease. This would allow AWM organisations to diversify portfolios, tap into uncorrelated asset classes and attract a new generation of tech-savvy clients. Less than a fifth (18%) of asset and wealth managers in our survey currently offer digital assets as part of their product offering. It’s early days for these products, but investor interest is increasing. Eight out of ten of the asset and wealth managers that offer digital assets report a rise in inflows.
Boosting revenues with technology-as a-service
Offering technology and data analysis services to other AWM organisations is another potential source of revenue. Our analysis indicates that tech-as-a-service offerings could open up growth of up to 12% by 2028 for early adopters. Trailblazers include firms that have seen notable growth in their sales of cloud-based portfolio management, risk analytics and wealth management tools. Asset managers are also aiming for future earnings through the sale of tech platforms, including advisory, pension services and more.
Pursuing the booming mass-affluent market
A potent mix of regulatory changes and the proliferation of technology is helping to crack open the door to the mass-affluent segment, which is set to see the second largest expansion in AuM according to our projections, outpaced only by the HNW segment.
Disruptive tech enables apps and platforms that let retail investors buy small stakes in private markets or tokenised funds. Tokenised fractional ownership could expand the market openings by lowering minimum investments and allowing otherwise illiquid assets to be traded on secondary markets. Our survey underscores the significant interest in tokenised private markets assets among both asset managers and institutional investors, with more than half of each group favouring private equity as the top tokenised asset class.
Making democratisation work for clients
With democratisation comes heightened regulatory and investor demands in areas such as customer understanding and the delivery of appropriate outcomes. Disruptive tech can help meet these expectations in a customised and cost-effective way by allowing more data about a client’s objectives, risk appetite and capacity for risk to be analysed, more quickly, across a much bigger client base. But the potential is still untapped. For instance, only 20% of asset and wealth managers are currently using disruptive tech to enhance personalised investment advisory.
As PwC’s Wealth Management Insights 2024 highlights, the other key foundation for retail expansion into private markets is meeting investor demands for a hybrid advice model that combines digital and in-person interaction. Disruptive tech can make the biggest difference in client profiling, analysis and insight, so advisors can focus on the human touch—and serve more clients.
Data integration as the differentiator
A full 59% of asset and wealth managers are currently adopting or considering big data analytics for their investment operations, which highlights the crucial role of both structured data (organised and easily searchable) and unstructured data (raw and unorganised) in driving innovation. Only through robust data integration can firms realise the revenue and cost-saving benefits of technologies like GenAI, including fund profitability analysis.
However, realising the upside of a data-driven organisation is as much about culture and organisation as it is about technology. In often siloed AWM organisations, the starting point is breaking down the data demarcations between business areas such as sales, finance and investment management to create an aligned, integrated, information-led approach.
The other big priority is aligning analytics initiatives with business objectives to help maximise viable value. Typical examples could include assessing the impact of new asset classes on portfolio construction or deepening your understanding of what new generations of investors and employees value.
2. Collaborate to compete
When we asked asset and wealth managers and institutional investors which disruptive technologies would have the most transformative impact on operations and analytics in the coming years, the answers were fairly evenly spread across AI, GenAI, cloud infrastructure, big data and blockchain technologies.
Some AWM organisations are placing their bets on specific technologies as they look to drive innovation and differentiation. But across the market as a whole, as players balance their performance expectations against risks such as bias, security and ethics, there is a growing recognition that the spearhead for change isn’t a particular technology or ‘killer app’—not even GenAI.
Rather, the convergence of disruptive technologies is reinventing everything and putting pressure on existing tech and data infrastructure. More than half of asset and wealth managers see their organisation’s lack of appropriate technology infrastructure (58%) as a hurdle in adopting disruptive tech.
Creating a springboard for modernisation
Cloud adoption has long been a prerequisite for broader tech integrations and applications. The fact that so many AWM organisations are only beginning to consider a move suggests that AWM is behind the curve compared to other sectors. Cloud platforms can accelerate transformation by providing a fast, accessible and scalable plug-and-play entry point for a range of technologies, including AI, GenAI, distributed ledger technology, internet of things, and big data analytics.
