{"id":623719,"date":"2026-06-06T02:37:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T02:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/623719\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T02:37:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T02:37:29","slug":"ai-could-bridge-advisor-shortage-wealth-ceos-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/623719\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Could Bridge Advisor Shortage, Wealth CEOs Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fears of a 100,000-advisor shortfall by 2034<\/a> may be \u201coverblown,\u201d with several wealth leaders confident that the scaling opportunities afforded by artificial intelligence can bridge the shortfall.<\/p>\n

During a discussion at this week\u2019s BNY INSITE Conference in Aurora, Colo., Hightower CEO Larry Restieri questioned whether the most dire projections laid out in a McKinsey & Co. report from last year would come to pass.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While finding the reports\u2019 results \u201ca little overblown,\u201d Restieri acknowledged that advisors are aging out. But Restieri said AI tools could help advisors \u201ctouch more clients and have more interactivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think being an advisor is a great career, and I think we have to do a better job probably of recruiting people into our only way of hiring is not just acquiring other teams, acquiring firms or poaching people from wirehouses,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s going to be, \u2018we have to do our own training, and we\u2019re getting to size and scale where this is something we\u2019re going to invest in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:AI Spending Could Widen Gap Between Largest Firms and Others<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s McKinsey report\u00a0indicated that the advisor population had grown only 0.3% annually over the last 10 years, with a further decline of 0.2% expected over the next decade. By 2034, the firm expected an industrywide shortage of about 100,000 advisors.\u00a0Incorporating expectations that about 110,000 advisors will retire in the next 10 years, McKinsey estimated the industry would need to attract 30,000 to 80,000 net new advisors in that time, compared with 8,000 net new advisors in the prior decade.<\/p>\n

For Cresset CEO Susie Cranston, the shortage would partially be due to the percentage of people seeking human advice rising in an increasingly AI-saturated environment. While productivity assistants will help bridge the gap, Cranston hoped to use AI to reach younger individuals entering the industry.\u00a0But Cranston said firms need to understand how to let those nascent advisors \u201cget enough cycles and enough reps\u201d to be able to connect with and advise clients, \u201cbecause it\u2019s not like you can just take a 22-year-old and put them in front of 75-year-old clients and have that go perfectly the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I do think firms have to think about how you leverage AI training, and also, what are ways you can get people real-life experience to get them ready for things in a very AI-heavy world?\u201d Cranston asked.<\/p>\n

Restieri hoped that AI and other tech tools could help scale the training of prospective advisors by expanding the breadth of veteran-advisor-led mentorship.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can create a way to teach your advisors by leveraging the people that are in-house who are actually really good at their job. My experience has been that advisors love giving back and helping, especially the really good ones,\u201d he said. \u201cThey love teaching young people how to do it, and if they can do it at scale as opposed to just the two people on their team, they\u2019re happy to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:RIA Marketing Leader Tina Powell Passes Away<\/a><\/p>\n

Like many industry conferences this year, AI was top of mind in every panel discussion and conversation over coffee, and the panel with Restieri, Cranston, Wealth Enhancement CEO Jeff Dekko and Ben Harrison, head of client coverage for BNY Pershing Wealth Services Platform, was no different.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Dekko, AI\u2019s encroachment into the industry was an opportunity, not a cause for fear, believing the sea change could make clients \u201clong\u201d for human relationships. Given that advisors are often privy to clients\u2019 most difficult life moments and decisions, wealth managers can become \u201call things advice\u201d for their clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone\u2019s going to own the \u2018advisor of everything,\u2019 the wealth manager is positioned to do that, and AI is the enabler for us to get to that,\u201d Dekko said.<\/p>\n

However, Dekko was less taken with the oft-repeated speculation that AI tools can be used to drastically scale wealth management businesses further into the mass affluent space.<\/p>\n

Related:Deals & Moves: Sanctuary Lands Father-Son Merrill Breakaway<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an emotional component to your life savings. And I don\u2019t care if you have $500,000, $5 million or $50 million, you want to be cared for,\u201d he said. \u201cSo this idea that we\u2019re going to play with AI and mass affluent first, I\u2019m not a big buyer that suddenly the mass affluent is going to say, \u2018Yeah, I don\u2019t need to be cared for.\u2019 It just doesn\u2019t compute for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the wealth CEOs\u2019 discussion, Phil Orlando,\u00a0senior vice president and chief market strategist\u00a0at Federated Hermes,\u00a0disputed the notion that a market juiced by AI companies threatened to be a bubble, asserting that the \u201creal companies\u201d spending on AI development didn\u2019t pose the same risks as the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

However, in the wake of Kevin Warsh becoming chair of the Federal Reserve, Orlando surmised that the market could hit an \u201cair pocket\u201d in the next several months. In particular, he noted that in the previous six years, when a midterm election and a Fed Board Chair changeover both occurred, the stock market reacted with a \u201cmidyear air pocket of 10% give or take.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also noted that midterm years are generally turbulent for markets in the run-up to the election, amid expected changes in political power dynamics in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not historically damaging longer term,\u201d he said. \u2018It\u2019ll result in a little bit of a hiccup over the next couple of quarters, but then the market regains its footing, and I think we\u2019re at record highs again by the end of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fears of a 100,000-advisor shortfall by 2034 may be \u201coverblown,\u201d with several wealth leaders confident that the scaling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-623719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}