71% of asset and wealth managers believe cloud infrastructure and technology will shape the future of the industry over the next two to three years.
How can AWM organisations make the most of the cloud potential? PwC’s 2024 Cloud and AI Business Survey identified a top-performing 12% of respondents who are realising the greatest return on their investment. The key differentiator is aligning AI and cloud modernisation with strategy-led implementation, rather than seeing it as simply a tech priority. Top performers also take care in choosing and building relationships with their cloud service providers.
Harnessing the ecosystem
Against this backdrop, 81% of asset and wealth managers are contemplating strategic partnerships, consolidations, or mergers and acquisitions to enhance their technological capabilities.
Larger players are accessing selective talent and technology from start-ups and scale-ups, either through acquisition or joint ventures, to speed up development and market rollout. Although small and midsize managers can’t match the investment of larger counterparts, they can harness fintech, managed service, tech-as-a-service and other ecosystem partners to provide the capabilities they need. The extended ecosystems that these relationships are creating not only enable smaller players to bring their systems up to speed quickly but also allow for greater outsourcing of non-core operations to more efficient and cost-effective partners.
These ecosystem dynamics mean that many organisations are navigating new and unfamiliar operating models; market scanning for optimal partners and fostering collaboration have become essential core competencies. The shift may necessitate appointing a chief collaboration officer, or similar role, to ensure enterprise-wide applicability.
Businesses must also refine their models to stand out and deliver maximum value within the network. Achieving this requires aligning a strategic operating model with business ambitions—in particular, developing interoperability throughout the tech stack for seamless collaboration across the ecosystem. By embracing crowdsourced innovation and open-source technology, companies can achieve greater agility and cost efficiency compared to traditional ways of working.
Helping smaller players deliver
Small service providers, which include fintechs and other third parties, often lack the operational capabilities to scale up their developments to meet the demands of larger partners. They may also lack the experience and expertise to meet regulatory demands within AWM. Support from larger partners is therefore critical. Regulators in the EU, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia have launched sandbox trials that allow fintechs to test innovations and connect with larger financial services organisations. There are also examples of operational collaborations in which a senior executive from the larger partner takes a seat on the board and provides guidance on development and regulation.
Driving return on investment
AWM organisations face the costs, challenges and risks of retiring legacy systems and modernising their capabilities, while integrating what is likely to be diffuse and complex tech infrastructure. If functionality falls short of expectations or fails altogether, confidence will quickly evaporate. That’s why it’s important to swiftly integrate multiple systems and surrounding innovations, focus implementation on clearly defined business needs, and be responsive to dynamic conditions. Furthermore, disruptive technologies implemented well could, according to asset and wealth managers in our survey, generate cost savings of up to 15%.
It’s also important to establish robust monitoring mechanisms. The majority (73%) of asset and wealth managers already measure the effectiveness of disruptive tech through user feedback and satisfaction surveys, regular performance tracking (57%), and the reduction of manual errors and inefficiencies through digital solutions (56%).
Step up the spotlight on third-party risk
Because a business is only as operationally secure and resilient as the weakest link in its supply chain, a more systematic approach to third-party risk management is absolutely critical. The focus on third-party governance has been given further impetus by regulatory scrutiny, including the EU’s incoming Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). Many AWM organisations may lack the resources to carry out the necessary supplier due diligence and oversight and may need to adopt a managed service option.
3. Reimagine talent and skills
People, not systems, drive innovation and make the most of technology. Accordingly, AWM organisations see access to skilled expertise as the top driver for M&A over the next two to three years, and almost one-third of respondents from these organisations say they currently lack relevant skills and talent.
Accelerating upskilling and reskilling
The need to bring capabilities up to speed requires more than increased investment in upskilling and reskilling. Currently, only 39% of asset and wealth managers are upskilling their internal workforce specifically to leverage new technologies. What’s more, some of the needed capabilities—for example, training and prompting AI and the ability to harness open-source technology—will be new, and likely outside of their current upskilling programmes. There is also widespread frustration over the limited skills development offered by employers, which is spurring many employees to seek opportunities elsewhere. PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2024 revealed a strong appetite among employees to acquire and develop new tech-focused skills.
Realising the tech-powered value potential of your workforce
The talent dynamics could be far more complicated than leaders at many AWM organisations assume. Disruptive tech is going to deliver a lot of the analysis that portfolio analysts have long provided, before they progressed to investment managers. Indeed, portfolio management is near the top of the list of the functions targeted for cost savings by the AWM organisations in our survey.
Rather than disappear, however, the portfolio analyst role is more likely to evolve. The clear conclusion from PwC’s latest AI Jobs Barometer is that people won’t be replaced by machines so much as by people skilled in leveraging the potential of AI, big data and other disruptive tech.
There could be costs for AWM organisations that see disruptive tech as primarily a way to accomplish the same tasks with fewer workers. These companies are at risk of winning the cost battle but losing the growth war, and they could end up sacrificing a critical component of reinvention: innovative talent.
Shaping roles and career paths for a new world
If most roles—portfolio analyst included—evolve, how can AWM organisations utilise the new capabilities and time freed up? A good starting point is developing proactive plans for reskilling people whose jobs will either go or radically change. It’s also important to reimagine entry-level roles for the investment managers of the future (as seen in the mock job ad above). Early movers will not only be in a stronger position to attract, develop and make the most of this talent but also to draw from a wider recruitment pool that includes more than traditional analysts.
Empowering your people
Harnessing the potential of disruptive tech demands a cultural change as well, built around empowerment, innovation and creativity.
The first step is encouraging wary staff to embrace the benefits of disruptive tech. Emphasise the opportunities for them to reimagine their roles and what they can accomplish within them. Encourage new attitudes towards activities such as experimentation; successful employees will embrace a readiness to try new ways of doing things, even if there is a risk of failure.
The move from an enterprise to ecosystem view of operations and offerings will also challenge prevailing assumptions. New priorities include being able to work collaboratively and productively with partners while protecting and enhancing the interests of your own enterprise.
4. Build confidence in disruptive tech
Unleashing the transformative power of disruptive tech ultimately depends on trust—trust in the technology, trust that it’s being used responsibly and trust that sensitive data is properly protected. Notably, 67% of asset and wealth managers cite concerns about the accuracy of decisions made by technology as the primary hurdle in adopting disruptive tech within their firms.
Strengthening visibility and protection
As AWM organisations embrace disruptive tech, investors will benefit from—and be motivated by—enhanced transparency and engagement through real-time access to investment data and performance metrics.
However, this shift towards greater transparency also raises concerns about cybersecurity and data privacy, especially within today’s extended ecosystems. More than half of asset and wealth managers (54%) say that disruptive technologies would significantly impact their cybersecurity measures. The AWM sector, like other segments of the financial services industry such as insurance and banking, will need to adapt its regulatory frameworks to ensure robust protection of client information and maintain the integrity of their systems.
In this new world, reactive compliance frameworks aren’t enough on their own. Priorities include the development and embedding of an ethical framework that addresses data privacy, security, algorithmic bias and transparency. It’s also important to provide clear communication to clients and investors about the technological tools and AI models used.
Making cybersecurity an organisation-wide priority
Cyber vulnerabilities will inevitably increase as data proliferates and more of the operations, decisions and stakeholder interactions become tech-enabled. So, it’s important to foster organisation-wide understanding and responsibility for managing the risks. As PwC’s 2025 Global Digital Trust Insights highlights, the organisations that are successfully doing so are experiencing fewer breaches, and the attacks that do hit them aren’t as costly.
AWM organisations must embrace disruptive tech and how it can help them compete, grow and unlock new value. Indeed, most firms foresee a significant shift towards tech-enabled solutions, as they seek to engage a younger, more tech-savvy investor base and serve a burgeoning mass-affluent market. Investing in transformative tech isn’t just a strategy—it’s the key to future-proofing success.
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